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.

Swat the mosquitos computer game

Here in Tianjin, we are pestered nine months a year with mosquitoes. They sneak in through the gaps in our windows, the gaps in the door jams that lead to the outside, the gaps in the drains. They come from every direction. You may not notice them until night. But trust that just as you lay you down to sleep, pray the lord your skin to keep. The mosquitoes will getcha if you don't watch out!

Somehow they're faster here than in America. They're cunning and conniving and seem to elude even our attempts with electric fly swatters that are like giant porch lamps attracting them with light only to electrocute their exoskeletons.

So if you can't swat them in reality, swat them virtually. Try this game! You are the giant fly swatter and you must swat the skeeters, winning only a larger swarm of them when you swat one.

Try it! See how many mosquitoes you can swat here!

Only in China: Weddings account for 10% of GDP

How good was business at last week's Beijing Wedding Expo?

The ATM machines ran out of money.

"I didn't bring enough cash," lamented 26-year-old Wang Lin, attempting to console his fiancee, Zhao Yue, as they waited in line at one of the few machines that was still operating.

"I never thought we'd make so many spur-of-the-moment decisions," said Wang, an IT worker, as he and Zhao leafed through brochures for gifts, photo albums, clothing, banquets and honeymoons.

They were not alone. An estimated 34,000 couples mobbed the Expo over three days. They spent an estimated $29 million, 30 percent more than last year, as more than 1,000 merchants promoted everything from Lincoln Limousines to tours of France.

Weddings have always been big business in China, and this year is no exception.

More than 10 million people marry annually in China. Expenditures totaled $220 billion, or 13.36 percent of GDP, in 2006, the last year for which statistics are available, according to the Ministry of Commerce and the China Wedding Industry Investigation and Research Center.

Read the rest of the story here

Tianjin makes the front page of New York Times!

TIANJIN, China — Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world leader in electric cars and buses after that.

The goal, which radiates from the very top of the Chinese government, suggests that Detroit’s Big Three, already struggling to stay alive, will face even stiffer foreign competition on the next field of automotive technology than they do today.

“China is well positioned to lead in this,” said David Tulauskas, director of China government policy at General Motors.

Read the rest HERE.

Hello, Goodbye relationship with Youtube.com

After it was restored for one day, Youtube.com is again blocked in China.

The most recent news articles I can access here are from last Thursday, reporting the Chinese government lifted its ban on Youtube.com. I suppose I'll report from here myself, since last night it's been blocked again.

"On Friday, people in Beijing access the site without using special software to enter it through a proxy server, a common way of getting around Internet walls put up by the government. Google said Tuesday that China had blocked YouTube but that it did not know why. The block came during a week when China was criticizing an Internet video, released by the Tibetan government in exile and put up on YouTube and other Web sites, that showed Chinese security officers beating handcuffed Tibetans."-taken from Edward Wong's New York Times brief

China is reporting this video was fabricated. Other sites that are recently blocked: keepvid.com and many pornography Web sites, according to this article.

"China has closed more than 2,000 Web sites and arrested at least 45 people in a sting against online porn launched in January. It has also vowed to stamp out erotic text messages sent on cell phones. Various blog hosts have been shut down as well, including some known for political content that ran against the central government line. " -taken from Network World article.

'Atta boy China–way to be vigilant. (For my students who read my blog frequently and for those of you in my writing class where we're about to study sarcasm, parody and satire, this is sarcasm.)

Tibetan Serf Emancipation Day today, but no info available

Though the Chinese government may have invited more foreign media to Tibet in the lead up to today, Tibet's Serf Emancipation Day, according to a China Daily article, Internet users within China can't tell the difference. We can't get any foreign coverage of the holiday here anyway.

Internet searches for news about the holiday instated this year by the Chinese National People's Congress only reap articles by Xinhua, the media arm of the government, and China Daily, the country's only national English language publication published by the China Communist Party. Several other news sources came up in my searches–Reuters, Washington Post, a Taiwanese media outlet–but only a BBC and Times online article could be loaded. The Times online article was headlined, "New holiday celebrates freedom for serfs and lets China show itself in a good light."

Earlier in the week, Youtube.com was blocked to all Internet users within China. Apparently started over a video depicting the beating of a Tibetan by PRC officers, the entire nation of Internet users was denied Youtube for the better part of this week. The government said the video was fabricated and the site is again available. Read Al Jazeera's report here.

Today's holiday is meant to celebrate the start of Chinese rule in Tibet, which began in 1959. The government's position is that it freed Tibetans from primitive slavery and antiquated living conditions. The holiday was formalized weeks after last Spring's Lhasa protests, during which Tibetans rioted against the Chinese government's rule.

Here's what I'm interested in: According to a Xinhua article, the holiday is meant to celebrate the freedom from primeval slavery Tibetans suffered under out-moded serf style rule. According to another China Daily article, only 5 percent of the population in old Tibet owned serfs. But according to yet another Xinhua article, more than a million Tibetans were freed when the Chinese came in 1959 and that that number, one million, comprised 95 percent of all Tibetans. This means before 1959, Tibetans were either serf owners or serfs.

If these numbers are factual and true, they're astounding and provide great credence to some of the government's actions in 1959. But I don't know if they're true. The journalists writing these stories work for the government and the government won't allow me to read any articles on the issue other than those written by journalists working for the government. I can't corroborate this information with any sources from outside of China. It's insular, inflexible and frankly scary and it doesn't provide a convincing-enough argument for me.

But lest I feel caged in and isolated in China, the government wants me to read another Xinhua article headlined, "Curious about Tibet? Look, listen and see for yourself!" Well, I can't. Since the beginning of February, foreigners haven't been allowed to go to Tibet or large parts of Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai provinces.

It's not that I don't think these things are true, it's that I'm only permitted one source of information and I'm not willing to believe anything until I can get a few sources on the same issue. I guess it's another situation where the government just asks me to take their word for it. By now, I want to see things for myself.

Beijing from the back seat

An afternoon ride in the back seat of a motorcycle cab through the hutong from Jingshan Park through, within the inner city walls, to near Chongwenmen.

Language still 'Big Mountain' to climb

RELATED • Fluency in the impossible: View Da Shan's Web site

I recently had a breakthrough in my Chinese and all I got from it was this lousy friend Da Shan

Da Shan, a foreigner like me, speaks fluent Mandarin, much to the surprise of the Chinese and much to the chagrin of other foreigners. Born in Canada, his Chinese name Da Shan means Big Mountain, while his English name, Mark Henry Rowswell is a common colloquialism for unremarkable white guy.

The only thing that makes this 44-year-old Ottawan special is his apparent fluency in an impossible language. For this thought-to-be-inconceivable accomplishment, he was rewarded with a TV show called "Sports Chinese," on China Central Television and the coveted position of dancing poodle on Spring Festival TV shows.

Read the rest of my most recent column on the Post-Tribune site here.

Xi'an city wall

My American aunt visited me last week in Beijing, for a whirl-wind, one-week taste of China tour. Though we spent the vast majority of her visit in Beijing, we flew out to Xi'an one day to see the clay soldiers my aunt has spent her artistic career admiring.

She cried out of happiness when she saw the soldiers, a reaction our Chinese guide Cici was definitely not prepared to handle. After the tears dried, she was vulnerable enough for me to talk her into riding a tandem bicycle with me on Xi'an's old city wall.

The city wall is entirely intact, preserved since the 2,500 years ago when it was built. Aside from the potholes (it is nearly 3,000 years old) it was smooth riding. The view includes the sometimes dilapidated interior city, the rapidly modernizing outer city and the spring peach blossoms of the gardens immediately surrounding the wall. Enjoy and if you'd like to see more of my pictures, go to my portfolio at www.AmericanFair.shutterfly.com.

Forbidden City photos

It's too late tonight to write, but feel free to check out more pictures from my first trip to the Forbidden City at my shutterfly site here.

"Hit the Christie's" another Chinese slug at the French

Chinese netizens are reacting to last month's sale of two bronze Chinese artifacts, originally stolen from China in the 1800s, at the Parisian Christie's auction house.

Beijing petitioned Christie's not to sell the items and instead return them to China for free, but the private auction house refused and proceeded to sell the bronze rat and rabbit head.

However, the winning bidder Cai Mingchao is a Chinese national who works closely with an organization that recovers lost and stolen Chinese artifacts. Cai joined the auction to deliberately sabotage the sale, winning the items and then admitting he does not have the money, nor does he plan on ever having the money to pay for them. Read the Reuters article here.

Now a few HTML savvy Chinese have created an online game "Hit the Christie's," where latent angry netizens can hit a punching bag labeled Christie's in Chinese that appears to be hanging from the Eifle Tower. Hit the Christie's here

According Wall Street Journal blogger Juliet Ye, the Parisian auction house has been slugged more than 340,000 times.

Say it ain't so

After a confrontation between five Chinese ships and one US Navy vessel Sunday, China is calling the US insubordinate and the US is crying foul, not what foreigners living in China want to hear.

US Navy ship The Impeccable was performing a sonar surveillance mission 75 miles (120 kilometers) off the coast of Hainan, during which it tows long cables behind the ship designed to detect submarines (presumably dangerous submarines designed for warfare). Five Chinese vessels approached, thought by US Navy officers to be a naval intelligence vessel, two smaller trawlers, a fisheries patrol boat and an official oceanographic ship, according to the New York Times.

The Chinese vessels "shadowed and aggressively manoeuvred in dangerously close proximity" to the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, on Sunday, with one ship coming within 25 feet (7.6 metres), a U.S. Defense Department statement said. -taken from Reuters.

The US says it was in international seas and the Chinese ships violated maritime rules. China said the US ships were conducting illegal surveillance so it doesn't matter whether or not the waters were international. Thus the rub.

"The U.S. claim about operating in high seas is out of step with the facts," a report from Hong Kong Phoenix TV quoted a spokesman from the Chinese embassy in Washington DC in saying. "The U.S. navy vessel concerned has been consistently conducting illegal surveying in China's special economic zone." -taken from Reuters.

Foreigners living in another country never want confrontation, but even worse, confrontation their home country and the international community is calling a battle of machismo.

The BBC and other international news services incident is being called a test of the newly minted President Obama's mettle. Maaaaaan, come on! (I tried to link a BBC World article to this post but it's currently blocked, go figure.)

Here's how I see the comment that the Chinese ships' aggressive behavior in international waters is actually a test to see what President Obama would do: it's lose lose. If it's wrong, you've insulted the Chinese. If it's right, we've got international conflict. Neither sit well with me from my apartment outside Beijing.

Wen Jiabao: China can still achieve eight percent growth

"In his annual speech to the opening session of parliament, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the country was facing "unprecedented" challenges from a worsening global financial crisis but that he still expected GDP growth of 8% for 2009." Watch the Youtube video of France24 analysis here.

If I am what I eat, thank god my tastes matured

David Halberstam, the famous Vietnam War correspondent, came of age as a food person Saigon.

"The pressure of the job was so great, the friendships among colleagues so important, and the food so astonishing that my life changed," he wrote in "The Boys of Saigon," "and I began to appreciate the things that I scarcely could have imagined when I first got there."

I'm not deluding myself to think my job and life in Tianjin compare to the culture of war Halberstam lived and chronicled, but I can compare to the experience of dining and how it mirrors a traveler's evolving lifestyle. Like Halberstam, food is my barometer of personal growth.

Read the rest of my column here

How I spent my Christmas vacation

In China, everyone's family. So by conventional wisdom, the universal facts about family–that you must spend Christmas with them, that they will ask too much of you and that they are a little crazy–are just as true here as they are in America.

In this case, my family was the Chinese staff of the English-language expat magazine I write for in Tianjin. The crazy favor? I spent Christmas Eve at a boat-shaped hotel that featured a stage show of "China's most famous transvestites," a Santa who couldn't pronounce the merry part of merry Christmas and a new best friend who outed himself to me over the first course.

It all started in a conversation with my friend Victoria. Originally from Colorado, Victoria spent the last two Christmas' in China because the schedules of English teachers don't allow you a vacation before the New Year. This year she was spending Christmas with her new husband, LY and his Chinese family.

How you feel at Christmas is all in how you spend it, Victoria told me over drinks while we listened to a Filipino cover band.

Speaking like an old China hand, Victoria told me, "Do something weird, something totally Chinese, because if you try to do something familiar, you're just going to realize how unfamiliar this place is during a time when it's the last thing you need."

So when Fiona Gu, my Chinese editor at JIN magazine assumed I had no plans for the biggest day on the Christian calendar and assigned me this dinner, Victoria's advice made me take the ticket.

It started off strange and got downright cooky.

The hotel is a gigantic boat on land. Reality is difficult to determine when you're surrounded by people half dressed in sailor suits, half dressed like Santa's little elves.

I was the only foreigner in a room of about 2,000 people. Naturally this made me as much of a photo opportunity as Santa. When I did in fact catch Santa, a 22-year old beanpole of a boy, he asked me for pronunciation lessons. He was pronouncing merry with a Russian accent. "Veddy Kreesmahs!"

When the stage show started, it was like worshiping at the church of the Las Vegas strip. Long-legged women festooned with meter-long peacock feathers and golden capes were modeling on the stage's catwalk. "The men behind us said they're famous transvestites," Lee, my Chinese coworker, told me. China is traditionally conservative and unaccepting of gay or alternative lifestyles so I couldn't help but think the women's show was a Christmas miracle for opening and reform.

What really took the Christmas cane was a conversation with another guest during which he revealed he was homosexual. Because of the gravity of this matter, I do not make light of someone else's life. However, it's an example of a common situation for foreigners. Some Chinese people find refuge in foreigners with whom they feel they can confess weighty feelings that are too taboo to discuss with family or friends. So for 45 minutes, I heard my new best friend's confession with an unbiased judiciousness that would make Father Christmas proud.

China is one big family, unpredictable, demanding, cooky and endearing. On the train ride home, Lee leaned over and handed me a small bag. "I know this is a big holiday for you, so I got you something little."

Inside was a black, sequence, plastic gardenia hair clip. It's popular here to have costume jewelry-like accessories and Lee's gift definitely fell in this category. I was genuinely moved by his kindness, and I kept thinking I would look like a member of the family with this gaudy hair piece!

Besides, what's Christmas without a gift you wish you could return?