(Ed Note: With several major projects in the works and with a gig next week guest blogging for James Fallows, I asked my lovely wife and co-conspirator Yajun if she’d like to help out for the next few weeks.)
I was born in a country where 90% of the people share a single ethnicity, where we have no national religion, but where we do have the stomachs to eat any living creature on earth. So it came as a shock to me, later than it probably should have, that some people may not eat certain things out of choice or because of their religion. Sure, China has Hui people who are Muslim and who eat Qingzhen (Halal) food, but prior to university I’d only met a handful of Chinese Muslims in my life. And even in school, it wasn’t that I didn’t respect my friends’ aversion to pork, but it was just completely outside my own upbringing. I don’t think I lacked sensitivity, just a sense of perspective about what diversity means.
This problem is even harder for my mom. During Spring Festival, some of my husband’s students came to our place for a dinner party. One of the students
The New York Times published an article about Han Han last week. In the article, Graham Lee, a Hong Kong native studying in Peking University was quoted saying “His way of thinking is different from that of ordinary Chinese.”
At first glance, this sentence sounds offensive. How do ordinary Chinese think? However, thinking for a second, I am not surprised that he felt this way.
In any other country, I don’t think Han Han would be that special. His criticisms and the courage to challenge authority, even the having the balls to drop out of high school, are common characteristics of young people around the world. He is a very good writer, that’s for sure, but in most places his writing wouldn’t be enough to make him one of the most popular bloggers and an iconic figure. However, in China, what Han Han says and does has value.
When I was in college, I was a fan of Han Han. His books opened my eyes and mind. For the first time in my life, I realized students could criticize and analyze profoundly the problems of the China’s education system. His words were harsh, but they were just so true.
Throughout
Feng Xiaogang’s new movie 唐山大地震 (Aftershock) is setting all-kinds of domestic box office records this week. I haven’t seen it yet, but good friend and fellow China blogger Modern Lei Feng has reviewed the movie. He said:
When I first heard about the movie, I thought this was Feng’s way of capitalizing off the Sichuan earthquake. Going into the movie, I had low expectations, and when it started and the credits included a minute of producers and executive producers, I sat back and prepared for a movie along the lines of “Founding of the Republic”, where everyone in the Chinese movie industry was falling over themselves to play a role in the CCP’s love letter in film to itself. If not that, it would be an overly contrived attempt to cram history into a movie lacking a story like Summer Palace. Spoiler alerts below (not that there’s a lot that can be spoiled), so if you want it all to be fresh, wait until you’ve watched the movie before reading on.
This is not like either of those, it is definitely a movie with a story to tell and while the earthquake’s “aftershocks” loom large throughout the movie, the actual
Ed note: This is a guest post by Zhang Yajun.
—————————–
As a Chinese person, books written by foreigners about my country always intrigue me. Of course, some are good, others…not so much. The bad books occasionally rate a mocking giggle, but the better ones are like mirrors that reflect the country, the people, and yourself. Peter Hessler’s new book Country Driving is one of those mirrors.
The book has three distinct sections: The first recounts Hessler’s experiences driving along the Great Wall from Beijing toward the Tibetan plateau, a trip of nearly 7,000 miles. He spoke with people he met along the road and observed first hand how automobile ownership and the boom in new highway construction have transformed interior regions of China. The second part focuses on Wei Ziqi and his family, who live in Sancha, a village in the rural hinterlands of Beijing. For six years, Hessler rented a weekend home from this family and built deep connections with them. He saw the effects on Wei’s family and the village as China’s economic development trickled into this previously isolated pocket of rural life. In the final section, Hessler describes how a little town in Zhejiang has become a boomtown in large part due to
Ed note: This is a guest post by Zhang Yajun, A.k.a. “YJ”, A.k.a. “Mrs. Granite Studio.”
——————————
On June 20th, over 20,000 overseas Chinese in Paris organized a demonstration to protest against what they call an epidemic of violence and robbery against the ethnic Chinese community. As a Chinese citizen who once studied in France for a few years, I am happy to see the Chinese community speak out and demand its basic human rights in a peaceful way. Furthermore, based on my own experiences, I feel that this protest is not simply a reaction to a few individual crimes, but is related to profound race problems in French society.
Chinese and other residents of Paris protesting last week against what they see as a continuing pattern of violence and crime against the Asian community in France.
Possessed of a mentality that seeks to avoid trouble whenever possible, Chinese communities usually prefer to keep problems to themselves rather than seek help from police. Being perceived as physically weak also makes Chinese seem easy targets for attacks and robbery. But after keeping quiet for many decades, the Chinese community in Paris finally decided to publicly demand greater security. This
|
|