Danwei: Wu Si on the intractable problem of forced labor

Brilliant interview with noted historian Wu Si regarding the illegal kilns in Shanxi and forced labor in general. HUGE props to Joel Martinson for the great translation. Wu Si dug through the archives and notes that forced labor, especially in the mining sector, has a long and tortuous history. Disconnects and dissonances between the central government and local power structures hamstrung efforts by the central government to eradicate the practice in the Ming and Qing, just as is the case today.

The very definition of a must-read. Go there. Now.

June 30th, 2007

Bill Simmons on Yi Jianlian to the Bucks

Bill Simmons’ annual NBA Draft Diary on ESPN.com had this to say about Yi Jianlian going to the Bucks:

I’m starting to come around on Yi — the thought of him shoveling out his car in minus-10 degree weather in January while fighting back tears and screaming, “Why????? Why?????” in Chinese is delightful for some reason. Too bad they’ll trade him. If the Chinese government can torture Jack Bauer for two years, it can definitely break the Bucks.

Yi refused to travel to Milwaukee or meet with team representatives after the draft, instead he flew to Las Vegas to take part in exhibition games with the Chinese National Team. Word is that his people are desperately trying to force the Bucks into a trade. Nice. Fellow China-based hoops enthusiast Postive Solutions has a nice breakdown of Yi’s non-Milwaukee options.

June 29th, 2007

Granite Studio Mailbag: Mutual Trust, Social Bonds, and Public Manners

Received an email this week at the Granite Studio: You always hear people talking about people have bad public manners and very low level of trust of strangers in China. As a Chinese , I think this is true. Lots of people blame this on the Culture Revolution. My question would be was there more mutual trust in Chinese society during Ming or Qing dynasty or even Tang than that of contemporary China?

I’ve heard the Cultural Revolution theory as well from people here in Beijing and in Tianjin. The story usually goes that the GPCR acted as a solvent on bonds of social reciprocity and thus balkanized once close-knit communities with each person or family group regarding others with a mixture of paranoia, fear, and mistrust. It makes sense. This was a time when neighbors routinely snitched on each other as old hutong scores were settled amidst flying accusations of “anti-revolutionary crimes.” It’s too easy for those of us from outside China to underestimate the immense damage done by the GPCR. One of the lingering effects has been an ‘every person for themselves’ mentality: If it benefits me and doesn’t have any direct negative consequences, then why not do

June 28th, 2007

Why bother?

“An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will” – Thomas Jefferson————————Blogspot is down. Blogsome is down. Type pad. Word press.

People are pissed.

Two things come to mind:

1) This is going to get worse before it gets better. The CCP has shown no particular evidence that such niceties as “access to information” and “a more open media for 2008″ are going to have any effect on their haphazard and arbitrary blocking of internet sites here in the Olympic city.

2) Why bother?

Seriously. Why bother blocking foreign bloggers or foreign media sites? Do the Chinese people really sit in front of their screens hitting refresh, refresh, refresh to check out what some laowai thought of last night’s gongbao jiding? Is the CCP so weak–in such imminent danger of losing its legitimacy–that it can be brought down by the strangled tones of the BBC World Service?

Apparently the website Flickr is blocked now, too. Well, that’s a relief because I’m sure Hu Jintao sweated through his jammies at night worrying that photographic evidence of “Bobby Sue’s Sweet Sixteen at the Marietta, GA Holiday Inn and Conference Center” was going to unleash a second Cultural Revolution.

If

June 27th, 2007

How to view Blogspot blogs in China–quick fix.

Since Blogspot has once again been “harmonized,” I thought it might be useful to repost this useful little Blogspot workaround:

Originally posted March 27, 2007:

Dave from Mutant Palm has posted a fix for the CCP’s kabosh on Blogspot. As a public service, I am reposting here. It took me a couple of tries to get it going, but I’ve got it running now and it’s great. It’s fast AND smooth…kind of like a pina colada made with Bacardi 151.

The Ya, I Yee/Fermi Zhang blogspot proxy patch:

1. Use the Notepad (or other text editor softwares) to write a file with the following codes:

function FindProxyForURL(url,host){if(dnsDomainIs(host, “.blogspot.com”)){return “PROXY 72.14.219.190:80″;}}

2. Save it as proxy.pac (MAKE SURE IT SAVES as .pac file NOT a text file) and put it in the root directory of C:\3. Take Firefox for example,click Tools->Options->Advanced->Network->Settings…-> fill the codes below in the blank under “Automatic proxy configuration URL”: file:///C:/proxy.pac

4. Press Reload on the right, press OK, and OK.5. Relaunch Firefox, done!

Note: Ya, I Yee also has version that will allow access to wordpress.com sites as well. For even more information on proxies and workarounds, check out this post by Ryan written last

June 22nd, 2007
 
  Older Entries »

日历

June 2007
M T W T F S S
« May   Jul »
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930