Chinese stories

It seems that every year in the past the Japanese prime minister has visited the Yasukuni Shrine (靖国神社) in Tokyo, which gets China and Korea upset, of course, and calling for apologies (the shrine honors convicted war criminals). This year Shinzo Abe (安倍晋三) didn’t go, and I didn’t hear much about it in the Chinese media. I do remember seeing him apologizing on TV as well recently, and didn’t hear much about that either.

Anyway, since Abe didn’t go this year a Japanese right-wing fanatic cut off his pinky finger and sent it to him in protest (link). The guy before him, Junichiro Koizumi (小泉纯一郎) used to go all the time, and after he went in 2001 a bunch of Koreans cut off their pinky fingers in protest (link). It seems that there’s going to be pinky cutting no matter what these guys do.

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We went to see Harry Potter 5 last night, because Tuesdays are half-off here. They have just finished remodelling the cinema lobby in the basement of New Oriental Plaza, and now there is a little press conference room off to the side. It is kind of neat, because you can peek through the cracks in the wall and watch the press conference that way. Yesterday there was a promotion for the upcoming movie Crazy Money and Funny Men (大话股神), which I guess is about the stock market. I only recognized two of the actors who were talking, Yu Entai (喻恩泰), who is in a popular sitcom about military cooks, and Li Qi (李琦), who is one of my favorite actors (usually plays the funny grandpa part, like in 东北一家人). Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to get an autograph.

One of the neat things about Beijing is that you see “famous people” once in a while. Of course the entertainment industry here seems small compared to other places, so being a star here doesn’t seem to mean as much, but my wife and I have spotted several “famous people” around Wangfujing, like Ai Hua, some anchor guy from BTV, and other random models/singers.  

Once we found our seats in the theater, the trailers started playing, and most seemed to be war movies for some reason. Two of them looked interesting. Feng Xiaogang’s (冯小刚) new war flick Assembly (集结号- IMDB plot summary: “A soldier fights to gain recognition for comrades who died during the Chinese Civil War”) caught my eye because the style reminded me of Saving Private Ryan, but the subject was China’s revolutionary war. Another was a cartoon war movie that I forget the name of, which also was about the revolutionary war I think, and combined styles of communist propaganda posters (red army soldiers striking poses) and more modern cartoon movies (some parts reminded me of Princess Mononoke in the way the characters moved). I thought it was interesting that the boring old war drama/propaganda genres are being remade, and incorporating some of these non-Chinese styles.

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Its my first time to Beijing, and I head over to Tiananmen Square. As I approach the Mao picture I notice people gathered on my left and see a man who appears to be dead being lifted into a van by police officers. I decide not to take a picture.

In a cab on the East Third Ring Road turning left towards Dongzhimen, a shiny black Audi pulls up alongside us and the man in the passenger seat rolls down his window, sticks his head out, and pukes. A little bit gets on the car he is in. He sees me looking at him, smiles, and waves. He seems to be really happy, so I wave back and smile.

While traversing groups of tourists and grabby pedicab drivers at Houhai, we pass by the Starbucks and hear a tourist say, “Oh! You have to get my picture in front of here, this is my favorite place in the world!”

We keep going and see a bunch of cops by the side of the road where taxis usually let people off. We try to get in one as someone is getting out, but the driver doesn’t let us, and drives away. Another one stops, and as we get in, a police officer tells the driver to get out of the car, and that he can’t pick up passengers there. We feel really sorry for the guy for getting a ticket for stopping for us, but what can we do? Now we don’t hail cabs when cops are around.

I’m in the filthy little Beijing suburb of Shahe for some reason, and at a bus stop I look over and see the strangest person I have ever seen. Her face is filthy, and is all that can be seen of her body that is covered in what appears to be dirty rags. They look like strips of garbage twisted and woven together into something that doesn’t look like clothes, but more of an extension of her body. She seriously looked like a walking garbage heap. I did not feel revulsion, but also could not bring myself to look at her for more than a few seconds.

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Here is a translation of an article from the Beijing News. A translation note: The article mentiones 台湾大学 Taiwan University, whose official name is 国立台湾大学 National Taiwan University. Are mainland publications afraid of putting in the ‘national’ part, or is it omitted just to save space?

National Taiwan University professor Fu Peirong speaks on Confucius, and his new views elicit controversy

The Beijing News, Jinan (special reporter Zhang Hong) Yesterday morning Taiwan University professor Fu Peirong was featured on Shandong Television station’s program “New Apricot Forum,” and gave the first lecture in a series called “Nine Talks on Confucius.” The main topic of this lecture was Confucius’s way as an official. Fu Peirong also mentioned that before Confucius took up an official post at the age of 50, he made a living by assisting others in making funeral arrangements. However, at the time of this reporter’s interview, the scholar Chen Ming felt that this is only Fu Peirong’s own viewpoint.

The controversial question of Confucius’s livelihood

Fu Peirong holds that Confucius did not accept tuition from his students – “He had so many students, if he got one piece of dried meat from each, how could he eat it all? He accepted anyone over the age of 15.” Fu also says that according to writings in the Analects and Mencius, “During Confucius’s time many people did not know how to properly hold the funeral rites, so he made a living from helping others hold funerals up until he went and became an official at the age of 50.”

 At the time of this reporter’s interview, Capital Normal University Philosophy Department Assistant Professor Chen Ming felt that Confucius did indeed help others hold funerals, but this was not his means of livelihood. “That is just the personal opinion of Fu Peirong,” Chen Ming said.

Fu Peirong Visits Confucius Temple and Confucius Forest

In terms of the way Confucius acted as an official, Fu Peirong says, “Confucius went from being a county official all the way to State Warden, an agent of the Prime Minister, and spent five years governing the state of Lu. If he had had enough time he might have been able to achieve his theory of benevolent governance.”

In the afternoon Fu Peirong successively recorded three programs on Confucius’s way as a teacher, of making friends, and of being filial. Today he heads to Qufu to visit the Confucius Temple and Confucius Forest.

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Zhongguancun 中关村 is supposedly the Silicon Valley of China, and is well-known for its electronics markets. Since our laptop broke (kept bluescreening on startup), we decided to head over there to pick up an external hard drive to back up our data, and try to get it repaired. Probably the most popular place to go to is the Hailong Building 海龙大厦, and we got our printer there that has worked wonderfully so far, so we headed there.

First of all it’s nearly impossible to get anywhere near Zhongguancun without getting stuck in some sort of traffic jam. There’s busses, cars, bikes, and people everywhere, plus every time we go there it starts to rain. Second, once you get in the building you are assulted by salespeople from all sides, and just have to put your head down and head for the escalators (or maybe wear noise-cancelling headphones). I swear there must be a ratio of at least 5 salespeople to every customer actually wanting to buy something on the first floor, and in my opinion they are even more agressive and energetic than the people you find in the big touristy places like the Silk Market, Hongqiao Market, Tianyi Market, or t-shirt stalls at the Great Wall. They don’t care who you are or where you come from, they just want to sell you a @*$#($& laptop! It is the right laptop for you! I think the managers must use the strategy of taking already energetic young people and feeding them Red Bull, then linking their pay to the decibel level maintained in their area.

In any case, we skipped straight to the seventh floor, where they have a cafeteria with food that just passes as edible. Then we started going down (the salespeople get less intense the higher you get), and first looked at printer cartridges. There is a big market in China for recycled printer cartridges, so you never know if what you’re getting is the real thing or not. We asked at one place, and they offered 75 RMB for two after a little bargaining down from 80. We went to another place, who said that if we wanted ‘locally produced’ 国产 cartridges they cost just 25 each (or something like that), and ones in their original packaging 原装 are 75 for 2. As we didn’t want to test the local ones, we took the 2 for 75 deal.

Next up was an external hard drive (2nd floor), and I did some reasearch on the Zhongguancun online webpage to try to guage the prices. Unfortuanately the website isn’t so helpful in giving an idea of what is actually available in the stalls. For example, one of the most popular items on the website seemed to be a 移动之星 160GB drive for 690 RMB (really cheap!), but in looking around I didn’t see many of them on sale. Samsung 三星 seemed to be the most popular name brand drive offered, so we started looking at those. One place gave us a price of 870 with a 3-year warranty for a 120GB drive, but came down to 800 after I said I saw an ad elsewhere for that price. Another place gave a price of 750 with no warranty (no receipt, or fapiao given), and a look at the back of the case on that one showed different markings than at the other store. Hmmm, they can’t both be the real thing can they? Finally, another place with a certificate of authorization on display asked first if we wanted a receipt (which apparently is related to them providing a warranty), and we said we did, and they gave us a price of 780, and wouldn’t budge. So we took it. I also picked up a 2GB SD card from there after they knocked 5 off the 170 RMB price.

Finally, we took our laptop to a repair center (on the 3rd floor I think). They were really nice and let us use the space to sit there and copy our data off the computer, then had a technician come out and look at our computer. The evaluation is free, and he even tried to use one of their hard drives in the laptop to see if it was a software problem, but they didn’t have that kind of hard drive even though it is a Dell I bought a year ago in the states. He said it was probably one of the latest viruses, and to do a system restore. All for free! (repair prices seemed to range from 400-1500 RMB) We took it home and the restore worked.

In the end, I don’t know if there’s any surefire way to know what you’re buying there is legit. Just try to find a non-sketchy place (one of the stalls we went to was being visited by the police at the time, so we moved on), look at a few of the models to see if there are any differences and get a receipt. It doesn’t seem like the prices are insanely inflated like the Silk Market either. Also, skip the first floor unless you have nerves of steel and like to experience full-contact technology sales.

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