You shouldn’t do it like Ethan Epstein, who I can only hope is not a regular contributor to Slate. He wrote “Staring at North Korea,” in which he travels from Beijing to Dandong to…be incredibly disappointed by his high expectations. The DMZ, DPRK side There are few things terribly wrong with this article (if I should even call it that): First, he has the worst three-picture slide show ever, which fails not only to depict the stark differences between China/the outside world and DPRK, but fails to actually show anything (photos include a train departure schedule, a foggy photo of irrelevant geography across the Yalu River, and a Chinese Tesco supermarket). And he had three days to come up with those photos? Second, he fears oversleeping on the train and waking up in Pyongyang, the epicenter of “world’s most brutal regime—and with no former U.S. president to come rescue me.” Perhaps brutal for native citizens, but would the government even dare to pull a hair off your head without incredible international repercussions? Third, he talks about how local Korean food isn’t as tasty as Korean food in Seoul or Los Angeles. Granted it even was an “authentic” North Korean restaurant
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I recently read this article in the NYT on the popularity and exclusivity of a Teach for America teaching position. I’m still adamantly opposed to TFA. So some overachieving kid with big dreams of world change gets thrown into an inhospitable atmosphere and tries to make good of all that’s bad. With little training, he tries to create a positive impact, but before he can achieve that, his stint is over and he leaves after two years with a sense of moral righteousness. Kid, now with a “prestigious” bullet point on the resume, continues to build his future career, likely unrelated to TFA, make big money, leaving underperforming students feeling abandoned yet again by the system. A simple Google Scholar search shows more results that undermine the notion that TFA brings “positive” change to underperforming schools across the country than supporting it. One study says: Findings for 5 school districts, roughly 300 new teachers, show that students of under-certified teachers (including teachers from the “Teach for America” program) make about 20% less academic growth than do students of regularly certified teachers. While I believe the underlying philosophy of TFA is still honorable, the pageantry and self-righteousness involved on the applicant
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Uyghurs are an ethnic minority of Turkic origin and Islamic faith that live in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR, or Xinjiang) in China, which today accounts for one-sixth of its land mass. As of 1998, Uyghurs comprised 45 percent of the 18.5 million citizens in Xinjiang; the Han Chinese comprised 40.58 percent of Xinjiang’s population. Two cultures, the Han Chinese represented by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Uyghurs (the largest minority group in Xinjiang), provide two different interpretations of the history of the formation and maintenance of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The CCP and Chinese scholars argue that Xinjiang has always been a part of China. Xinjiang has been under political contestation since the late eighteenth century, when the Qing reconquered the area. Political unrest became increasingly prominent since the late-1800s and sporadically manifests into violent opposition, especially during the late-1980s and early-1990s. From the 1820s to the 1870s, the Uyghurs posed a significant challenge to Qing conquests in the area until the Qing re-conquered the majority of the land. In 1884, the Manchu Qing empire brought Xinjiang under its control and incorporated it into the Chinese empire. The Manchus appointed hereditary princes and staffed local
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First, Twitter did not revolutionize citizen protests. If anything, it made for lazy journalism, wherein reporters and journalists spend time reading what other people have tweeted than providing their own analysis of the situation. It should be known that Iran still remains a vastly opaque country, with information becoming even more muddled as the Iranian government shuts down many communication services and blocks web access. Just today, reports of the Obama Administration scrambling for reliable information made the news. While Twitter has provided breaking, up-to-the-minute news about what’s going on in Iran, is the source to be trusted? You have to wonder who on the “other side” is reporting. There have been many false reports of protest traps, Mousavi under house arrest, and election results . Additionally, there has also been speculation that Iranian hardliner elites are manipulating the protests to “hoist themselves back into power.” Just like any other news source, you cannot take what you read at face value. What Twitter, YouTube, and 24-hour news syndicates have proven, though, is that media is very saturated in the average computer-user’s life. Thus, the repeated news stories from citizen journalists, bloggers, and reporters lead us to believe that much more
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James Fallows painted a bleak picture of what it’d be like to visit TAM Square on June 4. So when I decided to visit today, I decided to forgo bringing my Canon 5d and brought my compact camera, instead. Indeed, more plainclothes security than visitors that day. Some followed us, others tried to photograph us, but all-in-all a very uneventful day (as expected). Guard standing at one of the entrances to the Square Sea of umbrellas Just standing around with umbrellas, very inconspicuous Tons of ?? (wujing, special police forces)
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Let today be known as the day the Chinese government impaled the internet with its mighty spear of technology and added Flickr, Twitter, Hotmail, bing.com, live.com to its repertoire of blocked sites. Other sites blocked in China include: Blogspot, Tumblr, YouTube, WordPress, China Digital Times, and Huffington Post. 56minus1 speculates this may have to do with Ai Weiwei joining Twitter. Lostlaowai says it has to do with that special 20th anniversary on Thursday. Whatever the reason, this isn’t making my “I hate China” week any better. Edit: an exhaustive list of all the websites “down for maintenance” has been compiled. Check it out here.
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A few days ago, I found out that one of my male Chinese friends has gone to another city in China become a “duck” (鸭子, 男妓). I was actually quite unfamiliar with the phenomenon and even laughed when someone told me he went to go 养鸭 (yang3 ya1, raise ducks, a euphemism for male prostitution), because at first I thought he became a duck farmer. The name “duck” complements their female counterparts, who are called chickens, (妓女). According to The Observer, more and more Chinese women “buy a duck for a few hours of chatting, drinking and flirting.” While ordering a duck used to only be prevalent among middle-aged women, increasingly more younger women are also finding ducks to accompany them through a night of drinking, karaoke, or more. I became curious as to the life of a duck in China and searched some blogs and forums. One 19-year-old said on a forum: I am a 19-year-old duck. My family is poor. I am a high school graduate, and it is imperative for me to find a woman to take care of me, I can do whatever she wants me to do!…I can visit your home every day to serve
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It is almost inevitable that when you mention “America” to an older generation of Chinese people (30 and up), a discussion of differences between their motherland and the West will come up. There is a story that Chinese people like to tell about the differences in 消费 (xiao1fei4, consumption) between the U.S. and China: There are two old women, one is Chinese and the other is American. The American put out a mortgage for her home, lived in it, and right before she passed away, she finished paying her mortgage. The Chinese woman saved until she was about to pass away, and finally saved enough money to buy a house. China Journal reports that China’s economy is a rare case in the world right now, in that it has a “relatively robust banking system and sound government finances.” However, The problem is too little private consumption, despite encouraging signs from shoes to appliances that retail sales are holding up well. Instead of unlocking the buying power of its 1.3 billion people, for instance by deregulating services like health care or media, the government takes the lead with often billion-dollar bets. It was a good strategy to get infrastructure built, but
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My photographs of the aftermath of the TVCC fire in Beijing in February have gotten the attention of Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), and they’re going to feature some of my photographs on their slideshow about it soon. I will report back when it’s up. Unfortunately I’m not paid for it, but I’m happy for any publicity.
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