All Posts Tagged With: "china"

A view from Ritan Park

Another absolutely beautiful day today. What would you have done with it?

This article, from BBC’s James Reynolds, is so incredibly bad that I’m going to give it its own post in the hopes that five days later, or whatever, I can revisit this and make sense of it. Why anyone would start a post-Closing Ceremony post like this –

It’s over.

In a state which has no God, the Olympics has been a religion - together with its own cathedrals, rituals, and sacred flames. Everyone in China was meant to be a worshipper. If you didn’t believe in the Games, you were dismissed as a heretic.

– is utterly beyond me. Only someone who has absolutely no idea what’s happening in Beijing — who hasn’t bothered talking to locals, many of whom say the Olympics are a hassle and are in fact not burned at any stake — can write something like that. If a blogger off the block said that, no one would bother. Reynolds, on the other hand, works for BBC, which makes this article utterly appalling.

It gets stranger from there… a cataloging of national leaders (”The King and Queen of Sweden sat a bit further back - democratically wearing their official Olympic accreditation round their necks”) followed by this observation:

The biggest cheer of the entire night came when David Beckham rose up from the 2012 bus (if ever China decides to hold elections, Beckham might have a reasonable chance of getting a seat on the Chinese Politburo).

Uh… really, James Reynolds, were you actually there? Or did you catch it on the tube from your favorite English pub?

And then this: “Then came the final moment of a decade of work. The Olympic flame (always known here as the ’sacred flame’) was put out.”

“Sacred flame” is a Chinese thing, huh? It’s not called the sacred flame because, say, that’s what it’s always been called, from the days it was lit by a High Priestess in Athens?

The reaction to the post has been, well… invisible. As of 9:18 p.m. Beijing time, there have been 67 comments — this is over a two-day period — and all of them look like this:

• 67. At 1:39pm on 25 Aug 2008, daisylan2008

  This comment is awaiting moderation. Explain.

Xujun Eberlein, a notable blogger and author, linked to Reynolds’s abomination from her blog, Inside-Out China, with four words: “This one is hilarious.”

One way of putting it, I guess.

How does Reynolds’s blog post end? Oh but with a bang! Never mind ridiculous and ill-conceived…

A billion people will now have to find something else to believe in.

My fascination with Zou Shiming, China’s great hope for boxing gold, continues. I can’t believe I just found this New Yorker profile of him written by Evan Osnos, who earlier this summer penned the best China article I’ve read all year, “Angry Youth .”

Excerpt from “The Boxing Rebellion”:

Teacher Zhang stood close to Zou’s face, spoke softly, and tipped a trickle of bottled water into his mouth. When the bell signalled the start of Round 2, Zou sprang forward and buried a left-right combination to even the score. He set his stance farther apart than before and bounced lightly on the balls of his feet. He scissored his legs, an homage to his idol, Muhammad Ali. His first round, it seemed, had been a warmup. He glided around Paraschiv, pausing only to flick a combination into the Romanian’s padded brow. Every time Paraschiv slung his fist, Zou eased out of the way and counterpunched. Paraschiv, pivoting and swinging in vain, did not score another point in the round. Or, for that matter, in either of the two rounds that followed.

Zou rarely knocks his opponents out. He batters them and darts out of reach, like an angry sparrow. Sometimes he holds his fists so low that they drop below his waist, a caricature of Ali. Zou is a light flyweight, the lightest weight class in the Olympics. But, even among boxers his size, Zou is known for exceptional speed. After he beat the Irish fighter Paddy Barnes, I asked Barnes what had happened. Zou’s left hand, he replied. “It’s that fast. I could hardly see it coming.” When the American Rau’shee Warren was on his way to losing to Zou in the 2004 Olympics, in Athens, Warren told his corner that he couldn’t keep up: “I’m telling the coach, ‘Dang, he can move, and I can’t catch him!’ ”

Recommended read, to say the least.

One more excerpt:

Zou is unfailingly soft-spoken and polite, which, in a sport of swaggerers, can be mistaken for lack of confidence. It shouldn’t be. After routing a European amateur champion recently, Zou conceded, “He is good. Outstanding. But I am better.” I asked him how he pictures himself when he fights. “I think I’ve combined martial arts and boxing,” he said. “Martial arts have a soft and flexible side, and boxing is more direct. Putting them together is a specialty of Chinese boxing.” He prides himself on distinguishing China in a way that it has never enjoyed. “Opponents looked down upon Chinese players before,” he has said. “They were happy to take on a Chinese boxer, because we were too weak.

“Now they come and shake hands with you. The stronger you become, the more respect you get.”

I can’t help but think of the Frenchman who, after losing to Zou in the pre-quarters, refused to shake his hands.

UPDATE: Zou won the gold medal today, adding to China’s preposterously high count (51; next best: U.S., with 36, though the U.S. beat China 110-100 in total medals). Most countries win more silvers and bronzes than golds. For the Chinese, the complete opposite is true. They have 49 TOTAL silvers and bronzes.

It seems a new blog called Stryde Hax has blown the cover off the Chinese gymnast age controversy. A brief summary to bring you up to date, in case you haven’t been following:

The New York Times first reported that members of China’s girls’ gymnastics team — the one that won Olympic gold — may have been underage, two years below the legal limit. Documents were uncovered. They were deleted. Passports were reissued. Hullaballoo created. Cries of Western media bias. Jokes. The IOC didn’t care.

Enter Stryde, who hacked into Baidu, which is Chinese Google, and found a cached spreadsheet showing gymnast He Kexin’s real birthdate — before it was changed and the documents made unavailable — as 01/01/04, making her 14 years old. Check out Stryde’s discovery (and screenshots) here .

In a second post, Stryde writes :

What is this post really about? I don’t really feel that it’s about the gymnastics age limit, or even really about whether fraud occurred. At this point, I believe that any reasonable observer already understands that age records have been forged. This story now is really about Internet censorship, the act of removing evidence while at the same time claiming that the evidence is wrong. For the first time I watched search records shift under my feet like sand, facts draining down a hole in the Internet. Will this stand?

An excellent point, if you ask me.

As for whether this is sufficient evidence for the IOC to take away the girls’ medals, I’m not sure. It would be an absolute shame, but if it really is true that the Chinese team cheated, they deserve to get punished, especially since we’re not just talking about the team but the Politburo, which had railed against cheating while imploring its athletes to “stay clean.” This would be an embarrassment of monumental proportions.

I suspect, however, this story will fizzle in the coming days. The West always assumed the girls were underage anyway, and the Chinese… well, they’re not going to find out about this. Not officially, anyway.

UPDATE, 8/22: From ESPN News Services .

Li Du, gold medalist in the 10-meter air rifle four years ago, had a chance to win the country’s first gold medal of this Olympiad this morning. Instead, she placed fifth.

Tearful, she ducked the media and only addressed the media hours later, after, I’m sure, some agonizing self-reflection. Still visibly shaken — sobbing would be the accurate word here — she apologized, then expressed her sincere regret for her performance. It was heart wrenching.

Was it enough? That may not be the right question, because people have stopped caring. China is competing in too many events with too many chances to win gold — in fact, weightlifter Chen Xiexia did win gold soon after Li Du’s event concluded — so right now Li’s an afterthought, if even that. Her name has been relegated to the nether of just about every Chinese website. These are the stakes for China’s minor athletes: hero or unknown. Separated by the thinnest of lines.

An excerpt for you of this news story:

“I was satisfied by scoring 399 in the qualification round but I was not fully prepared for the pressure of shooting in the final at home,” Li said.

[Winner Katerina] Emmons expressed sympathy for Li.

“As far as I can see, there was too much pressure on her,” the newly crowned champion said.

“You media just swarmed around her even in her training.

“I can not bear that if I am in that situation, so I can feel what Du must have felt.”

Few can.

Good luck, Liu Xiang.

Via CS Monitor, this story of Zhang Juanjuan got my attention:

Zhang came in ranked No. 27 in the world, less a machine than a mercenary. She might not always be the most consistent of performers (gasp!), but in knockout competitions – like the Olympics – she is deadly.

Just ask the Koreans. They had not lost this event since 1984.

Joo Hyun-Jung entered the competition ranked No. 3 in the world. Zhang dispatched her tidily in the quarterfinal.

Yun Ok-Hee entered the competition ranked No. 2 in the world. She also held the record for firing the best recorded round of archery of any woman in the history of the sport. In May of this year, she fired 12 arrows at a target at an event in Turkey. Eleven hit the bulls-eye – 119 of 120 possible points. Zhang dispatched her, too, tying the Olympic record of 115 in the process.

Park Sung-Hyun entered the competition ranked No. 1 in the world. She was the defending Olympic champion and had set the Olympic record of 115 earlier in the day.

…With [Zhang's] nation watching, she was slowly turning the screw – no question of age or piling up medals in weak events. Just her nerve against the best in the world.

When her final arrow hit the target – a 9 – she had won by a single point.

The magnitude of this upset cannot be understated. Last month, the New York Times did an article on the South Korean archery dynasty, quoting one of the competitors as saying, “Our sensitive fingertips, descended from our ancestors, and our spiritual strength and willingness to fight until the very end — they are the secrets.” In other words, the success of South Korean archers is written in their DNA. How do you beat that?

Zhang, in taking the crown, took out South Korea — and the world’s — No. 3, No. 2 and No. 1 archers, in succession. Don’t know your opinions, but to me that’s mind-boggling.

Here’s another article about this. I’m still in shock.

I mentioned Chinese shooter Du Li in my ESPN The Blog article this week, saying how she could barely express herself through her tears after placing fifth in the 10-meter air rifle, an event she was expected to win. Well, she was in tears again Thursday after the 50-meter three-position rifle event, but under different circumstances: as a winner. She defeated Katerina Emmons, who won gold in the 10-meter event.

“The five days between my loss and this event were harder and longer than the four years between the Olympics,” Du said something to that effect in her post-event TV interview. “I didn’t want to leave the house. Everyone was so supportive, every time I heard their words I wanted to cry.”

She was in tears again. That was expression enough.

MORE LINKS

• Beach volleyball: cheerleaders! [Olympics or Bust]
• Opening Ceremonies images and links [TBJ]
• Liu Yan, injured opening ceremony dancer [Danwei]
• A poorly conceived Spanish ad [NY Times] … and the follow-up
• An article that makes me happy because the comments section lambastes the French [NY Times]
• Olympic medal designs since 1896 [Shanghaiist]

From Danwei:

It was a fitting finish for an opening ceremony that may have not been to everyone’s liking, but carried one strong message from beginning to end: We are China, we’ve been around for ages, and we do things our way.

Iran May Breakup “Six Powers” And Get What It Wants

“If Iran takes one step back, the arrogant powers in the world would take one step forward,” said Iran’s supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a sermon Wednesday, July 30. He spoke three days ahead of a deadline given by the six world powers for his government to give “a reasonable” answer to their incentives for suspending uranium enrichment to produce nuclear weapons.

Ayatollah Khamenei’s statement, broadcast by Iran’s national TV, if it represents Iran’s final position, will have the effect of breaking up the six-power front against Iran’s nuclear program. This may have been his desired effect. Russia and China are expected to take exception to the harsh economic penalties favored by the US and most of Europe and let Iran off the hook. Iran believes it can stall meaningful action against it relying on Russia and China to give it a pass, and ticket into the nuclear club. Iran, Russia and China all believe the U. S., particularly if Barack Obama is elected President, will lack resolve and they can advance their views and influence at its expense and they are arming and positioning to do so.

Simultaneously Israeli transport minister Mofaz, who leads Israel in the regular strategic dialogue with the United States, raised strong concerns over Washington’s direct talks with Iran at a meeting of the forum and encounters with Vice President Dick Cheney and secretary of state Rice on July 31. The hardline Mofaz, one of the leading contenders to succeed Ehud Olmert as prime minister, said “All options against Iran should not only be on the table, but prepared.” Israel has expressed open concern about the consequence of the upcoming U. S. Presidential elections, and is preparing to go it alone.

From a Danwei article about Chinabounder (you don’t need to know), this is the first paragraph of a four-paragraph comment from someone called bianxiangbianqiao:

If “Great” means attracting the best people in the world, China is in a sorry position. It is collecting junk from the world over. The book and “chinabounder” tell you a lot about the kind of foreigners flooding to China. The most disturbing part is that these losers and castaways from their own country are on university campuses. Not one foreign academic with a real grownup’s job (on a tenure-track position) in America I know of over the last decade has gone to China on a long-term basis. China is certainly not attracting the brightest minds in the world. Most of those foreigners on Chinese campuses are not even qualified for adjunct staff (a very sorry position) here. Even China’s own people, the Qinghua and Beida graduates who are now the top two most likely candidates to earn American Ph. D.s, are staying away from its universities. (Number 3 is UC Berkeley. Its undergraduates are 45% Asian. How many of them are Chinese descendants?) Why are the patriotic Chinese overseas dragging their feet in America? Is their patriotism fake? No. It is because Chinese universities are filled with losers like chinabounder and “professor” Zhang Jiehai. These two are quite a match. How desperate you have to be to want to join these guys?

Read more here, from a post titled “Fertility Display? What Chinabounder Tells Us about the Western Male Reproductive Strategy“:

I read somewhere in the anthropological literature (I am no anthropologist, therefore cannot remember the correct citation) that there are three critical scenes essential to the Western male identity. Number one is the fighting scene. Number two is the drunk scene and number three is the callous sex scene. Reminds me of Sanlitun, as described on the internet; I have never set foot on that part of my hometown.

I have my faults, admittedly, but BXBQ’s post sort of makes me proud to not be a laowai — especially the sort who’d write this crap.

POSTSCRIPT: I’m being facetious, of course, as I tend to be on occasion on this site. It is, however, a bit late for anthropological discussions, so I’ll add some thoughts if they come to me later.

POSTSCRIPT 2: The fourth-to-last comment on Danwei’s 35-comment thread, nestled between an engrossing exchange between “Bill” and “Pffefer”:

People, read my book if you got nothing better to do.
Posted by: Chinabounder | July 19, 2008 10:05 AM

Wang Zhaoshan, an officially licensed “writer” in Shandong, recently wrote an abomination of a poem in the June 6 issue of Qilu Evening News that’s so terrible that people all over China are throwing up as we speak. From Danwei :

…In the poem, Wang impersonated a victim expressing his gratitude to the government from his grave:

天灾难避死何诉，主席唤，总理呼，党疼国爱，声声入废墟。十三亿人共一哭，纵做鬼，也幸福。银鹰战车救雏犊，左军叔，右警姑，民族大爱，亲历死也足。只盼坟前有屏幕，看奥运，共欢呼。

Here is fairly literal translation:

Natural disaster is inevitable, so why should I complain about my death? The president calls, the premier asks, the Party cares, the country is concerned, the voices go into the rubble. One-point-three billion people shed tears. I feel happy even as a ghost. Silver eagles and army vehicles came to rescue: soldiers, police officers - the great love! I am satisfied to die. I only wish I could have a TV set so I could watch the Olympic Games and cheer with others.

The article goes on to mention the Chinese Writer’s Association, a consortium of, it appears, very bad writers who are government-funded and required to produce government-approved pieces of “literature.”

In China, a country with a rich literary history (though utterly infuriating and unreadable, even to Chinese scholars), art means something completely different than the definition Westerners have come to know. It doesn’t reflect society, or transcend it, or advance it (every artist’s dream). Instead, it sort of just blends into the Party line. And that’s a shame.

We have a defacto suicidal oil avoidance policy which makes Bush’s shortsighted oil focus look like a misdemeanor in a world of capital crimes.

Bush once declared he was never part of “big oil,” rather he once was part of “little oil”. Bad, bad man. So punish the entire US population.

Well, I say to you, Cuba and China working together to drill for oil in our neighborhood is about Big Oil, but not what ignorant shortsighted politically motivated environmentalists usually think of. Such Stinging hypocrisy. I am an environmentalist, but do not think we have to commit suicide.

They have their heads in the wrong place and deserve any peculiar awards they get. Any ideas?

Suicide. Oil. Policy. Not by Bush.  Get it? Iraq WAS about oil, not our appropriating it, but specifically about keeping oil lanes and supplies open to all of the world including poor countries who are dependent on oil and cannot assure it’s availability in a world where volatile countries own and control a lot of oil. It is important to keep the shipping lanes open and half of our military expenditures may be directed to that end for the BENEFIT OF THE ENTIRE FREE AND OTHER WORLDS WHO USE OIL.

Do you know any country that does not use oil?

Do these Energy Brilliants know that while Brazil may be independent of oil thanks to massive forest destroying cultivation of sugar cane and it’s wide use throughout the country they still search for oil? No matter, damn those Exxon profiteers! Boycott their gas stations until they reduce their gas prices. Again, no matter, just fly me in a private jet to the next conference without delay, my limousine and award is waiting.

You follow in a non private plane to take my picture. And don’t be late. And do not us oil products made in the US, be sure to get them off the next boat from half way around the world. Hope any leaks are not on our shores.

Who cares that Venezuela, the country controlled by a mad man who “cares about the people”, owns Citgo. Why bother boycotting them? Well, because they are not Exxon, the Great Satan, who produces, what? Only a small percentage of world wide oil production? How can that be?

No matter. They only give 40% of their political donations to liberals, Democrats or progressive interests so they are bad.

Despite not being dependent on oil, Brazil and it’s sovereign Oil Firm has recently announced that they looked for and found new massive oil reserves in offshore fields. A second one just recently. But only because they looked for it, found it and will drilled it without the permission of god-like US environmentalists. Big Oil again. Taxem, taxem I say.

It is good news for these politically motivated liberal environmentalists because they will get to rejoice that Exxon is not going to make those profits, let along those made off our very own shores. After all if they did, we would have to penalize them and tax the “windfall” for making maybe an 8 to 10% return on equity on a large investment base. That is not a windfall even if measured in billions. Goldman Sachs just announced a poor financial result for the last quarter, just a little over 2 Billion. Where are the cries for a windfall profit on a company that probably makes 60% of their political donations to liberals, Democrats and progressives.

Many industries make a far greater return, but no matter, penalize them. Union pensions own a lot of stock in such companies but that is just hypocrisy, not worthy or mention.

Such shortsighted folks, including those sympathizers in government, do not know what a windfall is. Their extraordinary pensions, health care and other perks and fine china are windfalls and should be taxed at 90%.

Actors or actresses getting 1 to 20 million for a single movie taking 4 months to film, is a windfall requiring poor people to pay $8 to $12 per person for a movie.

An athlete getting similar egregious salaries so that poor people have to pay through the nose to see a single game, is a windfall. Oh and do not forget the 4 dollar popcorn. Unhealthy oil included at no extra charge.

Bill O’Reilly and Larry King’s salary and benefits are egregious and true windfalls.

Al Gore makes windfall profits by scaring us but has no solutions his own worshipful constituency would pay for. Hugh fees for speeches by former Presidents like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton are windfalls.

Which US legislator is going to introduce the Windfall Profits Tax on Brazil? Or Reagan’s estate or Clinton’s ventures?

Or Cuba or China or Russia?

Hey, how about this, let’s tax Iran for their windfall profits!

Why didn’t we think about this sooner? Notice something here? Those are countries, not stockholder profiteers owned by our pension funds and universities. All conduct foreign policy and build and buy weapons and train and pay for armies. No conflicts of interest there, is there?

Kind of like several much bigger Exxons, some with nuclear weapons, others wimply with nuclear ambitions like Iraq under Saddam. Where will they get the money for those kinds of programs? Not from Profits but from the entire asset base of the company/country. Wake up.