Friday Happy Hour: Su Dongpo, economist…democracy with Chinese characteristics…new signs for old places…racist sofa traced back to China

The always surreal China Daily brings in noted economist, and Song Dynasty official, Su Dongpo to weigh in on the risks inherent in China’s current economic boom. “Indeed, who would not feel dizzy a little as both wings of the economy–the GDP and the stock market index are flying to ever higher altitudes” quoth the China Daily staff, paraphrasing one of Su’s more famous poems. (How I wanted to ride the wings of the wind/To the Jade Moon Palace if only I could bear/the unbearable cold in the high air.) This just in: China’s economy is growing too quickly with potentially unstable bubbles forming in the stock market and urban housing prices. Film at 11.

Joseph Kahn has a good piece in today’s New York Times on the internal debate within the CCP over “democratization.” It’s not quite what you think. After all, as Kahn points out, CCP leaders, “claim that the one-party state has long practiced democracy, in the sense of governing on behalf of the people, and they show no signs of preparing to cede any political power.” But I think any kind of opening of the process to include more actual voices and meaningful votes–even if those voices and votes are still limited to the upper echelon of the party elite–is a sign of progress. Still much remains to be done and as I’ve noted before, the CCP faces a challenge similar to that of the Qing court in the last decades of its rule: How to change to accommodate growing demands for reform without ultimately reforming itself out of existence. (Though I suspect that the fates of Mikhail Gorbachev and Nikolai Ceausescu are as much on their minds as the errors of Cixi.) Lest anybody forget, April 21st marks the 18th anniversary of a certain march by an unknown number of individuals into a famous unnamed Beijing landmark where these individuals stayed until a fateful day in June.

CCTV reports that over 100 stone steles will be used to mark historic sites and homes throughout China. The report noted that previous steles (blocks of stone with carved inscriptions) had been removed or damaged due to warfare, neglect, and weather. The first stele was erected in Changsha this past week at a historic Qing dynasty residence called the “Garden of Oranges.”

Okay, so taxis in Beijing are a kind of pet project for me. Once again the Beijing city government is concerned about the effects of Beijing’s taxi fleet on the city’s reputation. “‘The taxi drivers are a window through which the foreigners will see Beijing, and we need to further regulate their services,’ said Lin Xiaoming, vice director of the Beijing Transport Commission, an arm of Beijing’s municipal government.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…I don’t mind a dirty, smelly cab as long as the drivers knew where the hell they were going. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to go to a restaurant or other place you’ve never gone before and being expected to give turn-by-turn directions to some idiot cabbie. I know it’s a tough job and I know they don’t get paid a lot but seriously…knowing how to find a street address in your own city doesn’t sound like such a high hurdle does it? The Friday evening taxi extortion is another favorite game. Every Friday I do a little work down by the Full Link Plaza here in Beijing–traffic nightmare–and some less than scrupulous cabbies will line up and refuse to move unless you agree to go off the meter and pay extra. I’ve also seen them try to pull the same stunt on foreign tourists at the taxi stop on Wangfujing. 2008–New Beijing! Feel the Excitement!

Be very careful of your translation software. A Canadian woman was shocked to learn that her new sofa had a tag describing its color as “N—-r Brown.” When she called the company to complain, the company investigated and learned the problem originated with the Kingsoft translation software used at the factory. From the article: “‘I know this is a very bad word,’ Huang Luoyi, a product manager for the Beijing-based company’s translation software, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. He explained that when the Chinese characters for ‘dark brown’ are typed into an older version of its Chinese-English translation software, the offensive N-word description comes up. ‘We got the definition from a Chinese-English dictionary. We’ve been using the dictionary for 10 years. Maybe the dictionary was updated, but we probably didn’t follow suit,’ he said.” Whoops.

Finally–just so nobody thinks that all I do is read old Chinese documents and blog all day–I also managed to pull out a championship in one of my two fantasy basketball leagues and lost in the other league’s final by a mere 5 assists. That makes three championships out of four tries in the last two years. Not bad. I will now go outside and desperately seek something approaching “a life.”

Tags: Beijing Journal · Chinese History

1 無名 - wu ming // Apr 20, 2007 at 1:38 pm

y’know, su shi was such a polymath, i wouldn’t be surprised if he had a little macroeconomic analysis tucked in the collected works somewhere.
2 花崗齋之愚公 // Apr 20, 2007 at 5:59 pm

Wu Ming,

I agree with you. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.

Jottings from the Granite Studio