Holy Smokes!

Something is moving in Google China.

I have been working for the last 12 hours with Google docs, and I just realize I was using Yi’s computer, the one that doesn’t have the VPN installed. This means that Google Documents is unblocked since  yesterday evening at least.  And so is Google Groups! Both sites were blocked by the Chinese GFW until recently.

Now I don’t know what to make of this. Is the GFW tinkering with the censorship algorithms as it prepares to include the whole of Google.com in the block and turn off the lights for ever? Or are the negotiations in Beijing going fine, like we were wishfully trying to guess this week from the mini-Youren updates?

For the moment my tests of Google.cn and Google.com show no difference from censorship as usual. More about this coming soon, plus a recap of the situation in advance of possible changes. Stay tuned.

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The summit of Copenhagen has inspired some hot debate on the media, for the most part more related to international politics than to climate change. Some spectacular pieces like Mark Lynas’ on the Guardian have been followed by more moderate opinions, like those appeared on Danwei and Inside Out, trying to understand the roles of China and US in this affair.

But of all I have read on the subject, the best information around is still to be found on the Shanghai Scrap blog. He reminds us that climate change is not and cannot be the first priority for the government and the people of China today. It is an "uptown" concern, completely foreign to those who are still worrying whether their drinking water contains lead, or whether they will need a gas mask to breathe the Beijing air tomorrow.

But back to the question: Did China really wreck the Copenhagen deal? In other words, was there really a deal ready to be signed and China unexpectedly rejected it, ruining the heroic efforts of the Western World led by president Obama?

What the hell happened in Copenhagen

Have you noticed that, when there is something really important in stake, governments organize summits as small as possible to get a meaningful deal, and only reluctantly they accept new participants in the G groups? The climate summits are just the opposite, everyone is invited, carbon footprint and all, the more the merrier. The World has become so multilateral today… especially when multilateralism is in our own interest.

Climate change is always a great subject for politicking, because the success in the negotiations or the problems arising from the failures will not be felt during the political life of the protagonists. It is one of those subjects where the only real measure of success is the perception of the home public immediately after the meeting. And clever politicians don’t let the opportunity pass to fabricate a good story.

For the Obama administration the objective of the negotiations can be summarized as: ensuring a deal is signed sufficiently meaningless to cause little problems with the industrial lobbies, and sufficiently powerful that the climate change enthusiasts are satisfied. Since this is obviously impossible, there is a plan B: ensure that whatever happens, it is somebody else’s fault. This is where China makes an excellent partner.

Partly for the reasons given in the Shanghai Scrap posts, and partly because it is not a democracy and it can control the information circulating internally, China is much less worried about the Copenhagen game than Obama. Free of internal pressure and faced with very mild international pressure, Chinese leaders will logically reject any deal that involves a sacrifice for their country. They will also neglect to give a coherent explanation in the language of the international media, offering a great target for post-Copenhagen accusations.

Now, I know Obama’s ambassador is not not an expert in China, but I can’t believe he was so incompetent to ignore the facts above. Obama himself was in China a month ago, and it is impossible that he didn’t know the obvious: that China was never going to sign an agreement forcing her to accept international inspectors with access to virtually every strategic industry, and with the power to expose to the World and to the Chinese public all the weaknesses of the Chinese system.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that China and US position was pre-arranged between Obama and Hu, but I think the American delegation, during and after the visit to China have been more intelligent than what most observers imagine.

Ever since the times of Kyoto, the US was at the head of the evil carbon emitters. Obama had to make a difference with his predecessor, and for the moment he has already worked a miracle: without making any major concession, the US have now become the World Champions of climate change policies.

In the meantime, the EU countries, the only ones that take this climate change thing seriously, are again pushed into the background because of their lack of credible leadership… and Obama, the clever American, has made the most of it for himself and for his country.

And in the meantime, the climate is changing…

One of the funniest accusations I have read in the media after the Copenhagen summit is that China has prevented the developed countries from signing a deal to limit their own emissions. This is so stupid that it could make it into a China Daily headline. How can China prevent the US/EU/Japan from signing a deal among themselves to reduce their own emissions?

No, seriously, if we are going to act against climate change, I would propose: what about reaching an agreement among the developed countries first, like we did for so many things before, and put it into practice even without China?

Yes, I know, to make a carbon reduction effective, all countries should participate. But the same could be said of the GATT/WTO and many other deals at the time, and this didn’t stop us from signing it and push China into it much later. Once the developed World is united, it is always much easier to lobby together for the respect of some standards, or to impose sanctions to non compliant countries.

But why do all that, when it is easy to content the public with less?

In the first two posts of this series, we saw that Chinese is the last language in the World to maintain a complete set of independent vocabulary roots and a non-phonetic script to represent them, what we might call a separate Word System. For this reason I argued that Chinese may be the most difficult language to obtain full fluency, regardless of the linguistic background of the student.

But there are more interesting implications than the mere difficulty of the language, in particular cultural and political ones. Because the refusal to use loans and phonetic script is the result of conscious decisions. There is nothing in the language itself that forbids import of foreign words or use of an alphabet, indeed, there are already some exceptions of direct loans in current use that are written in latin letters, such as DVD or KTV.

Chinese has a parallel Word System diverging from the rest of the World, and the government has an active role in the maintenance of this system. However, this policy is not unilaterally imposed from above. It is certainly encouraged by the education system, but Chinese speakers seem to follow it naturally and often prefer Chinese roots even when not supervised. This is in contrast with the situation in many countries where the system tries to protect local terms, only to find that people still prefer “email” to “courier electronique”.

Anyone living in China long enough realizes how aware Chinese are of their long history and their status as a different civilization. This discourse is irritating for Westerners, because it reminds too much of ultra-nationalistic creeds back home. But it has one essential difference with those creeds: in the case of China, it is true. As we said before, China is justified to see itself as a cradle of civilization, and it is the only such culture that has survived practically independent from World mainstream till modern times. This cultural awareness is the main reason for the preservation of the language as we know it, surviving different regimes and even periods of chaos.

When we study Chinese we are not merely learning another language, we are learning the words of a parallel World, the last independent system of vocabulary and writing that humanity still has. It is the most similar experience available on Earth to learning the language of another planet. If Chinese is really so hard to learn, this should provide enough motivation for anyone to try it.

Political considerations

Mandarin is not in itself a very difficult language, what makes it hard is its complex Word System, which is for the most part not essential (that is, the language could still exist with loans and an alphabet). This System makes it hard for foreigners and Chinese to communicate, and it is a serious obstacle in the education of the Chinese. In the last century,  development has been the main priority of China in order to recover her past glory, and inefficient relics have been torn down without blinking, just like the Walls of Beijing. Chinese words and characters are the last of those obstructive monuments to remain, and by far the oldest of all. It is a miracle that they have survived till today.

The invention of convenient methods to input characters on a keyboard has made the future of the characters seem more secure, but their permanence is by no means ensured. Many famous linguists have argued for the use of pinyin as main written language and elimination of the characters from daily life, not least of them Lu Xun, or the late John de Francis. Much as I admire these men and their work, I am completely opposed to their position as a matter of principles. I don’t suppose anyone will believe me in this age of economists, even less in the China of the new philosophies, but I have this to say: Efficiency is not a supreme value. In fact, it is not even a value in itself, but just a means. And a sad means it would be to recover the greatness of China, if there were nothing left to recover.

I think it is clear to most Chinese today that their Word System is too precious to abandon it for the sake of efficiency. However, some reasonable concessions can be made which might ensure the very survival of the System in the long term. In particular, the acceptance of foreign loans for new technical words might facilitate the access of Chinese to foreign research and the incorporation of foreign talents when the real Chinese brain-drain starts in earnest. The complete acceptance of latin script to represent phonetically foreign Proper Nouns (which is already used informally) would also be a step towards efficiency without sacrificing the heart of the system, and would be of great help for all the Chinese trying to learn English.

Apart from the practical issues considered, no less important is the mentality underlying the Chinese Word System. The growing common vocabulary in all the languages in the World represents the recognition by most cultures that there is a large part of common human culture, and that, since this part is only going to become larger with the progress of technology, the sensible solution is to adopt a common language to communicate it. By deciding to stay apart from this system, the linguistic choice of China represents a stance opposed to the rest of the World, and in a certain way it perpetuates the traditional isolation of the Middle Kingdom even in the age of Global interconnection. The insularity of the Chinese internet community and the misunderstandings between cultures that have arisen from it are, to some extent, a consequence of this choice.

The part played by the language in China’s relations with the World is probably not of the first importance. But even today this part is not negligible, and with the advances in communications, nobody knows how vital it will become in the future. Ultimately, it is only up to the Chinese to decide what language they want for themselves. We can only wait and see, and hope that they find a way to stay connected with us, while preserving their unique heritage of Words.

I am back to Shanghai with some interesting anecdotes and some mildly funny pictures of Japan. Unfortunately, I will not be able to post any of that,  because this week I am busy with work trips in China, and especially because this is the HSK week. It is just as well, I guess, after all this is not Japanyouren, and there are funnier travel bloggers out there if you are looking for a laugh.

Before I disappear for a week into my studying den, let me explain you again this business of the HSK. It is short for 汉语水平考试，or Chinese Level Exam, and it is the official standard to measure your level of mandarin, accepted by all universities in the mainland. It is also a very crazy exam, designed to squeeze out of the examinee’s brains as much linguistic information as possible in 3 hours, and then put it down in measurable statistical terms.

As it happens, the HSK is an exam that does not mainly measure your level of Chinese. It measures your determination, endurance and sangfroid, and your faith in a better life after the bell. The good side of it, apart from hardening your soul, is that it gives you a good taste of the ultracompetitive Chinese education system and their university entrance exam. It is even reminiscent of the 科举考试, the old imperial examination to select the bureaucracy, which famously caused some of the candidates to lose their wits and become heavenly kings. For a foreigner who is serious (deranged) enough to try to understand China, this experience is essential.

But back to the facts: This Saturday 17th is the HSK advanced, and I am going to fight for a level 9, out of 11 possible levels. I need to get this degree desperately, for the sole honourable objective of beating my own record. This is the Olympic spirit.

My practice essays with thoughts on the Four Books

Here are some details of the exam: the reading section contains text with a total of over 4,000+ characters, the equivalent of some 10 pages in a standard format novel, and on that text you have to answer 15 questions (not choose a,b,c,d, but actually answer with a sentence). There is a total of… 15 minutes for this part. I tested with a native Chinese friend and that is the time she took just to read the text at normal speed.

The essay writing is another scary part, because you get so used to typing with the computer that when it comes to handwriting characters you don’t even know where to start. At least here you do get 30 minutes for an essay of 400-600 characters, so you actually have the time to read what you are writing, and to consider if you really want to express your own point of view in an exam which contains exercises like:

“The concept of scientific development leads our people towards a more ——- society”  ( a-harmonious, b-harmonic, c-harmonium d-hormonal)

This example is not exactly literal, I am quoting from memory. The point is the HSK has a strong Beijing flavour, and some of the phrases are taken directly from CPC handbooks and the helmsmen’s theories. In a way, it feels like the Four Books of the imperial examinations all over again: the Thought of Mao Zedong, the Theory of the 3 Represents, the Concept of Scientific Development… As the old saying goes: All things they’ve changed, and nothing has changed.

I was pleasantly surprised when I booked my last minute flight to Japan, I got a very reasonable price for the 1st October National Day. When I went to Pudong airport I understood why: the streets were empty in Shanghai, nobody flew at that time because they were all at home with the eyes glued to the TV set, watching as thousands of men and women, looking silly in their flowery dresses, marched on Beijing’s Chang An Avenue.

I had the chance to watch the parade for 30 minutes as I waited to board my plane. I have to say it was beautiful. Sure enough there were  cringeworthy moments, like when the TV showed the communist model peasants, workers and miners, shining like Mario Bros in 256 colours. But of course, a good deal of hypocrisy is always mandatory in these State events, in China and elsewhere. And regarding the execution, I have watched quite a few of the famous mass events in Pyongyang, and I am pretty sure North Koreans are white with envy watching this one, if their state channel even cared to broadcast it.

All this display of patriotism reminded me of the conversation I had last week with little Yi. It was after we watched an advert on TV, the one where the little girl stands on Tiananmen Square squeaking in that ghastly toddler tone: “妈妈我爱你!” (mum, I love you), and a similar girl says the same in Tibetan in front of the Potala temple of  Lhasa. The screen then goes white, and a message comes up: “祖国我爱你”.  Motherland, I love you. I don’t remember which was the company announced, but the advert has been showing continuously for months, and it was the eleventh time I watched it.

I had a delicate stomach that day, and pushed to the limits of resistance, I couldnt help bringing up the subject:

“This is ridiculous,” I said bluntly, “you can’t love a country like you love your mother!”

“Of course you can,” said little Yi, “you don’t understand the feelings of the Chinese!”

“Yeah, right.”

Babbling toddlers and feelings of the people. That was about as much as I could take before lunch. I regretted I’d spoken at all.

“Our country is like a mother for all the Chinese, ” she continued, “that is what they mean.”

“Yeah, OK, except that it is NOT the same. A mother gives you life, she will always love you and no matter what happens, no matter what mistakes you do or how stupid you behave, she will be there for you. A country, if you fail to comply, will just abandon you or even put you to death ”

“Well, it is a different kind of mother. If you fail, the punishment is terrible. If you work hard and succeed, the prize is much greater. It is a mighty mother with higher stakes, what is wrong with that?’

“Nothing wrong, just that that is not Love”

“It is,” she insisted. “Or don’t Christians teach love of God, and isn’t He much more terrible, that if you fail to behave even your life is not enough, and you get an eternity of pain?”

“I…,”

I shut up. She had some point there. I don’t particularly believe in the Christian god, and besides, 2000 years ago they invented a mother Mary precisely to deal with the rough edges of the Old Testament. But it is true that, in religion and in politics, many people in the West feel that same kind of loving feelings as the Chinese. So this was not really a discussion about China, but a more general one on patriotism.

My problem is that I do not accept the word love to refer to a country. For one reason, because I understand love as a feeling that can only happen between persons, perhaps sometimes with animals, but not with things. And definitely not with abstract and easy manipulable concepts like “nation”. But granted, this is merely a problem of language, and I don’t have the authority to prescribe how the word “love” should be used, even less how “爱” is employed in Chinese. Still, there is a more compelling argument against love for the motherland:  I think it is not in the best interest of the “loving” party.

Let’s look at the facts. Human society has to be organized some way, and the power needs to be held by someone. In the past it was the tribe, the emperor or the feudal lord. Now it is the nation-state, nothing particularly wrong with that.  All forms of organization require the respect and participation of the citizens to work, and it is in the interest of everyone to treat them accordingly, once their legitimacy has been established. Therefore, I understand it is important to respect and work for the improvement of one’s country, and I try to do it, just like I do for my company or for my university. But love them like a mother?

It might be that I am speaking from a very European perspective-though by no means mainstream even there. Perhaps I am failing to take into account the particular circumstances of countries like China. Europeans used to be the haughtiest and most virulent motherland lovers, until their excessive feelings brought about ruin and destruction. Patriotism in China never caused any catastrophe of even comparable magnitude, and instead worked well to save the people from foreign-imposed sufferings. So the feelings of many Chinese are understandable, if not necessarily beneficial today.

And still, the key question we have to ask ourselves is: are these feelings in the interest of the citizen, and in the interest of mankind as a whole? Can the World really be in peace if the relation between citizens and their countries is one of blind love, like child to mother? When there is a conflict of interests, is the loving child not forced to fight for his beloved to the last consequences? Since conflicts of interests and greedy rulers are facts of life that will not disappear, is not the love doctrine in contradiction with the ideal of World Peace that most of us profess?

I would like to hear opinions about this. Of course, I understand that for many sentimental people the feeling of love for their country is very much alive, and there is little to explain since it is just a feeling . But Chinese tend to be very rational and in control of their feelings, and when they choose to love it is rarely out of blind passion, but rather because they consider it a good option.  I suspect their patriotism is in most cases the result of a prisoner’s dilemma: if other countries act patriotic, the only rational attitude is to do the same.

But I wonder if people are actually following this logic (ultimately a defensive attitude) or are really so in love with their country and their flag that they don’t even think much about it. And if you do think about it, do you actually believe that a peaceful World is possible in the long term?

Perhaps I think too much sometimes. Perhaps the fact that I am writing from Nagasaki, where I have just seen one of the most chilling exhibitions of human-caused horrors, might have some impact on my thoughts today. And still, I stand by all I write here.

What are your views?

(PS. On the same subject, also see this post just published on Chinageeks)

One of the things I learned this Summer is that, while I may leave on holidays to Europe, China doesn’t really leave me anymore. More than just a country, it is a force of nature, the other face of mankind that is now part of my life. China is always there, and she is everywhere, showing up in unexpected circumstances.

Take Spain, for example. The Chinese community there is largely new, not fluent in languages, and originated from one single point in China: the tiny county of Qingtian, upriver from Wenzhou. When it comes to languages, the Spanish are not much better than them, and the whole situation is full of opportunities for the literate laowai. While a simple “nihao” is usually enough to be the hero of the day, some preparation yields better results. Just wander into a Chinese shop casually dropping a Qingtianese greeting, and comment on the remarkable history of the old stone-carving county, home of the Chinese-Spanish. This makes you popular. And you can drink tea and practice your Chinese conversation for hours on end.

What follows is a true story that happened in my last day of holidays. It includes a Chinese family with extraordinary sleeping abilities, and a team of adventurous Spanish ducks. I hope you enjoy it:

It was the first morning flight from Bilbao to Paris, where I was scheduled to connect with the Air France to Shanghai. As I entered the cabin of the A319, I marked immediately a Chinese family sitting in one of the front rows: a middle-aged mother with her son.

She was wearing a shapeless purple jacket in the style of the hundred names, and her teenage son covered his head in a Korean hip-hop hoody. They stood out in the business atmosphere of the early flight. But what made me notice them—and I couldn’t help a smile—is that they were already fast asleep before I even got to my seat. As far as I could see, they didn’t switch their positions for the duration of a rather eventful flight.

From the start, the journey proved trying for my nerves. As we were taking off, there was a loud bang coming from the back of the plane, followed by a vibration that grew stronger as we flew. For a while nothing else happened, but then, as we were approaching France, the plane suddenly leant to one side, and the Pyrenees mountains turned 180 degrees around us, until we were headed back West from where we came.

The noise grew worse, and the passengers with notions of geography were increasingly anxious. The town of San Sebastian appeared below us for the second time, only this time the ground seemed much closer. All the service call beeps went off one after the other. I looked around to the other passengers and they were all looking around. Nobody spoke.

Finally, the cabin crew appeared on the aisle, delivering row by row the official version of the facts: during take off a flying object had collided with the blades of engine 2, producing the bang and subsequent vibrations that we were experiencing. It was a common occurrence, and there was no danger. As part of the normal safety procedure, the captain had decided to return to the home airport for maintenance.

“It was probably a bird,” said the stewardess when she got to our row.

“A bird?” laughed the steward, “that was a team of big fat ducks!”

I figured he must have been instructed to keep a light mood. I tried hard to laugh, picturing circles of ducklings turning in the turbofan as we struggled to get past the sharp Basque valleys.

***

After an endless flight we were safety landed back onto Bilbao airport. As we were waiting to disembark, the pilot confirmed that the airplane was done for the day. We had to pick up our luggage first and then go to the Air France office on the second floor to request a new ticket. As usual, my suitcase was one of the last to appear on the rolling band, and by the time I got to the office there was already a long queue, about the length of a duck-stricken A319, and every bit as noisy.

The crowd was growing unruly. Some French passengers harangued the masses with true revolutionary spirit, launching slogans against all winged creatures, including ducks, airbuses, and Air France pilots. Since I was last, there was not much point in queuing, so I just stood on one side in a way to signify my disapproval. Then I noticed the focus was gradually shifting, as the keen Robespierres directed their anger to some unidentified target at the front of the queue. I walked over to have a closer look.

It was the Chinese family.

Clearly, they hadn’t understood the instructions to pick up the luggage, and they had come straight to the airline office before anyone else. They were first, and they showed no intention of giving up their position.  On the contrary, they were holding it admirably. The mother covered the rearguard with her fierce eye, while the son held fast to the desk. They were obviously well trained in conflictive queues, and they seemed unimpressed by the mob.

Linguistically, the situation was not ideal. The mother was screaming in Qingtianese, the son translated into Chinglese and an Air France employee replied in elaborate Spanglish, while the French head of office stared in disbelief. I was alone, and my faithful friend the Electronic Dictionary & Thesaurus was out of reach in the bottom of my bag. But the time was to act, and I did not falter in the hour of peril.

I cut right to the front and put in a “Qué pasa? 什么事?”. All four faces turned to me at once. The queue became suddenly quiet.

“They want to go to China!” cried the employee in Spanish.

“We want to go to China!” cried the son in Chinese.

The positions of the parties seemed to me very much unanimous, and ripe for an easy consensus. But further enquiry proved that it was not exactly so. I managed to reconstruct the following facts:

The family had slept through the flight, right until we landed back in Bilbao. Then they had not understood the strongly accented message of the pilot and they had dashed out of the plane straight to the connections desk, where they had been redirected to the airline office. And they acted so urgently because they only had one hour to catch the connecting flight. All they asked is to board their plane immediately, and they were pretty suspicious of this whole attitude of the staff in Paris.

Because they actually thought they were in Paris.

The problem was not an easy one to explain. Not only the mother’s mandarin was as bad as mine, but also she was determined, and she had a deep rooted common sense. They had just flown into Paris and therefore this was Paris, she would take no nonsense from a laowai. I used all my persuasion. I noted how the souvenir shops were selling bullfighters, and not tour eiffels. Finally the young son understood, and he helped me convince her. The fact was settled: We were in Spain, and there were no direct flights to Shanghai from this airport.

The rest was fairly easy to manage, and after a few minutes the three of us left the office with a new ticket. Once their infinite gratitude had been sufficiently expressed, I couldn’t help asking the son:

“But, how could you not realize that this is the same airport as before?”

“Well,” he smiled shyly, “Mum was just telling me that she finds all airports in Europe look strikingly similar!”

And his mother, who was tough but good-humoured, found it rather funny, and we all joined in a face-saving laughter. Then I knew I was engaged as official interpreter of the sleeping family.

***

In the end, my work as a translator served my interests well. We got our new tickets before anyone else, the last three places left to connect with the evening Paris-Shanghai. The revolutionaries were so stunned by the performance that they forgot to guillotine us, and the Air France employee gave us some free lunch vouchers for the VIP lounge. To make our wait more pleasant, she said, the company was offering one of their specialty dishes in the “Restaurant des Mondes”.

It was still far from the Spanish lunch time, so we had to wait while they opened the kitchen for us. The prospect of a free lunch worked well to improve the mood of my Chinese friends, and we had a lively chat in the VIP sofas. I took the chance to impress them with my baidupedic knowledge of their hometown. After that they opened up to me, and the last lines of suspicion finally vanished from the woman’s brow.

I listened distractedly as the son informed me of the state of the rap scene in Zhejiang. A terrible state that was, apparently, and I waited for a chance to switch topics. It was his mother that I found most intriguing. All the while she was sitting very still, as if lost in her own thoughts. She had an outside appearance that in China would be classified as “peasant”, but her proud, resolute eyes didn’t quite fit in the picture. What was she doing flying around with her single son? I finally asked him.

As it turned out, she was a renowned chef back home. Qingtian is the origin of thousands of Chinese restaurants across Europe, and their extended family had made a fortune with a popular chain of Chinese food. She had come as an expert to establish new recipes in the family restaurants in Spain, all the while teaching her son the secrets of the Chinese cuisine. They had toured the country for three months, making the company’s food “more delicious, more authentically Chinese”.

“Her most famous recipe is Beijing Duck,” said the kid, licking his lips, “You have never tried anything like that!”

“I would love to have a chance to try it,” I answered, suddenly hungry for duck.

Then the mother, who hadn’t said a word all this time, looked at me with a strange smile. I felt there was an invitation coming. Instead, she opened her eyes wide and nervously shook her son’s shoulder.

“Heavens!” she cried, “we still haven’t picked up our luggage!”

***

When I took them down to luggage collection, their belongings were still lonely turning around on the band, a number of shapeless pieces covered in woven tarpaulin. As we loaded them one by one onto a trolley, the son suddenly found something was wrong. It was the last packet, a cardboard box with some strange little holes pierced on the top. He held the box on his knees and showed me one of the corners where it had been torn open. The box was empty.

The woman was very upset. She started moving her arms up and down and speaking in her sing-song dialect at an alarming speed. I couldn’t understand a word of what she was saying, but the replies of her son were more composed, and I could more or less make out the gist of it:

“I told you we couldn’t take them on a plane, mum!”, he was saying.

“But how can we pass the long winter without them?”, she replied.

Suddenly I had a very dark premonition. While they were busy arguing, I walked over to the broken box and examined it carefully. As I held it up in front of me, a small, delicate object floated down from the broken corner. It was a feather.

I dropped the box as if it burned my hands, and I kicked it behind the rolling band were it wouldn’t be seen. I was in panic now, and I joined the arguing party with my own version of alarmed mandarin:

“We have to het out of here, NOW!”, I said.

“What? But the box?,” said the mother.

“Forget it!” I pushed the trolley towards the door, “we will see to that later!”

“What? But we have to file a complaint. They might have found …”

“No!”

I tried to control my nerves, as I envisioned charges for terrorism, and the dire diplomatic consequences of China’s national dish being presented as evidence of the crime. I tried to relax telling myself that at least there hadn’t been any human casualties.

“Please help us,” she said.

“We can’t do this now! Spain is a bureaucratic country, these things take a long time…” I muttered. “And anyway I’m sure your little friends are going to be fine!”

She gave me another inquisitive glance, like the first time I suggested she was not in Paris. She was clearly reconsidering about my sanity.

“Well, excuse me,” she said, “but they are important to me, and if you don’t want to help me I will have to file the complaint myself”

Just at that moment the airport PA system cracked with a life-saving announcement. All the passengers of the cancelled flight were asked to go back immediately to the second floor, were new information was awaiting us from the captain.

“Quick, this must be our lunch, let’s go before we miss it!” I translated, and this argument finally seemed convincing enough for the stubborn lady.

***

On the second floor, the slick French captain was putting in practice the company’s open information policy. The maintenance staff had just confirmed—he said—that  it was indeed the impact of external objects on the engine that had caused the vibration. The strange bodies had been already extracted and brought in from the hangar for analysis. The decision to return to the airport had proven a good choice, as it was the chief engineer’s opinion that we would have never made it to Paris.

A drop of cold sweat fell down my right temple as I considered the chances of those little animals finding their way into the turbine. Even if they managed to tear open the box and then break free from under the piles of luggage, even if they could unlatch the hold door with their little beaks, still,  how could they fly over to the engine? It seemed impossible. I remembered the laws of fluid dynamics, and how turbulent airflows exhibit nonlinear, chaotic behaviours. For the first time in my life I felt I understood the real meaning of the Chaos Theory.

In the meantime, the mother had sent her boy to inquire about lost objects, and he was explaining their problem to the captain in such a perfectly unintelligible English that the brave man could only smile politely. They looked around at a loss, only to see that their laowai friend was nowhere to be found. I had just in time slipped into the gentlemen’s restroom.

At this point, the airport loudspeakers buzzed again:

Passengers of the AF2435 to Paris, please proceed into our VIP lounge. As a special attention, we are offering you the chef’s specialty in our exclusive “Restaurant des Mondes”

***

I joined the family again as they walked down the corridor to the VIP Lounge. It seemed that the luxury meal kindly offered by Air France had conquered the heart of the frightful woman. Her expression showed no more pain for the loss of her beasts, and I hoped she had decided to give up the search. Presently, she was impressed by the quality of the service, and her mood was chatty.

“They know how to treat a client, in France,” she said conversationally, “back in China it’s not even comparable.”

“Oh, sure, great service here,”

“Even if they don’t have any proper backup plans,” she noted, “they are just great at doing nice surprises.”

“Oh, yeah, you can count on the French for surprises”

“It is all in the attitude, isn’t it?”, she said, and her only child nodded in agreement.

As we approached the “Restaurant des Mondes”, the atmosphere was so relaxed that I thought we had passed the worst. I just had to get them on our plane right after lunch, and there would be no more nonsense of lost object complaints. Then I saw the stewardess at the restaurant door, smiling. She held a large sign written in all the major languages of the World, including mandarin. It read:

TODAYS SPECIAL DISH:

“Thin-sliced duck Beijing style”

In case there were any doubts, underneath the text there was a colourful picture of a team of ducks thinly sliced as if by fast rotating blades, swimming in the dark sauce of the traditional Beijing recipe.

I tried with my body to hide the sign from their view, but I was too late. There was not much point anyway, the pictures were all over the place, and the food was coming out any minute. As we sat down, I peeped at her out of the corner of my eye. Her expression was enigmatic, the initial apprehension had turned into something more lofty. Was it triumph? I trembled.

The dishes were served and, unexpectedly, nothing happened. I glanced at my two friends. The were obviously enjoying their meal, emitting now and then favorable grunts and other judgements with the assurance of the true connoisseur. Then, halfway through their ducks, they looked at each other with an understanding smile and, following some mysterious signal, the lady suddenly stood up, knocking her chair behind her, and crying out loudly:

“I want to speak to the person who cooked this!”

There was a spark in her eye as she glared at the kitchen door on the other side of the dining room. I could not think of anything to say this time, so I just sat still, helpless as the slings and arrows flew swiftly towards their target.

Seeing that no help was forthcoming from my side, the mother ignored me and took direct action. She strode across the room and, without further preambles, she thrust open the kitchen door, roaring in Qingtianese. In a minute, the cook came out sporting a high chef hat and howling even louder than her. To my surprise, he was also employing some variety of Zhejiang dialect.

Then something strange happened. The moment he saw the chef, the son stood up and ran across the dining room charging like a fighting bull, and when the three of them were at a close distance, they came together in a long, warm hug.

I stood rather awkwardly next to them, wondering what was next. The chatter of the adults had risen to undecipherable speeds under the flow of emotions. I looked at the teenager for an explanation, but he was too absorbed speaking to the cook. Finally, I managed to catch some fraction of the conversation:

“Uncle Li, we knew it had to be you, nobody else in the World can cook Beijing Duck like mother! What are you doing here?”

“You know, I got a catering contract with Air France, didn’t I tell you?”

“Uncle, you really need to help us, mother is really worried! This laowai is with us, but his Chinese is so-so, and he just doesn’t get it!”

“Say, my boy, what is the problem?”

“It is the new down-filled coats that mum bought to take home for the winter. She was so upset when we found out that they’ve been stolen from our luggage…”

It has been a while since I last wrote, and now I feel the typical blogger’s guilt, the same that drives some weaker souls to start all their blog posts with unasked apologies. But worry not, we are not that kind of blog. We don’t ask for forgiveness here, and that is because we already punish ourselves even before facing the public. What better penance than playing the role of a lab rat for a sociological experiment? Using our own body to test in the open some potentially lethal phenomena?

What follows contains shocking images made public here for the first time. Sensitive readers are advised to close this website now before reading on.

The laowai phenomenon

Everyone familiar with China has heard of this phenomenon. When a person with non-Asian features wanders in the country he gets hundreds of local fingers pointed at him, as he is promptly and thoroughly informed that he is a foreigner (“laowai !”). Even in the 21st century, after 30 years of reform and opening, this behavior is prevalent in most areas out of the foreign-populated centres of Shanghai and Beijing.

Although some foreigners still take offense, it is by now widely acknowledged that the “laowai call” is just  a neutral form of expressing curiosity in a country that is almost entirely uni-racial. It has also been explained as part of a socializing device that consists of stating the obvious to each other, like “Hey, you are back from work!” or “hey, you are a laowai”.

Fig1: Standard testing equipment: “laowai has come!” - “laowai has left!”

But enough theory now. This Summer we took a completely different approach and decided to test the Chinese people’s humour by entering some of the most dangerous bumpkin infested areas of the country wearing the garment in Fig 1. The sampling areas selected were: the tourist village of Zhujiajiao and a fake market in Shanghai.

The challenge was phenomenal, and the reaction of the public was correspondingly massive and spectacular, with whole streets turning their heads or popping out of windows to share in the excitement. It was a great performance of what I believe is called “Kazakh humour”, its main characteristic being that nobody is sure who is laughing at who.

Among the passers-by we discerned and duly registered in the log book the 3 following attitudes:

1. Conspirational –  Those who were laughing with us.
2. Malicious –  Those who were laughing at us.
3. Annoyed – Those who felt they were being laughed at.

Fortunately, the Chinese passed the humour test remarkably well, falling mostly into category #1, with some children and local lowbrows accounting for the #2s. We didn’t encounter any crazy patriot accusing us of hurting people’s feelings, which confirms my previous notion that those people can only be so silly when under the anonymity of the internet. In any case, this T-shirt is a must if you want to be famous in a mid-size Chinese town in the first 5 minutes of your arrival.

Some more pictures of the experiment:

In the fake market

Relaxing facial muscles after hours of being pointed at

The next challenge

If you liked this performance stay tuned for the next experiment. We have obtained the necessary gear to boratize this time an altogether different social group. Equipped with the 7” mangy moustache and the genuine garment in Fig 2, this specimen will make its appearance at the next fashion show in the exclusive M1NT bar. How will the high society in expat Shanghai (more than 50% clad in fake Paul Smith) fare in our test?

Fig 2. Whiskered specimen used for laboratory testing

One of the essential purposes of a government is to ensure the safety of the citizens and, from this point of view, the Chinese government has failed spectacularly in Urumqi.

To begin with, it did not afford sufficient protection to the Han victims during the night of 5th July. Some wrong decisions were most likely taken during the crisis, and the leaders of the forces of order owe at least some explanation to the Chinese.

But the CPC has failed in a more crucial way, which cannot be ascribed to simple human error in time of emergency. It has failed to create the conditions for the peaceful coexistence of the Chinese; it has failed in the very objective that it states as its own: the creation of a harmonious society. 200 Chinese killed by Chinese are the clear proof of this failure.

I will analyze in this post some of the reasons why the interethnic policies may have failed and what can be done to  improve the situation. There are many good arguments both for and against the independence of Xinjiang, which would make for a fascinating discussion, but I will not touch the subject here. Whatever the theory says, the reality is that Xinjiang is and shall remain Chinese for the foreseeable future. Large numbers of both Han and Uyghur can equally call Xinjiang their homeland, and these peoples have to learn to live together for their own sake. Let’s try to be constructive and see how this can be achieved.

The intentions of the CPC

I began by saying that the government has failed, which is obvious. But to be completely fair, interethnic relations is an extremely difficult area where almost every government in the World has failed to some degree. Looking at the region where Xinjiang sits, and comparing with interethnic and interreligious strife in similar nearby countries we have to acknowledge that the record of Xinjiang in the last 20 years is far from catastrophic.

Some argue that there are no worse problems –fundamentalism, suicide bombings, war- just because the Han are repressing the Uyghur population to inhuman extremes. This is easily proven wrong, and anyone who has been to the area knows this much. Moreover, a simple look at the World can tell us that even the most extreme repression by the army does not guarantee peace, but rather the opposite, as seen in Uzbekistan, Chechnya or Palestine. It is not mainly force, but prosperity and stability that have kept the Uyghurs silent.

The party’s interethnic policies have failed, but the very existence of these policies and their actual enforcement speaks a lot for the nature of the CPC’s intentions. The clear goal of the party is to guarantee China’s unity, stability and harmony, it is not and has never been to impose the supremacy of the Han. Granted, China is an authoritarian regime, and individual rights are not always respected, in Xinjiang or in any other province. China needs democracy and rule of law, but this has nothing to do with the oppression of the Uyghur by the Han.

Interethnic policies

Let’s take a look at the essential of these interethnic policies, which mostly come in the form of positive discrimination: 10 added points in the gaokao exams for access to university, partial exclusion from the single child policy, quotas (but rather low) in the administration and, most surprising of all: an explicit policy of lenient treatment for non-political crimes, which is known to all Chinese in the form of the common assumption: “be careful with Uyghurs, they can carry knives”.

Another group of policies are the ones destined to avert the danger of Islamic fundamentalism. These include prohibition to wear headscarves and other religious attire in schools and government buildings,  prohibition for under 18 year olds to attend prayers at the mosque, and strict control of the clergy. While we can accuse these policies of offending sensibilities, we might as well say that France has a similar headscarf prohibition, and that China is consistent with its clear principle of forbidding religions to engage in politics. An enlightened rule, in my opinion, more so in a place where there is reasonable grounds for fearing religious fundamentalism.

Other more recent policies, decided by the maximum leader of the party in the region, Wang Lequan, are less justifiable. In particular the one related to having all the schools teach solely in Mandarin makes no sense and can only spark resentment among the Uyghurs. The logic of this decision is that all citizens need to be proficient in mandarin, but this point is not technically sound, as it has been proven that a full bilingual education from early age is compatible with proficiency in two languages.

Grievances

One interesting point in the conflict of July and its aftermath is that it was never made clear what exactly the protesters wanted. The WUC had plenty of media time, but it didn’t present a consistent program. Kadeer dedicated her appearances to send out casualty figures and to deny her role in the events, relating them to the Guangdong incident. As a result, it is difficult to know which of the Chinese policies are most resented by Uyghurs, other than being “colonized and repressed”. The absence of a moderate Uyghur voice makes things very difficult to understand, another consequence of the heavy handed government of Wang Lequan.

In any case, it looks like it is not so much a matter of one policy in particular, but a problem of attitudes between the Uyghurs and he Han. A problem of integration and mutual misunderstanding that is so typical of interethnic conflict in any Western country, rather than a conflict between the oppressors and the oppressed. This is consistent with many of the observations of foreigners living in Xinjiang.

Much has been written in the West about positive discrimination, and you might be familiar with the kind of problems it can create. There is a natural reaction of resentment in the poorest elements of the majority group at what they see as unjust favouritism towards minorities. But worst of all, policies such as “2 restraints, 1 leniency” lend themselves to abuse and often benefit the worst individuals in the minority, starting a vicious circle of negative selection.

In China positive discrimination is particularly vicious because the Han, encouraged by the official media, tend to take these few concessions as a definitive proof of their generosity towards the Uyghurs, which then gives them carte blanche to engage in all sorts of discriminating behaviours, in many cases not even realizing that they are being unfair.

The Uyghurs react to this perceived –and often very real- discrimination by adopting the role of eternal victims and recalling the invasion of the bingtuans, or the dilution of their people, which is hardly a strong argument as: 1- A large part of the bingtuan population is not installed in Uyghur areas, 2- The Chinese have been doing bingtuan-like activities in Xinjiang long before the Uyghurs even arrived and 3- Chinese companies  have all the right to establish in any areas of their country as long as they are not forcefully expropriating the original owners.

Some possible solutions

In conclusion, I think this is not so much a matter of bingtuan, oppression or ethnical dilution, but rather a matter of complete insensibility from both sides Han and Uygur, and most of all from the Chinese government in Xinjiang, whose head only cares about pleasing Beijing.

I know the really important problem – lack of democracy and rule of law - will not change in Urumqi until it does in Beijing. But without looking so far, I have some modest suggestions to the CPC of Xinjiang that should be easy to try and improve the situation.  All relatively simple points, more gestures and attitudes than large power concessions:

• Don’t forcefully modernize Kashgar declaring it backward.
• Don’t force monolingual schools on people for their own benefit.
• Impose 100% bilingual schools for all in majority Uyghur areas.
• Stop, progressively and with tact, the leniency policies.
• Enforce the laws against discrimination in job postings.

But most important of all, I have one advice for the government of China that is not restricted only to Xinjiang: Actively promote mutual respect and understanding among different cultures and races.

This ability is seriously lacking in most Chinese of all ethnicities, as this essential part of their education has for years been substituted by clichéd touristic dances and children in costumes. This spells trouble for China not only with the minorities, but also in other regions where it wants to earn respect and expand its influence, like Africa or South America.

It is common knowledge that studying a foreign language involves studying a culture. Consciously or not, that is the main reason why people enjoy it. If it weren’t for its cultural content, a language would be little more than an empty set of code-words and rules designed with an exasperatingly faulty logic. And learning languages would be just like memorizing the phone directory, useful knowledge in some situations, sure, but hardly worth years of study.

But languages are vehicles of culture, and that is why we find them fascinating. When you study a language, and especially when you study it in its natural habitat - in a country where it is the mother tongue - you are continuously absorbing the elements of that country’s culture. At the surface level, these learnings are obvious, like when your local barber tells you the story of the Old Fool and the Mountain. But there are deeper levels where the language in itself, through its structure and its semantic relations, carries a cultural load that may go unnoticed by all but the most careful students.

During my practice for the HSK exam these last months, I went through thousands of new words and hundreds of chengyus (the ubiquitous 4-character constructions/idioms that Chinese use almost like words). And when I was fed up of memorizing I would let my mind drift for a while, musing over the learnt vocabulary, and sometimes I ended up finding unexpected meanings.

Here and (perhaps) in future posts I will copy some of the notes I did while studying. Some are just funny misunderstandings, some come loaded with philosophical connotations, and some are surely just the result of my own imagination. Warning: I will indulge in some vast generalizations and home-made anthropology, please bear with me and add your righteous insults in the comments section. Here’s the first three expressions, all baidu linked for examples:

下不了台 - Xia bu liao tai

This is an expression in Chinese that literally means:   Cannot get off the stage. It is used when somebody is embarrassing you in public, particularly when somebody says things that make everyone focus their attention on you. Then he is scolding you, or praising you, or otherwise treating you  ”xia bu liao tai”.

It struck me as very Chinese in the way it is used as a negative expression, similar to the English to embarrass. But in English the negative expression is  more often the opposite, to be “upstaged”  (ie. sent to the back of the stage). Which comes to illustrate this difference between Western and Chinese individuals, the former generally enjoying some degree of public attention while the latter prefer to pass unnoticed and blend in the crowd.

英伦三岛 - YingLun San Dao

This is one of the most perplexing expressions I have come across in Chinese. It literally means “The three islands of England”, using a phonetical approximation of England (“Yinlun”)  that strikes me as pedantic, as it is not the usual name Yingguo 英国.

But the pedantic speaker (or the “Autentic Engrish Vila” advert) is, I am afraid, making a fool of himself. I might be missing something, but last time I checked England was not an island, nor were there three islands in the British Isles, however you look at it. The garbled definition on Baidupedia doesn’t help much either.

This seems to be an old expression, so my guess is someone in the times of the Qing decided thatEngland was a Kingdom of 3 islands. And no amount of  insistence nor letters from ambassador Macartney would change the minds of the mandarins.  So I believe this expression shows another particular trait of Chinese culture, and particularly of Chinese politics.   It can be summarized in the phrase  ”This is what the party says, and we don’t care what reality thinks”. A nice little example with pigeons can be found here.

北京，背景 and the tones of English

This one is a problem of pronunciation. I have observed that everytime I hear the word bèijǐng (背景), meaning “background”,  I automatically think of  běijīng (北京), meaning “Beijing”.  And even though I am perfectly aware of the tones employed by the speaker  (the 4th tone in bei is usually very obvious),  I still can’t help myself from thinking of the city of Beijing, and often pushing the misunderstanding to absurd extremes.

After many times of unconsciously making this mistake, I came to the consclusion that I was influenced by the English pronunciation: Usually when we say Beijing in English we tend to pronounce it in a way that sounds almost like a 4th tone/3rd tone,  that is “Bèijǐng”.  So inevitably my brain is hard-wired to associate this sound with the capital of China, and I am lost in conversation everytime it comes up.

And one question in case somebody knows: what tones do we normally use when speaking in a non-tonal language like English? My guess is that most of the times, in neutral, non interrogative sentences, we use a combination of the 4th and the light tone for the stressed and non-stressed syllables respectively.

And more to come

I still have lots of notes in my studybooks so if I get some good feedback I will roll them out little by little. Let me know what is your interpretation of the above.

This week I had some interesting conversations on other blogs, mostly regarding my state of internet blockdom and the possible actions that a webmaster can take to solve this problem. I will share here some conclusions that might be of interest.

Just to make sure we don’t forget anything, I will go first over the most obvious points:

1- If you are any kind of commercial undertaking, or if you depend on your site for a living, please pay attention to what you publish. Sites in English have quite some leeway to publish political content, but the bigger you get the tighter the line will be, and any kind of political activism can get you down.

2- The worst position is when you are big enough to attract the censors attention, but small enough to be insignificant in the general scheme of the internet. Say the BBC gets blocked: this makes a lot of noise, and eventually the Chinese government feels the pressure to reopen it. Inversely, if you stay small enough, you will never be blocked regardless of what you write. When you are in the middle, like these sites, the risk is biggest.

3- Finally, if you are already blocked, you can try your luck at 9 Dongdajie, Qianmen, Beijing, as a commentator suggested (this is the address of the Beijing Public Security Bureau) or any official body of your choice. I have no experience with this, and I am very skeptical about the results, but it is not impossible that the legal system works once in a while. We have seen stranger things in China.

Getting through the block

Once you have gone through the points above and decided that none applies to you, here are the typical solutions for users to get through the Wall. There are many of them, so I will just list the most well known, such as: lists of free web proxies, ad-supported or fee-based VPNs, networks like Tor or activist software like Freegаte*.

I will not go over each of these because you can find lots of information on the internet already, but I have tried a few of them and they all more or less do the trick: you can open in China sites that have been blocked by the GFW. These solutions are well known to the Chinese netizens users, as you can see in this Chinese blog which has even more options, such as giving a SSH number and code to your users.

So, you might think, what’s the big deal with the Great FWall? It is full of wholes big enough for a whole horde of Mongols, like it’s always been.

You are right, and yet, the GFW is a powerful system. For anyone who had a website blocked, it is very easy to see the impact on the stats of incoming hits from China. Depending on your size and content, it can be down to a 25%, and if you remain blocked for some time, chances are most readers will not find their way back to you. My guess: a combination of laziness, hi-tech aversion, and the excess of info flowing on the net means that a missing site is quickly forgotten, and few go through the trouble of opening a proxy for you. Click to continue »

From the post left unfinished last week. Some of the main arguments read (or heard) in China Crisis discussions:

The Time

Economies don’t grow indefinitely.  Low cycles follow high cycles and after 30 years it is about time. China cannot break the laws of economics, so the recession must necessarily come in the next X years. The country hasn’t prepared itself politically and psicologically to face this period. In the end, we are sure to have trouble.

Of course, this argument is of little value without the X, and many proponents of a time limit have failed in the past. This is the field of technical analysts and other mystical thinkers. Mythology also plays a role:  In Chinese history, cataclysms mark the end of a cycle. An earthquake preceded this crisis, and a solar eclipse is coming in July, the dynasty has lost its virtue. These arguments tend to work better with a bit of hindsight.

The Markets

The World’s economies are interdependent today. China’s economy is largely dependent on exports and FDI. The weight of these external factors in China’s growth has been much discussed, but regardless of the exact numbers, few doubt that it is a significant motor of the economy. External motors failing, China turns to internal ones: investment and consumption. Today, strong public investment, mostly in infrastructure and energy, is making up for the loss. Click to continue »

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. Click to continue »