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the great irony
December 29th, 2003
the more i read this news article, the more ironic i feel. the article states: “China’s socialist laws theoretically protect workers even as the country embraces capitalist ways. But the police crush efforts to set up independent unions as threats to the Communist Party.” i’m not surprised but still it’s so unbelivably ironic; it’s just pathetic. allow me to go over some history - during the first united front in 1920s, the Nationals (now the gov’t of taiwan) and the communist united under USSR’s encouragement to take over china from the warlords. the communist was best known for spreading idealism and help with workers’ rights. they helped forming labor unions in many places esp. in shanghai. they encouraged workers to protest against their unfair treatment. but Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Nationalist was close to the rich people. in fact most of their army was founded by rich people. they were certainly not happy to see the workers gaining power. convinced to strike first, Chiang Kai-shek open fired at the communist without warning. wiped out an incredible number of communist members in no time. the event is remembered as bai se kong bu - white terror of 1927. yes communists died then but they seem to me were heros who had given their lives to help those who were worst off. when did the original idealism take a complete flip? oh i know when.. after Mao’s ideal devasted China - after his intension to give everyone enough to eat, surf pass the US in steel production brought chinese disasters after disasters, no one believes in it any more. china is now a capitalist country where money is the only god everyone worships but sharing idealism is nowhere to be found. why does this seem to me like history repeating itself? when will china be able to truly balance sharing and economic growth?
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china needs more sexual eduation
December 17th, 2003
Why is the Chinese government banning this museum while sex related shops are thriving? Not long ago someone sent me an article published in Chinese describing how many chinese believe sexual positions and special needs in sex are abnormal behaviors. a man questioned a psychiatrist his wife’s sanity because she screamed during sexual intercourse. he couldn’t understand why his wife behaved like that because she was always very quiet during the day. another woman believed her husband was crazy because he liked “animal position” during sex. sex is just a total “no no” in the public. you don’t talk about sex in the public in china. due to the increasing popularity of the internet, more middle school and college students are sharing sexual experience online. but seriously china needs to make sexual eduation part of its curriculum.
I remember in elementary school we did watch some videos about sexual growth but it had nothing to do with intercourse. Just watching male genitals on video totally freaked us girls out so bad that most of us just covered our eyes. We never even attempted touching those topics at that age. Actually by fifth grade I still didn’t know what “period” is because my parents never mentioned it to me. Ironically the first time I heard the word “penis” in chinese was after I came to the US. Some naughty boy in my 7th grade class decided to look up the word “penis” in my english -> chinese dictionary. He asked me how to prounce it. In Chinese it’s “Ying Jing”. I do recognize both of the characters but I had no idea what it was. Later I came home and asked my parents what it was, they did not answer me; they just shaked their heads and said “american children are taught too much.” I incorrectly guessed it to be “vagina” because the word “Ying” is usually associated with female in Chinese. My parents have never talked about sex with me. But sex is totally nature; why should the government crack down so hard educating people about it?!
I never thought of what the article pointed out: “xing,” (pronounced “SING”) the word for “sex” in standard Chinese is an ideograph that combines the symbols for “heart” and for “life.”
Apparently who ever created the word “xing” did not want it to be suppressed.
Wen Jiabao’s Speech in Harvard
December 12th, 2003
Chinese Premier Wen’s four day visit to USA is an important tour. I find it quite interesting that he gave a speech a Harvard business school. I have to say after reading different news sources about his speech, i’m quite impressed.
1. he admitted human rights problems in china. although providing no solid proposals to improve the situation, he mentioned “Reform and opening-up creates conditions for the advancement of human rights, and the latter invigorates the former.” (source)
2. he supported democracy. “China’s leaders want democracy, the conditions are not yet right for contested elections for senior officials. China is such a big country and our economic development is so uneven. To start with, I think the education level of the population is not high enough” (source) - this i quite agree. I’m not sure whether chinese would truly appreciate democratic election at this point of the stage. i am worried that democracy would not be truly democratic due the huge number of corruption exists in the government. think back to the very first election in Republic of China that led by Sun. What a failure huh? but then who can judge when is the right time for china? i find it interesting how peking duck mentioned even tho singapore is not a democratic country, it manages to provide “people nearly all of the freedoms they crave.” what will work in china should not be judged by outside forces. so i also applause his statement “China is a large developing country. It is neither proper nor possible for us to rely on foreign countries for development. We must, and we can only, rely on our own efforts.” (source) every country has its own problems and needs its own unique solutions.
3. i really like the way he handled the interruption by a woman who stood up to call for Tibetan independence. no matter how legitimate you think that woman’s protest is.. Wen managed to make her look bad. he said “I will not be disrupted because I am deeply convinced that the 300 million American people do have friendly feelings towards China.” the woman was removed from the audience for the interruption and i doubt anyone was impressed by her “bravery”. at least i am not.
After Wen’s visit with Bush, Bush changed his tone on Taiwan issue just about 180 degrees. I don’t think I want to get into why. Just interesting to note.
I’ve been trying to read many different news sources describing Wen’s speech. i haven’t yet found one that’s negative. most people thought Wen was amiable. I’m happy to have him as a premier for china.
news sources i’ve read:
http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/business.bg?articleid=1058
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/12.11/01-china.html
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/asia/story/0,4386,224879,00.html
http://fpeng.peopledaily.com.cn/200312/11/eng20031211_130140.shtml
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2003/12/11/2003079112
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8130123%255E1702,00.html
honour killing
November 20th, 2003
so in today’s world, there are still “honour killings”. i’ve read about the abuse of women in my international policy book a while ago. but this story just blew my mind!!
*copied the story in case the link comes broken*
Another ‘honor’ victim: Daughter, raped by brothers, killed by mother
Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Nov. 14, 2003 12:20 PM
ABU QASH, West Bank - Rofayda Qaoud - raped by her brothers and impregnated - refused to commit suicide, her mother recalls, even after she bought the unwed teenager a razor with which to slit her wrists. So Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud says she did what she believes any good Palestinian parent would: restored her family’s “honor” through murder.
Armed with a plastic bag, razor and wooden stick, Qaoud entered her sleeping daughter’s room last Jan. 27. “Tonight you die, Rofayda,” she told the girl, before wrapping the bag tightly around her head. Next, Qaoud sliced Rofayda’s wrists, ignoring her muffled pleas of “No, mother, no!” After her daughter went limp, Qaoud struck her in the head with the stick.
Killing her sixth-born child took 20 minutes, Qaoud tells a visitor through a stream of tears and cigarettes that she smokes in rapid succession. “She killed me before I killed her,” says the 43-year-old mother of nine. “I had to protect my children. This is the only way I could protect my family’s honor.”
The guilty brothers are in jail.
Qaoud’s confessed crime, for which she must appear before a three-judge panel on Dec. 3, is one repeated almost weekly among Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel. Female virtue and virginity define a family’s reputation in Arab cultures, so it’s women who are punished if that reputation is perceived as sullied.
Victims’ rights groups say the number of “honor crimes” appears to be climbing, but at the same time, getting little attention. Israelis and Palestinians are too busy with political and military issues to notice what they dismiss as domestic disputes, says Suad Abu-Dayyeh, who works for the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling in East Jerusalem.
Poverty and war have exacerbated the problem, says Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a social work and criminology professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an expert on violence against women.
“Men do not have any power except over women,” she says.
Police in Israel investigated at least 18 honor killings in the past three years.
Palestinian police reported 31 cases in 2002 - up from five during the first half of 1999 - the last time such incidents were counted before the current Palestinian uprising began, according to the center’s study.
But the number of killings is likely higher, given that Palestinian police investigate only crimes that have been reported, said Yousef Tarifi, the Ramallah prosecutor assigned to Qaoud’s case. Shalhoub-Kevorkian says her past research showed the likely number to be 15 times higher than the number of reported cases.
Legal authority on the West Bank has been weakened by Israel’s military crackdown, and the growing influence of militant Islamic factions has led clans to dole out their own justice. “In this chaotic situation, every man who thinks he knows a little bit of the Quran thinks honor issues are supposed to be resolved by killing,” says Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who adds that leading Muslim clerics in Jerusalem and Jordan have denounced such killings.
Qaoud says her husband, Abdul Rahim, 52, told her the Quran forbade such killings. But neither his pleas nor those of Palestinian crisis counselors swayed her. “Why did she accept what happened to her?” Qaoud asks. “Even a wife can tell her husband ‘no.’ “
According to court records, Rofayda was raped by her brothers, Fahdi, 22, and Ali, 20, in a bedroom they shared in the family’s three-room house. On Nov. 26, 2002, doctors at a nearby hospital who were treating Rofayda for an injured leg discovered she was eight months pregnant.
Palestinian authorities whisked her off to a women’s shelter in Bethlehem, where she gave birth to a healthy boy on Dec. 23. He has since been adopted by another Palestinian family, court records show.
Rofayda, meanwhile, wanted to return to her parents in the Ramallah suburb of Abu Qash. Ramallah Gov. Mustafa Isa called a meeting with the family and village elders, demanding they pledge in writing not to harm the girl. “He asked me if everyone in the family and the village would promise not to bother this girl, but I told him I couldn’t give him a guarantee,” Abu Qash Mayor Faik Shalout says.
Rofayda returned home in late January without notifying the authorities.
The shame was unbearable, Qaoud said. Relatives and friends refused to speak to her family. Her elder daughters’ husbands wouldn’t allow them to visit because Rofayda had returned home.
On Jan. 27, Rofayda sent word that she was in danger to crisis counselors at Abu-Dayyeh’s center in East Jerusalem. They, in turn, called Palestinian police in Ramallah, who have jurisdiction over Abu Qash. The police said they couldn’t get to the Qaoud home because of Israeli checkpoints.
Qaoud, meanwhile, sent her husband, who suffers from heart disease, to a doctor in the nearby village of Bir Zeit. Her three youngest children went to a cousin’s house.
At 11:30 p.m. she killed Rofayda, court records show. Tarifi says he’s convinced Qaoud had an accomplice, but Qaoud insists she acted alone.
Qaoud turned herself in and, after four months in jail, was released pending the resolution of her case.
While honor killings committed in the heat of the moment - for example, by a husband who catches his wife in bed with another man - generally carry a six-month to one-year jail term, Qaoud will likely be sentenced to three to five years in prison, Tarifi says. The fact she is a mother who was trying to protect her family’s honor mitigates the crime of premeditated murder, which is punishable by death under Palestinian law, he adds.
The brothers are serving minimum 10-year sentences in a Palestinian jail in the West Bank city of Jericho for statutory rape of a relative, Tarifi says.
No trace of Rofayda or her brothers remains in the family home. Qaoud says she ripped up all of their photographs and burned their clothes. The bedroom in which she killed her daughter is now a storeroom.
Erasing the memories is harder, she admits. She eases her pain by doting on her three children still living at home, especially the youngest, Fatima, 9, whom she lavishes with kisses. The children say they’ve forgiven Qaoud and return her affection.
“My mother did this because she does not want us to be punished by people,” Fatima explains with a shy smile. Leaning into Qaoud’s arms, the little girl adds: “I love my mother much more now than before.”
boycotting japanese goods in china
November 6th, 2003
as i dug a little deeper on the anti-japanese incident, i realize i used the wrong word while tranlating that blog entry. it was not a parade; it was a demonstration and a protest against the japanese. during a banquet in the foreign language department of Xi Bei University on Oct. 30th, a japanese teacher and three japanese exchange students put on sexually suggestive costumes danced wildly while shouting “this is you chinese; you dirty chinese” in japanese. my description of what happened is translated from this message board post. many online news sources also reported the incident and regarded the dance as insulting and obscene. as the description of the performance spread around the school, students requested an apology from the japanese. when the university officials were unable to provide one, they demonstrated and protected in and out of the school. as reported, more than a thousand chinese students participated in the demonstration. Here are some pictures of the demonstrations.
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new media for the masses in china?
November 4th, 2003
i really enjoy reading wang jian shuo’s blog because he’s a fellow shanghainese who is currently living in shanghai (me having hometown pride) or maybe because he provides valuable information about shanghai and various other things on his blog. I first stumpled to his site when I did a google search on how to install perl on windows. Today I found on his blog the link to Top 47 key tips from the world’s best bloggers which led me to NetGuide Magazine and cnblog.org. I find NetGuide’s feature articles extremely interesting. Unfortunately I don’t live in New Zealand otherwise I probably would subscribe. Do they have interesting magazines like that in the US? I guess I’m not a magazine digger so I might have missed a great deal. I’ve always believed you can find plenty of information about the web through the web itself. But to have them in an organized and renewable fashion would be a bonus which I am willing to pay cash for. The discovery of cnblog.org is a breath taking event to say the least. I have no idea blogs are becoming a new trend in China. That site discusses much of the international blogging trend online with interwined chinese and english. I just can not believe it. It discusses the possibility of blogs becoming China’s new media for freedom of speech. If that becomes true, it would be revolutionary. However I still believe much of the internet unlike in western countries are under governmental control in China. As the author said, there will be a long way to go.
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Power Outage?!
August 14th, 2003
hrm.. how did it happen? anyone got hit?
and WHY IS THIS GIRL STILL DIRECT LINKING MY PIXEL even tho it shows up as THE BIG I’M A THIEF IMAGE (look in her iframe).. what’s up with people.. too dumb? anyone registered at that fake non english speaking site? please advise her. thanks
[EDITED]alright i created something MORE SPECIAL for my beloved direct linkers. what you think?[/EDITED] - i will keep my creativity alive 
oh romance
May 14th, 2003
SARS can’t stop student’s nuptials (taken from here)
By Amir Efrati - The Daily Iowan
Love can transcend time, space - and a deadly respiratory disease.
Lin Wang stood in a courtyard outside his Hawkeye Court apartment Tuesday, his face covered by a white, rounded mask as images of his fiancée, Lei Lingyan, fluttered through his mind.
It was a dress rehearsal for May 18, when the 25-year-old will board a United flight to Shanghai en route to Leshan, where he will marry his sweetheart - the product of a two-year online romance - despite a chorus of objecting voices from family and friends in China who fear he might contract SARS. They think he’s nuts; Wang sees no other option.
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nuclear missile
February 12th, 2003
North Korea has untested ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. West Coast, CIA director George Tenet says. read more.
Is atomic war so close to us? It’s talked everywhere. Are we basically waiting for the end of planet earth here?
