The changes in version 2.0 are not related to design, so they may not be immediately apparent to the eye. But they are rich in content and they will have important implications in the way I blog from now on. See the following points for what’s new:

Switch to Real Identity

Ever since I started blogging, and especially since I started using the Google sharing tools with my real ID, I have suffered from split personality on the net. Those who have been following from the beginning might remember the big fuss about this last year, as I was never completely comfortable with my internet persona.

I quite liked Uln in a way, it was amusing the way it naturally took a surname as Mr.Dice, and it was even cooler to see how some journalists used it freely to create their own heroins. I am not going to kill it completely, I will continue to use the avatar on the internet, but I will sign the posts as Julen. I guess the main reason for this decision is that I put a lot of work in my posts, I care about what I write, and I was growing jealous of that Uln guy who was taking all the credit.

I started using Uln in the first place to avoid problems with the Chinese authorities. Not that they were going to throw me in jail for this, but my life is in China, and if I can’t renew my visa for some part of me it will be like a death sentence. I have learnt a lot since I started this blog, I have spoken to many other bloggers, had my own site blocked and unblocked, and finally come to a point where I feel comfortable with the Chinese internet. I don’t think the risk is zero, but  today it makes sense for me to assume it so that I can be myself.

Following this change of philosophy, I have updated my Introduction and the Instructions Page. They were the first pages I created two years ago, and they were seriously in need of a rewrite. I hope now they give a more fair picture of who I am and why I write.

More New Features

Today I am also presenting a series of new features that I have been playing with lately and are now ready to be released. More detailed descriptions can be found in Instructions. Here is the list:

The MiniYouren: This is the weird midget that lives on the top part of my sidebar, a sort of mini-me. It is a mini-blogging platform that I use to write quick posts and connect it with Google Reader and Google Buzz.

The Roadmap: This is a sort of to-do list with the plans for new posts to come that can be also used for off-topic comments or for proposing new subjects you would like to see me write about, or write them yourself.

Links to the Future: This is a revolutionary new technology that I have invented in this blog. It is an internet time machine that allows me to link to a post that exists only in my mind. These links are green and they all point to the Roadmap page described above.

Gitmo and Laogai: These are my two latest children and let me tell you I am proud of them. I see them as a breakthrough in China blogging, where not only you can enjoy and communicate with other people, but also improve and reform yourself. I am almost tempted to call this Web 2.5. I just hope I don’t have to send many readers there this year.

The Top Tab bar: Embarrassingly enough, this feature is broken, and I haven’t been unable to fix it in time for the presentation. I will see to it as soon as possible. The idea is to add dropdown menus on the Top Tab so that all permanent information can be accessed directly without scrolling.

• You can click on the title of the news item to go directly to that article.
• You can click on the Follow button to see my profile and subscribe.
• You can Reply to any of my notes right here in this page.

There is one annoying thing with GReader sharing system: you still can’t reply directly to a note. That is why I have opened this page. Just copy the note you are replying to in your comment below, or continue an existing thread. If it gets interesting enough I will open a separate post and put it in the front page.

Any other suggestion about this new service is more than welcome!
.

It is interesting how analysts of China continue to explain all the  social phenomena with the Confucian tradition, when it seems to me that the Johnsonian and Golemanian thought must be at least as influential nowadays. Walk into any Chinese bookshop or check out the local pirate’s tricycle to see that self-improvement and cheese management titles rule supreme. The glossiest and most liquid books on the front table are the likes of: “Train yourself to start the next Google”, “How I changed myself from a complete idiot to a Fortune 500 CEO”, or “How I built a company that acquired the  company of the idiot in the previous book”.

Now, I have to warn you at this point: the titles mentioned may not be 100% exact, I am illiterate in the field of self-improvement. As a conceited, self-styled free-thinker I cannot help an almost classist repulsion towards those works, and I frown even on the  tricycle that sells them. During my years in the old Europe I happily managed to stay away from the rites of personal productiveness.  But ever since I moved to China, the new philosophy is lurking at every turn of phrase, and all resistance is in vain.

One of the concepts that appears most often in conversation is that of EQ, or emotional intelligence, coined by D.Goleman in his 1995 best-seller. After dozens of Chinese  spin-offs over the years, it has become an everyday expression here. It is not surprising that an idea like EQ should be so popular in the highly competitive Chinese system, where it provides some much needed comfort: don’t worry if you didn’t make it into a top Uni – the books say – because it’s not IQ but EQ that will determine your future. The pair IQ/EQ is also known in Chinese as 智商/情商，(zhishang/qingshang), although I find that the English abbreviation is more commonly used.

Whenever EQ comes up in conversation I like to point out that the concept is unscientific, especially in the loose form in which it is used here. But my wikipedic erudition always fails to impress the locals, and I have seen my EQ summarily analyzed in multiple occasions. The first time this happened to me was during a lunch with my colleague Jia, an otherwise bright engineer, in the first year of my stay in China. I can remember it almost vividly:

- Uln, your Chinese is getting pretty good.
- Thanks -  I ignored it. The comment is standard icebreaker in mandarin.
- You have a very good IQ –  he continued.
- Hm, thanks, you are also not bad.
- Yes, but.
- But? –

He looked me intently in the eye. It must have been the expression called “frank positive emphatic” in page 362 of the emotional book. When the look had been established, he proceeded:

- IQ is not good enough.
- No?
- No, you should watch your EQ.
- You mean, Ah Q, by Luxun?
- No, I mean E-Q.
- So who wrote that one?
- Nobody did.
- It’s  not a book?
- It is many books.
- Is it any good?
- Listen here. EQ is what explains why some people with lower IQ get further in life than others with higher IQ!
- You mean, like guanxi.
- No, like emotional intelligence.
- Ah, I thought…
- Guanxi is just a part of it. EQ is  about your skills to get on in life!
- I see.

But I didn’t see. That human relations and non-technical skills are essential in one’s career was one obvious thing, that I should check my parameters like a cranky old motor was quite a different one.

- Your IQ is Okay - he insisted –  but you should watch your EQ.
- Like what?
- Like there are open positions in HQ, that would be a good move for your career.
- What?
- A corporate level position is the way to leverage your expat experience .
- But I don’t want to live in Paris!
- You see, that is EQ.

I was beginning to feel a bit annoyed by the philosophy. I weathered another “empathic positive penetrative” while I plotted my counterattack.

- So, why don’t you apply to go to Paris yourself? – I said finally.
- What, me?
- Yes, of course, you have much more experience!
- But I am not an expat!
- So what, it’s not required.
- You know, Uln – he paused slightly – I have my children to take care of.
- There are family packages.
- She would never let me, my in-laws would kill me!
- Hah! –I said victorious – You should watch your EQ!
- But I already do!!

And this time he quickly looked away, forgetting the EQ looks, as if to hide some shameful thought. But too late, I had caught him already. It was my turn to pull the thread.

- Jia?
- Yes?
- You are pretty serious about this EQ, right?
- Er, I … do what I can.
- Building  good connections in the company is a good strategy, right?
- Er..  you might say that.
- Like having a friend in the HQ,  for example, right?
- Huh? No, no, of course I didn’t say that..I wouldn’t…
- Jia?
- Well?
- You have an excellent EQ, Jia, you know that?
- Oh, haha, no, no, thanks, you have an excellent IQ…

My approach to learning Chinese this year is based on the one I used with my previous languages: The reading method. It can only be used starting from intermediate level. In the case of mandarin, I would say this is not before 2 years of studying at a normal rate.

The method consists of acquiring first a minimum level of vocabulary to understand most simple texts, and from that point on dedicate your study time to the pleasant hobby of reading novels as captivating as possible. If you are a bookworm like me this works very well, because you end up putting in far more hours of study (reading) than you would if it were normal exercises. I know there are also many resources to read Chinese on the internet with cursor translator included, but computers tend to distract your attention very fast, whereas reading a good book gets your eyes glued to the characters for hours on end.

The result of this method is that you end up with a vast passive vocabulary and excellent character recognition abilities. Then it is up to you in your socializing time to go out and try to use these words in conversation, at the risk of locals saying you sound pompous. Sometimes you can even lift full phrases from a novel, and it is fun when you manage to use them in real life. For example, when I was reading Lu Xun’s “AhQ” I placed neatly my favourite line:

Little Yi:我讨厌我的老板，怎么办?

Uln: 你先估量对手，口讷的你便骂，力气小的你便打。

Little Yi:天哪！

Uln: 怎么啦？

Little Yi:你又在练习！

Uln: 我？没有啊。。。

Admittedly, my use of the method is a bit radical. But the social phase is an essential part of it, because once you have used a word a couple of times successfully, it quickly moves into your active vocabulary, and after that it rarely leaves you again. This is only practicable if you live in a Chinese environment, it never worked when I was back in Europe.

Reading speed

The key tipping point in the reading method is that moment when you realize that you can read a story fast enough to actually enjoy it. This is a function not only of your knowledge of characters/words, but also of the interest of the book and of your own personal nerdiness. When I read my first novel “Brothers” last year, I was so excited to taste the Chinese popular literary style that I gladly spent two months ploughing through the 700 pages of chengyu-ridden Yu Hua.

Since then, I have much increased my reading speed, to a point where I can sustainably read non-fiction without falling asleep. The preparation for the high-speed requirements of the HSK has helped me a lot for this, and I must say that, in spite of all my ranting in the previous post, it does make sense to force students a bit. Because the ability to read characters at normal native speeds is one of the most difficult to acquire, in my opinion.

Note that, when I say speed, I am not referring to the speed that comes from knowing all the words in the text. It is obvious that by using less the dictionary it is possible to read faster. My point is that, even for simple texts where all the words are familiar, I still read almost 3 times slower than a native Chinese, even after 1 year of reading books. This is an issue that has appeared only when studying Chinese, and not in any of my previous languages that used latin script, so I have strong reasons to think that it is tied to the use of characters.

I think it probably has to do with the way the brain processes the characters, and the way people schooled in Chinese from an early age have developed differently in this field. The post about reverse pinyin last week pointed me in this direction, and a few experiments I have done with my Chinese neighbours as well. I hope I have the time to write a bit more about this next week.

In the meantime, if there is a non-native advanced reader out there, I would like to hear your experience. Does it eventually get better, and do you manage to read at the same speed as the Chinese? Or do you have the same problem I note here? Let me know.

OK, off-line I go again. I already missed all Tuesday and Wednesday in an absurd meeting in Changsha so I need to catch up. I’ll be back after the HSK, if I haven’t showed up by Monday call the fire brigade.

This is the imposing main entrance of my favourite university campus in Shanghai: HuaShiDa.  I like this entrance because it is very green and very complete, and it has everything from a roundabout sign to a saluting giant Mao, to a construction crane in the background. But what I like most is the inscription:

SEEK TRUTH, FOSTER ORIGINALITY, LIVE UP TO THE NAME OF TEACHER

Huashida, also know by its complete name as East Normal Uni, has a great campus crossed by a little river and flanked on its Western side by a collection of great barbeque stalls and by the always romantic ChangFeng park. There is a popular phrase among the students of Shanghai that goes, if I remember well:  玩在复旦, 吃在同济, 住在交大，爱在华师大. This translates roughly as:  Play in Fudan,  Eat in Tongji, Live in Jiaotong and Love in Huashida, stating the strong points of each of the 4 big Unis in Shanghai. So, if you are in Shanghai, pick which is most suitable for you and go try your luck. All of them make for great summer walks if you enjoy University tourism.

Now the question remains: what was Uln doing in Huashida last weekend? Well, not exactly looking for love this time, but on a special mission. If you have been following this blog for a while, you know that I am part of a group of suicide mandarin students that go in for the HSK examination at every possible occasion, even without any need for a diploma in Chinese. Just like that, for the sport of it. The latest edition of the HSK challenge took part last week and this time they assigned me to the centre of Huashida. I survived the HSK, and that is all I will say for the moment. When I get the results I will (perhaps) comment a bit more.

I mean, I haven’t been writing anything for ages, is the Propaganda Department punishing me for being lazy? Has some big Chinese BBS  linked to me recently, is Uln hot now? As I was looking around for an answer, I found out that the Peking Duck blog was blocked more or less at the same time as mine, and it was asking the same kind of questions.

That is when I got this idea of the LIST, which I wrote on their comments. Everyone knows that GFW is unpredictable, it starts and stops and nobody ever knows why, if you don’t believe me look at this funny chronology. But this random behaviour usually affects only some websites, and never touches others. So necessarily, the guys at the GFW Control Deck are working with a number of websites that have been shortlisted beforehand.

I am quite sure of the existence of this LIST, because I noticed very precisely the moment my blog was shortlisted. It happened earlier this year with that political post that was picked by the New York Times. Since then I had strange things happening, with miniblocks now and then, a perceived slower speed loading in China, and, of course that particular Chаrter 08 post has been blocked ever since (even as the rest of the blog remained open). Also, look at that weird comment in Chinese in that post, where the guy says I am interfering in China’s internal affairs… could be a troll. Or could be not.

Anyway, my guess is that this blog and the PKD’s block have probably nothing to do with our recent activity, but rather with the tense atmosphere in the censors office these last weeks, after the Green Dam fiasco and the Google affair. At some point someone must have said: “hey, let’s block some more sites”, and we were unfortunately the next names on the LIST. And, unlike Google, I am afraid sites speaking specifically of politics are blocked permanently, such as this one, or this one. I hardly imagine the censors taking the trouble to monitor our blogs every day to see if we are behaving better. So my guess is, both for me and for PKD, that the block is here to stay and there is no solution.

… or perhaps there is?

You might have seen this manifesto of the Anonymous Netizens,  found on the RConversation blog. They promise some action on the 1st of July.  I like the document, it is well written and, unlike other efforts, it is very clever in that it sticks to its objective and doesn’t try to change the World from zero. It doesn’t ring very Chinese to me though

Look at these 2 extracts (but if you got time read it all):

For the freedom of the Internet, for the advancement of Internetization, and for our rights, we are going to acquaint your censorship machine with systematic sabotage and show you just how weak the claws of your censorship really are …  You are trying in vain to halt the wheels of history. Even with your technocratic reinforcements, you will not understand the Internet in the foreseeable future

….

NOBODY wants to topple your regime. We take no interest whatsoever in your archaic view of state power and your stale ideological teachings. You do not understand how your grand narrative dissipated in the face of Internetization. You do not understand why appealing to statism and nationalism no longer works. You cannot break free from your own ignorance of the Internet. Your regime is not our enemy. We are not affiliated in any way with any country or organization, and we are not waging this war on any country or organization, not even on you. YOU are waging this war on yourself. YOU are digging your own grave through corruption and antagonization.

Perhaps it is just this anarchist instinct of mine, but I find the discourse inspiring, and I hope it makes some noise in China and local netizens here get the message. Because it works well to defeat the old nationalistic shield of the Chinese government against outside critics.

Not that I think the Attack announced on the 1st July is going to change much. These guys are not really Chinese, they are the people at the 4chan bbs, you can read a bit more about them here. They have done some interesting actions before, in particular against the Scientologists, and I am curious to see what is coming on the 1st July.

But however smart the guys are in the West, I am afraid they don’t have a chance in China. It is a completely different playing ground, they have no popular support here and as far as I know their BBS in the West have no links to the Chinese ones here.  I might be wrong, but I have the feeling that this is exclusively a Western initiative, perhaps with the participation of some overseas Chinese.

The thing with Western internet activists is that they seldom realize the massive size of the Chinese internet, and its limited connections with the outside World. We will speak about this some other day, but let me just say that the Chinese internet is an enormous island within the internet, an island that we all know is there and we all now it’s big, but we have no idea of what’s inside or how to get there. Something like Greenland, perhaps.

But I am digressing. I just meant to write: keep an eye on the Anonymous Netizens on the 1st July. They will not overturn the regime, they will not break the GFW or send the Nanny to the retirement home where she belongs. But they might -they just *might* – manage to ridicule the Chinese censors and expose them enough for all the Chinese to see what a bunch of incompetents they have in that Department. And how efficiently they are destroying the image of China in the World, and causing the country to loose face by the hectare.

And then perhaps someone in that office will decide that, after all, Chinayouren is not noxious for a harmonious society. Until then, I remain, blocked.

EDIT: self-harmonized my language to leave out the insults.

Chinese ultra-blogger Han Han is starting a magazine. He announced it previously on his blog, and his last post is already giving the details to send in article drafts and job applications. I learned this last night from my friend 2Ting, who was eagerly preparing her CV and intro letter. The literati of the post-80s are very excited, it appears.

Han’s magazine, which still doesn’t have a name to avoid imitations, is presented in this blog post. A very Chinese and a very Han Han announcement, interesting for several reasons. But before I speak of it let me give some background on Han Han. I’ve been planning to write about him for ages, and never found the time until today.

The man

Han Han is 2Ting’s idol. He is also the idol of thousands of others post-80s Chinese, and he has become – in spite of himself-  a symbol of this often caricatured generation. His bio is interesting: while attending middle school he won a first prize in a famous literary contest, then he dropped out of high school and started writing  popular novels and driving race cars. By now he has become one of the best selling authors in China, and, if I got my stats right, the most read personal blogger in the World.

Han Han’ s appeal to the Chinese youth is based on his character and his life as much as on his incisive writing style. For modern day Chinese students, stifled by a cut-throat education system and the high expectations of their parents, there is no room for the big ideals. It is not Communism or Democracy that worries them, but rather the daily struggle to improve their grades. And  the fairness of a system that should allow them in the future to find a job according to their efforts.

In this world, dropping out of school has to be the ultimate rebellion. Han Han fought the system and Han Han won.  And not only he won, but he took to denouncing the gaps in the establishment, directly challenging the older generations that hold the power today. Add to this that – I am informed- Mr. Han is “hot”, and you got the bearings to start to understand the Han Han phenomenon.

The blog

Like a sort of Robin Hood of the Sinosphere, Han Han writes about injustice. He complains and makes fun of things that are wrong, by people who have power (political or other) in the older generations. Like his readers, he is not interested in the big words, you do not see “Charter” or “democracy” on his blog. You see a mayor in Chengdu who spent too much for a luxury “earthquake relief” car, or a rant against some older writer who sold his soul (some of his feuds with artists and critics are legendary).

By my own estimate, Han Han’s blog must be the most read personal blog in the World. The numbers are baffling. Each of his posts has hits in the hundreds of thousands, and comments are counted in the thousands. According to the stats on sina.com.cn, he is long past the 200 million hits. Impressive, even if we discount the part driven by returning low-value commentators. Typically, the 100 first comments on a post are whining about not being the first (the “sofa!”). Then it quickly degenerates into a series of ecstatic “chichis” and “jiayous”, which is the way Chinese express their cheering approval.

The lack of explicit political involvement is what makes many foreign readers ignore Han Han and turn to other -smaller- bloggers who write in tune with their expectations. This probably also explains why Han Han has managed to get away with so much, while being censored so little. The Censors have barely touched his blog, only once in a while blocking the occasional post.  Like the thousands of tolerated protests organised in the countryside, most of the times he is just writing  against a case of local injustice, and he rarely crosses the line of attacking Beijing.

But westerners and officials alike might be underestimating Han Han’s influence. His fans  belong to defined and very concentrated sectors of the population, including one that has been identified as potentially conflictive in times of crisis: the young graduates from university that are unable to find a job. Looking further down the line, the post 80-s will start entering their 30s next year, and gradually they will gain some power and cease to be ciphers. Han Han is in a strategic position.

It has been said that his writing lacks a message, or that he is just a student fad, perhaps because he doesn’t fit our mould of a”chinese intellectual”.  But he never was meant to be an intellectual. He is a man of action, who hops from high school to the race cars and on the way home plots his next witty line. He is the kind of man that makes change happen, rather than theorising it. The following extract of his magazine announcement can give a taste of what I mean.

The magazine

This is the bold announcement posted on the 1st May, approximatively translated and abridged by Uln:

The magazine I edit is calling for manuscripts. Any kind of documents, including novels, short stories, news, essays, commentary, etc. For this magazine, I have decided to give the highest salaries in the field. 2000RMB/ 1000 characters for original cover stories. 1000RMB for other original stories, etc. These prices are around 10 to 40 times higher than average of the industry.

The magazine will also have a section for the points of view we completely oppose. The magazine considers the author is mentally disabled. These will include articles against humanity, against common sense, against justice and freedom. We will publish these articles and remunerate them  250*RMB/1000 characters. And this is also a high standard, for 250s don’t fall from heaven, and there is also a cost for the 250s to be born.

(*NOTE:  For some reason, the number 250 in Chinese means “stupid”)

That is already a promising declaration of intentions. Fighting injustice with irony, that is very much the style of Han Han. In a country like China this kind of writing can go a long way. Until, of course, one of the 250s is powerful enough to take away their publishing licence.

The texts will only be paid 15 days after publication, to give enough time to the readers to find any plagiarism. If this is the case, a note will be published in the cover and compensation of 1000RMB/character given to the original writer, and 500RMB/character to the one who finds it. The magazine will not admit original authors that plagiarize themselves under a different name to claim both payments.

The salaries for the staff editors will be of 6500RMB/month, which will increase if we manage to keep the business afloat.

Some people advised me against this kind announcement, but  I didn’t listen to them. When I asked some guys in other publications what was their monthly budget for writers, they said it was negligible. I am fed up of the situation in this country and I want to help improve it. I am a well known writer and a champion driver and with my income I can hardly buy a flat in Shanghai. In other countries these professions are more respected and you earn enough to buy Ferraris, etc.  I want to ensure in my magazine that writers receive the proper compensation for their work.

Remarkable announcement, and, as I said, very hanhan. Also very Chinese, showing the money straight from the first paragraph. The likes of Han Han are not ashamed of  what  they are, and I can’t see a better way of getting his hordes of fans feverishly updating their CVs. I wonder how he is going to deal with the avalanche of manuscripts.

A funny paragraph is the one about plagiarism. It is a recurrent theme in Han Han’s posts, as he has been himself a major victim. The whole system of low wages for creative jobs is partly due to traditionally low awareness of intellectual property. To understand the extent of the problem, just consider that Han Han’s novels are plagiarized before they are even written: some crook commissions a writer to put together a novel with the bits of information that leak about Han’s next work, and in a week it is on the tricycle market.  In these conditions, original books in libraries rarely sell for more than 15RMB (2$). Any increase would get the tricycles flocking to your doorstep.

But finally, one might ask, what is the magazine about? In the world of Han Han, the particular theme doesn’t seem to matter so much. As we saw above, humanity, freedom, justice and common sense are the principles that will guide it. Principles without capital letters, because there are none in Chinese. Perhaps the following phrase, which sounds better in the original, can give some more hints:

We don’t have a standpoint, we just discern right and wrong. Too many people around us have standpoints, they don’t discern right and wrong.

So be it.

This article is dedicated to my friend Ting.  I really wish you can make it into the Han magazine

The Shanxis have solid history

There are some alarming Gods

And alarming fire fighting equipment

Guanyu deserved better than polystyrene

The council should buy benches

The way of The Way

is a rather steep Way

No, I kid you not

Stairs are out of spec

Instant Noodles for the climbers

Those that don’t get disneyfied

An authentic Ming Dinasty Mandarin

Apprentice of authentic Ming mandarin

WMDs detected in Yuncheng fair

Some love the green leaves

Now is when I have to come up with some good excuse.  Like:  Spring has finally come to China; I have been travelling a bit in the dusty real-sphere of Shanxi; a band of homeland friends cheerfully invaded Shanghai, bringing with them some good Rioja wine.

The cat got my blog, what.

Of course, the real blogging spirit never dies. The blogger mind is a highly evolved mechanism, constantly absorbing stimuli from the environment and processing them into hot controversy.  When not at the computer, he will continue to blog the pub over the old pint of Tiger, moderating the comments of his table-mates whom he suddenly addresses as “subscribers”…   This behaviour led to some critical situations, and soon several of my friends were inviting me to kindly  get back online. At my earliest convenience.

And now that I’m back, the creepy thought:  what has China been up to all this time? 

Be advised, reader, that I haven’t opened a newspaper for the last 3 weeks. This is more than enough for a  fast country like China to change itself beyond recognition. For all I know, we are still in a socialist system with Chinese characteristics, governed by a mysterious CPC oligarchy, still doing quite OK  in a World crisis that somebody else started, and glad to point this out at every possible occasion. God, last time I checked we were asking the US to dump the dollar and start using some World wide currency. Like in Star Trek!

I hope I can get back in the loop over the weekend, and normal service will resume promptly.  Thanks for sticking around.

It all started when some Chinese blogs, including hecaitou, posted this image, which was picked by Chinageeks in a post titled “racism in China”. Hecaitou responded rather energetically to the pingback, writing a new post, and then commentators from all sides joined the party.

The discussion about whether Chinese are racist or not is a never ending one, and it has been commented to exhaustion already, for example in the FM blog.  It usually degenerates into a series of “you worse than me” counterexamples, as American/Chinese national pride quickly takes over any serious attempt of debate.  Rather  than racism, the misunderstanding comes from a different perception on the limits of the socially acceptable (ie PC). Some notes I would like to add to the debate:

1- This is one of the points where Chinese should pay attention to not mix all Westerners in the same bag. Although PC runs in all the Western countries,  the degrees are different, and UK-USA PC  is probably the single most extreme one that borders on paranoia.

2- This brings to mind the famous case of the olympic Basketball players, where a Spanish paper posted a picture of the Spanish basketball team doing “chinese eyes”. The UK and American press found it and they turned it into a major scandal, with serious accusations to Spain and reminders of Franco’s regime. I still remember a British girlfriend of mine in Shanghai,  genuinely worried, asking me: ” Uln, you are not really racist, are you?”  The whole situation was absurd, because the truth is neither Spanish nor Chinese understood this as anything more than what it was: a silly joke. The anglo-american press never succeeded in its serious efforts to turn it into a conflict.

3- On the other hand, even if I agree anglo-american PC is often exaggerated and ineffective, I cannot agree with the picture posted by hecaitou. There is a large difference between joking about some particular aspect of  a nations physique (in the Spanish coast they say suntanned British look like cooked lobsters) and  comparing Africans to apes. Because the message of that picture is clear: it is an inferior race that has still not become human.

Of course, I don’t suppose this was the real intention of  Hecaitou, he probably didn’t think of it very much when he posted the picture. But I do think there is a reasonable middle way between Anglo-PC and the Chinese laissez-faire, and Chinese need to be more careful with these things.  The fact that China was not a colonial power, or the fact that the New York Post does stupid cartoons is not an excuse to insult millions of Africans who had nothing to do with all that.

My Conclusion: It doesn’t make much sense right now to discuss whether Chinese are racist or not. The real  test of tolerance is done when different races live together, anything else is just good intentions. The day when  the major Chinese cities have a significant proportion of different races we will see how racist they are. In the meantime, observations from the Nigerian communities in Guangzhou seem to indicate that Chinese — like most other cultures — do have an inclination to discriminate racially. Which justifies even more the introduction by intelligent bloggers like Hecaitou of some basic principles of tolerance and tact.

H/t Peking Duck for providing the link.

I can understand these feelings. Nothing would make me prouder than to stick my picture and my name at the top of each page, because I am not ashamed of what I write and I am ready to stand for each of my statements. Nor is mine a full anonymity, as I know and I am known (with my real name) by many people in the China blogging community.

So why continue hiding behind a pseudonym? Simple:  I like writing about subjects that have the potential to excite large numbers of people. Today I represent a company in China, and this company is not mine to decide its political stance.  There is a real risk of clients associating my blog with my company if my name gets spread all over the Chinosphere – it has happened to other bloggers before-  and due to the kind of clients I deal with, I cannot allow this to happen.

So if you don’t mind, and until the next horde of fenqing decide to flesh-seach and chop up Uln, I will keep my semi-anonymity. But since we are speaking of “credentials”, I want to unveil the following points about me, just to make sure that nobody takes me for what I am not:

• I am an engineer, but I have a Master in Business and a Semi-Master in International Relations (Didn’t get the degree because I got a job and never found the time to finish the thesis, but I will be back).

• I like reading a lot, books. Sometimes even uni course books, like my famous brick: Samuelson’s economics. Because of my focus-challenged nature I have always learnt more from my own readings than from what I heard in a classroom, even when I had remarkably good teachers.

• I have been in China for 2-3 years, including Beijing in 2002 and now  Shanghai. I haven’t stopped for a day speaking about politics with all the Chinese I’ve meet. That probably explains my poor results with the “delicate” sex. On the other hand, it has taught me to be diplomatic.

• My experience and “achievements” include weird and unconnected points such as: winning a national poetry contest in France, writing and performing songs with guitar and harp, spending 1+ year living and coordinating a project in 5 different provinces of North Korea, and others even more irrelevant.

• And finally, the most exciting: my Chinese qualifications. My level is already enough to read books in Chinese, the last book I read was XiongDi by Yu Hua, and I absolutely recommend it. I am aiming at HSK 7,  signed up for  the next test session in April and then I will publish the results on this blog.

Voila,  I don’t think any of the points above provides a serious basis to support my comments on Chinese politics and economy, so I am safe from self-satisfaction. My posts will all need to stand on their own, and when they don’t please point it out. Same when I “invent” words and phrases that don’t exist in English.

And I will leave this info hidden behind the fold of a single post instead of updating my profile info. Because I only feel like telling these things to those readers that had the patience to come all this way.

I go back to this because I am surprised there hasn’t been much said about the internet chats that for the first time have been organized with legislators participating in the NPC-CPCC Annual Sessions. Where has all this gone?  Not even the Chinese language internet seems to be very interested, judging by the search 网络民主.  It is obvious that without a strong push of the propaganda machinery the “internet friends” don’tpay much attention to these initiatives.

And why didn’t the State Media push it this time? Perhaps they are bored of it already, or perhaps  not everyone was very hot for the idea of “online democracy”. For example,  NPC chairman Wu Bangguo, one of the strong men in the politburo standing committee, who made these encouraging statements yesterday.

In the end, it is not so much about democracy (that’s too big a word for the NPC), but more about trying to give it some sort of role in participatory politics that would allow the legislators to take into account at least some requests of the public. The problem is, this year again, the NPC has given an image of being just a big annoying “Carnival”,  where the guest’s only role was to clap at the words of Mr. Wu.

Did I say the only role? No wait, the deputies  also have the duty of making proposals, and some of them must be pretty talented, judging by their phrases “amazing like thunder”.

ULN takes you for a browse

But follow me for a minute as I browse the Chinese internets, see what interesting things we can find on this subject. A good place to start is izaobao, with their daily roundup of bloggy stories:

以前我很关心两会，因为那时候很傻很天真，认为这两场嘉年华真能改变些国家民族的命运。现在我还是很关心两会，因为总有些的雷人语录，给无趣的生活带来了很多有趣. 这些雷人语录（简称雷语，三表老师原创）自然轻易就占据了媒体网络的头条，因此也带来了另一个问题，大家把太多目光聚集在雷语上，可能就忽视了春风——那些真正有价值有专业水平的提案。我相信我们的代表委员绝不会全都是倪萍奶奶那样的智商水平，其中应该不乏精彩的提案，可是为虾米不公开给大家看呢？以现在的技术手段，应该不是什么难事吧。

I used to pay attention to the NPC-CPCC, because I was stupid and innocent, I used to think these 2 “carnivals” were really going to change the destiny of the Chinese people. Nowadays I still pay attention to them, because there are always “thundering statements”（雷人语录), which bring interest to an otherwise boring life  (… ) this also brings another problem: everyone is paying too much attention to the “thundering  statements” and possibly missing some of the “spring breeze” – that is, those proposals that might have some value and professionalism. I am sure in our NPC-CPCC not all have the IQ of NiPing, there must be some with excellent proposals. But why don’t they do it in public, with the technological means we have today?

And that’s what I ask myself, why not in public? Let’s try to follow some links and find out:

First, this cue of deputy NiPing, it  is not linked here but we will easily google it. There you are, it is a funny story: the typical embarrasing situation where an older lady that could be anybody’s mum tries to use buzz words of the online community, like shanzhai (山寨). The uncoolness she radiated could be sensed all the way from Guangzhou, were finally this blogger saved the World by proving that she had no idea of what she was talking about, even though nobody really knows what this rapidly morphing word means.

Forget NiPing. Let’s follow the links on the Izabao article. One of them goes to our familiar “3 watches” blogger, who attempts to coin or re-coin the term  雷人语录 (thundering statements) into the shorter and perhaps cooler  雷语 (er.. thundering statements). Wondering if the Chinese internet slang really needs any more innovations, we leave this blog  and continue our quest for some Thunder material, wishing “3 watches” luck with the promotion of his new word.

OK, don’t get impatient. We are almost there.  Let’s check on the link to  Sina, which brings us some pretty thundering stuff straight from a newspaper in Chongqing,  the “Chongqing South Journal”

据中新社电 全国“两会”期间，人大代表和政协委员踊跃建言，“炮声”隆隆。不过在“炮声”之外，也有不少代表、委员发表的一些“异类”观点，被网友用时下很流行的一个词“雷人”来形容。

According to China News, the NPC-CPCC is on, and the deputees are enthusiastically advising, with a rumble like a cannon. But apart from the “cannon” activity, there are also some atypical points of view, that the internet friends describe with the buzz word “thundering“

What are these thundering points of view? Something we need to look into more carefully. The article gives 3 interesting examples that we will skim-translate, so that you can get the gist of it:

Thunder N.1 : “For 5 Million, I’d  sure admit you 20 points down”

“谁要是给我五百万，我绝对降他二十分录取”

全国政协委员、北京第四中学校长刘长铭谈起择校问题时说，“择校是个正常现象。有些人的孩子分数差几分，希望用别的方式补偿，花点钱进入一个学校，这也是正常的”。刘长铭说，有些专家认为金钱不能打破分数面前人人平等，这是思想僵化的表现。“谁要是给我五百万，我绝对降他二十分录取。一百万留在自己学校，四百万可以捐给其他学。”

This  is about the problem of access to schools. Deputy and Schoolmaster Liu ChengMing says:  ”It is a normal phenomenon, some people’s children are only missing a few points to get into a school, they wish there was another way to compensate, and there you go: you spend a little bit of money and get in, that is the most normal thing in the World. Some experts say that the money shouldn’t break the equality given by the points, but this is a rigid attitude. If someone gives me 5Million, even with 20 points less for sure I would admit him, then keep 1Million for the school and give 4 to other schools!!

Thunder N.2: Lin JiaXiang is a great Cadre!

“林嘉祥是个好干部。”

去年底，深圳市海事局党组书记林嘉祥涉嫌猥亵女童一事闹得沸沸扬扬，事后，林嘉祥被撤销职务。但在本次“两会”，全国政协委员、交通运输部海事局常务副局长刘功臣却为林嘉祥叫屈。刘功臣说，林嘉祥“是一个很好的干部，谁不会有喝醉酒的时候呢”。他认为，林嘉祥遭遇了网络暴力，“网络是可以杀人的，他就是个倒霉蛋。”

This is about a party secretary in Shenzhen who was suspected of molesting girls and removed from office. NCP deputy and minister of transport etc.  Liu Gongchen said:  “Lin is a great cadre, come on, who hasn’t been drunk sometime”.  And adds: ” the internet can kill people, he is just an unlucky egg!!”

Thunder N.3:  Just give a woman a hen…

“如果给一个女人一只母鸡……”

全国政协委员张晓梅建议，应加大发挥女性的社会优势，倡导女性精神应对经济危机。她举例说:“如果给一个女人一只母鸡，她会节俭下自己的口粮， 饲养它生蛋孵鸡，并在鸡与蛋的循环中，帮持家用，供弟妹上学，继而产生无限生机和力量；如果同样一只母鸡给到一个男人手中，最有可能的结局是炖了被用来当 作下酒菜。”

This CPPCC member Zhang Xiaomei suggested the feminine spirit is the best to deal with the economic crisis. “If you give a woman a hen, she eats sparingly, feeds the chicken until it lays eggs..blahblah.. take the children to Beida with the proceedings and what not. But give the hen to a man, most probably he will eat it. An internet friend commented: then the best against the crisis is sex change surgery.

On to 1515

Whatever, that was a good read and we are beggining to get tired of so much translation, even if it is approximative. Let’s switch to the 1515.cn link, see what we can find there. Finally, we do find some kind of serious analysis here.  Or perhaps not, it is a column posted on Xinhua’s herald.

[...] 前两天和一位政协的领导聊天，他说，你们媒体每年都会问，为何有些政协委员又请假了，追得紧了，自然会对这些老是清假的委员们产生压力，他们以后 就不敢了。我倒是没有这样乐观，因为对一批政协委员来说，这个头衔不是他们自己想要得，而是作为一种荣誉和社会地位主动给与他们的，既然他们从来没有想要 过，那来自外界的压力，又怎样会改变这样的状况  [...] 不过对于那些雷人的议案，公众在批评和议论之余，还应该看到这样一点，毕竟因为提案并不是完全公开，大家能够知道的，只不过是数千份议案 中的很小很小的一部分，因此这些被媒体曝光，或者是代表委员们自己向媒体透露，或者是透过代表委员们自己开设的博客主动向公众阐述的，不能够反映代表委员 们的普遍水平。[ ... ]   好的议案被忽略有几个原因，第一是媒体缺乏信息来源，因为不是每个委员代表都愿意公开自己的提案，很多人愿意低调的实实在在的做 事情，第二则是因为媒和公众本身，媒体觉得不吸引眼球，而这种判断，是因为公众对于严肃的问题缺乏兴趣，这也就让那些雷人的议案传播效应越来越大.

After explaining the origin of the expression ‘Thundering” (雷人）from Japanese cartoons and a few other things, the author speaks about his chat with a CPCC  deputy, who says that media puts a lot of pressure on some members to attend the meetings and stop asking for holidays.

But the situation will not change because many didn’t really choose to be CPCC members, it is just a honour and social status given to them. They have no capability and no willingness to participate. Perhaps we should consider other ways to reward these guys instead of forcing them to seat  in the boring NPC-CPCC every year. There are already enough proposals in the CPCC so perhaps they should just resign.

Among the thousands of proposals that are issued in the NPC-CPCC, the ones that everyone can see are only a tiny part.  They surely don’t represent the general level of the deputies. The media does not publish many proposals of deputies either because many of them don’t want to make statements in public, or just because the proposals are too serious and would not attract the readers, which is precisely the reason why the ‘Thunders” do go public.

Some notes

So there you go, a few different points of view from the chinese blogosphere. Note, these Chinese blogs are not necessarily representative of the mainstream opinions in the Chinese internet, but rather of what is – in my opinion anyway- the intelligent fraction of the Chinese internet.

I hope you have enjoyed the ride. This is my first attempt at bridge blogging proper, if you find it useful let me know and I will try to do more. Otherwise I guess I will stick to commentary in English, where I am more time-effective.

IMPORTANT: the translations above are not meant to be verbatim. Browsing with ULN means that you see what I see and you skip what I skip. I have tried to convey the tone and the message of the originals, but feel free to correct me if you see some translation error.  Chinese readers, now is the time to take revenge for all my mocking of Chinglish signs.

Any thundering comments?