Afternoon Tea: Poverty and environmental protection…Lao wai tigers?…CIA agents spend twenty years in Chinese jail

One of THE BEST blogs currently in the Chinese blogosphere is China Dialogue. Its excellent collection of Chinese and English articles (with translations) on environmental topics make it the very definition of a must-read blog. In today’s edition, Jiang Gaoming, professor of Botany at the Chinese Academy of Science and vice secretary-general of the UNESCO China-MAB (Man and the Biosphere) Committee, explores the connection between environmental protection and economic development. (“Fighting poverty and saving the environment“/”既要脱贫又需保护生态环境“) Professor Jiang argues:

Poverty has become a kind of resource. There is no shortage of money from national poverty alleviation funds, environmental management funds, disaster relief funds, money for education and for irrigation – not to mention money from NGOs, businesses and individual donations. But the poor themselves have no voice in how the money is spent, and many problems have arisen as a result. A change in the basic methods of poverty relief is needed; it must be questioned how the nation’s money can best be spent.

Future poverty relief projects must include the active participation of the poor; they should not simply be implemented by government. The poor need to have a stake in the land, the environment and any projects

February 22nd, 2007

Tales of Spring Festivals past and stories of Chinese history told from the dinner table

Brilliant post on Danwei yesterday in keeping with the theme of Spring Festival. It is an annotated translation of interviews about Spring Festivals of years past collected by oral historian Sang Ye. The stories tell not only of the great hardships (floods, starvation) but also of the little joys (roasting a pig in the communal dining hall.) It’s a must-read and another example of why oral history can be so powerful. Thanks to Geremie R. Barmé for his excellent translations and for his wonderful post. It also got me thinking about other oral histories, many of which are closer than we imagine.

This past week as we sat down to another of many dinners, I had the pleasure of talking with YJ’s grandmother. “Lao Lao” was born to a well-to-do family and had gone to missionary school in the 1930s and 1940s in Tianjin. (She scared the hell out of me when I first met her a few years ago by suddenly turning to me and requesting, in perfectly enunciated English, to “Please have a seat.”) She told us stories of when the Japanese invaded Tianjin and she and her classmates rushed to the roof of their school to see

February 21st, 2007

Defining terms: China, The West, civilization, and modernity

I’m still busy with Spring Festival matters so I’m taking the lazy way out and cross-posting between The Granite Studio and The Peking Duck. In a week, I’ll be back in Beijing and on a more normal schedule.————————

In the journal First Things, David Gress reviews the new book What is the West? by French philosopher, Phillippe Nemo. In his book Nemo argues, perhaps unsurprisingly, that we must first look to Greece:

The story begins with the Greeks, who invented scientific speculation and the ideal of the city, in which “individual lives are no longer submerged in a vast sea of humanity. . . . Each person now has individuality and character.” To this-a point of capital importance-the Romans added their “invention of private law,” whereby they “invented the individual human person.”

The next stage, of course, is Christianity or, rather, the impact of biblical religion and spirituality on ancient culture, an impact that was crucial in transforming that culture into what we call medieval. Biblical religion introduced an ethical and an eschatological revolution, “cherishing the individual, morally responsible human being, by emphasizing human individuality as desired and created by

February 21st, 2007

Chinese historian: "To exaggerate the size of China’s historical territory is not patriotic" – Full Text

Via CDT: Letters from China blogs about an article in the magazine China Review by Fudan University professor Ge Jianxiong. The CDT brief and the Letters from China post both feature the title “Tibet not always a part of China: Chinese Historian.”

Taken in context, Professor Ge’s comments are not quite so shocking. While he does mention Tibet as not being a part of the Tang Empire, the article itself I think is more interesting for the larger argument: When discussing what is and, perhaps more importantly, what is not China, it’s crucial to keep in mind both the context and that the term “China” is not as certain a historical term as we might assume. Professor Ge argues that if we are to gauge the limits of territorial control in China’s history, it’s also imporant to specify who is doing the controlling and what is it we mean by “control.”

Chinese textbooks do attempt to hammer home the idea that Tibet is a part of China–often using some rather specious historical arguments in the process–but most scholars in the PRC look back to the mid-Qing takeover of Tibet as the true beginning of “Chinese” sovereignty over the region and

February 20th, 2007

Spring Festival at The Granite Studio

At the risk of slipping into what China Law Blog refers to as a “noodle” blog, I had some thoughts while wandering around Tianjin the last couple of days before the Spring Festival.

YJ’s mother is the sweetest human being on Earth. She really is. But like an evil genie, when you are in her presence you have to watch what you wish for. Two weeks ago, in the course of a conversation about food, I mentioned that I really liked hongshao rou. You can guess what happened. The next morning, YJ’s mom went to the market and bought two kg of meat. For the last fourteen days, hongshao rou has been served every lunch and dinner. Don’t get me wrong, I love hongshao rou, but a fortnight of marinated fatty pork is a lot for anyone. It’s getting to the point where I need a couple of EKG paddles and a heart stent just to get out of bed in the morning.

In order to compensate for my creaking cardiovascular system, I have taken up morning exercise namely, basketball. Each morning around 6:30, I pay my 3 jiao to play basketball at the local park. It’s early but the

February 16th, 2007
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