Racial profiling of Tibetans and Uyghurs at Beijing hotels and bathhouses?
This notice put up by the Huayuan Road Public Security Bureau in Beijing's Haidian district requests owners of hotels and bathhouses in the neighbourhood to ensure that all Tibetan and Uyghur guests are reported to them. Business owners are also to ensure thorough identification and verification of the ethnicity of all guests, according to the notice.
Must-read story of Chinese-American soldier who committed suicide in Afghanistan
Jennifer Gonnerman of New York magazine has a riveting account of the life and death of Private Danny Chen, a 19-year-old Chinese-American soldier who was found with a gunshot to his head in Afghanistan. The gunshot, as it turned out, was not inflicted by armed Afghan rebels, but by Chen himself. The abuse that he had to put up from his platoon mates for being the only Asian guy around was too much to bear.
Chinese-American voter to Mitt Romney: Stop putting Asians down
"I'm Chinese and I'm American and I love this country. I heard all these degrading things about China this and China that and it just doesn't make me feel good."
Watch: White guy and Chinese girl have old-fashioned wedding
Behold, new frontiers are being crossed in the grand tradition of going native! A wedding took place yesterday between a 'high-nosed deep-eyed' Californian and a Kaifeng native in Kaifeng, Henan. The couple, who live and work in Shanghai, pulled out all the stops with a traditional Chinese wedding in the girl's hometown.
Zhang Lijia on the identity of her mixed-race kids
Zhang Lijia, author of the book Socialism is Great, offers us a personal anecdote on the identity of her mixed-race kids. She writes of a recent trip to Bangladesh with her daughters:
Everywhere we went, people asked us which country we were from. At point, May, my older daughter, aged at 14 (but going on 18) replied without thinking: “We are from England.” I immediately contracted her: “I am from China and my daughters are half-Chinese.” Later I pulled May aside and asked: “You were born in China; you spent 10 out of 14 years in China and you are living in China. How does it qualify you as ‘English’?” May blinked her big round eyes. “Well, if I tell people I am Chinese, people wouldn’t believe me.”more ›
Christianity, Uyghurs and Xinjiang
Josh Summers of FarWestChina follows up on our story of Alimjan Yimit, the imprisoned Uyghur Christian pastor of an underground church, and tells us a little about the Uyghur people and Christianity in Xinjiang:
Many people don’t realize that there are government-approved Christian churches in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi. I have personally been inside and sat in on a couple services. According to Chinese law, the government is supposed to supply registered religious organizations with a plot of land and a building in which to meet. Key word: registered.more ›
Race in China: Immigration, minorities and progress
As foreigners, we are constantly engaged with the question of race in China: what does it mean to be a foreigner living in Shanghai? At the same time, China's high paced economic and cultural opening has raised similar questions for the populace as it struggles to forge its new, global identity amid an influx of foreign influence. In the background of such discussions lies the specter of race, with all of its implications for a society struggling to deal with immigration and domestic racial tensions: how will China learn to acknowledge and incorporate notions of diversity as it presses on through the 21st century? The New York Times' Room for Debate blog has a number of different perspectives from notable academics on the subject of race in China, and is worth a read if you've ever pondered your own role as an expat.
Ding Hui: Still Chinese, still black, still playing volleyball
The past couple of days, traffic to China Sports Today from people searching for "Ding Hui" has seen a little uptick. Could it be a coincidence that a recent story in The Guardian said that Ding Hui, the Chinese national volleyball team's first black player, was booted from the national team last year, implying that it was because Ding Hui is black? But If you came to find out about the volleyball player who was kicked off the Chinese national team for being black, you won't find what you're looking for because it didn't happen.
Shanghai Alleycat bike race sounds like purrfect fun
We're too much of pansies to navigate the Shanghai streets by bike ourselves, but if you're an avid city cyclist with a penchant for competitiveness, check out this crazy little race we came across: Shanghai Alleycat.
Lou Jing talks to Netease about Oriental Angel, growing up black
China Hush has published its translation of a Netease interview with Lou Jing (娄婧), the half-black Oriental Angel contestant who was the subject of a lot of online netizen character attacks, most of them extremely bigoted.
Videos: "Chocolate Girl" Lou Jing on Oriental Angel
The controversy surrounding Lou Jing, the half-black Shanghainese girl who recently appeared on DragonTV's reality show "Let's Go! Oriental Angel" made actually curious about the show. We mean, we were curious about the show before, when we first stumbled upon its auditions at the Channel One mall, but now we actually wanted to check it out.
Interview: Eric Ransdell, director of Shanghai Rush
We hope everyone's readying their tv sets to watch Shanghai Rush, China's first English-language reality show, which premiers tonight at 8pm on ICS. While others have taken a sneak peek at the first episode - in which we're introduced to the ten teams of two that will be gracing our televisions for the next twelve Sundays - we decided to have a chat with the man behind the scenes: Eric Ransdell, director.
Minority roundup: Torch tension, Muslims in Tibet and letting go of the "race complex"
- The Olympic torch moves today to Qinghai Lake in the Northwestern province of Qinghai, after making a one-day cameo in Lhasa. The Saturday visit to the Tibetan capital was carefully monitored in light of March’s uprising, and tight security continues in the province that was another sight of spring unrest. As the torch makes its way through China’s heavily-minority sections, several pieces of interesting news and commentary have surfaced covering the situations of various ethnic minorities in the PRC:
- The LA Times explores tensions in Tibet far more complex than just pro-China, anti-China struggles — the region also has strained relations between Tibetans and Hui Chinese, a minority ethnically identical to majority Han Chinese, but Muslim. The historic friction flared up last summer in the town of Guojia, when a Tibetan women alleged that she found a tooth in the soup she had ordered in a Muslim restaurant across town. Violence erupted against the neighborhood’s Hui restaurants, many of which have now gone out of business as proprietors flee the area for their safety.
- Blogging for China brings us a translation of a post on a Uygur forum describing one Minkaohan’s (ethnic minorities raised and educated alongside Han Chinese) discovery of his own, inevitable “racial complex,” and the importance of setting that polarizing emotion down in favor of national and local peace, cooperation and unity.
- Earlier today, we mentioned that China has released over 1,000 involved in Tibetan unrest, but The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that arrests are still occurring in other areas of Asia. Three Tibetan activists were jailed for three months in Katmandu, Nepal on Saturday, while hundreds of exiles from the region were detained for protesting inform of the city’s Chinese Embassy.
The Chinese Dream?
As China rapidly climbs to world economic power, some enterprising individuals are emigrating here in the hopes of finding a new version of the American Dream. Blogging For China translates an article from the Southern Metropolis Daily on African traders who move to China (notably the city of Guangzhou, which currently holds an estimated 100,000 Africans) with the same burning desire of an earlier generation who emigrated to America: a better life. Many of them face strong prejudice against blacks in China and struggle to integrate themselves into their villages. The reporter follows one Liberian trader as he greets Chinese store-owners in his neighborhood:
He’ll loudly greet them, “Friend, how are you recently?” His “friends” don’t respond. Some pull out a cell phone and intentionally ignore him. Others impatiently wave at him, and say in a combination of Chinese and English: “If you’re not buying anything, then go… quickly GO!”more ›
Around Shanghai: quarantine forms, population density and a new TV channel
Photo of a Shanghai demolition site from Montrasio International
Today's Links: Top minds, pollution maps and Bibles
“Local authorities are offering lucrative packages to lure leading academics to the city under a new scheme to help boost its competitiveness.”
“The ICS programs, covering news, information, fashion, entertainment, foreign TV shows and movies, will be aired in English and Japanese, with Chinese captions, for 19 hours a day.”
“The move will make Shanghai GM the third joint venture automaker to deliver a hybrid vehicle in China following Toyota and Honda. Toyota Motor Corp is currently the only carmaker that builds a hybrid car in China.”
“China Eastern will resume its twice weekly Shanghai-Saipan flights starting Jan. 11, 2006, close to five months after the charter flights were suspended because of the decline of tourists coming in from China.”
“A focus will be the Shanghai dialect … ‘As more and more young people in Shanghai use the dialect to communicate online, and as its vocabulary expands, it will be standardised and promoted as a distinct local language.’”
“Amity has churned out 41 million Bibles for Chinese believers at its plant outside … Nanjing, including more than 3 million copies last year. (About nine million copies have been exported to Africa, other parts of Asia and Central Europe.)”-
“Police have arrested five people alleged to have duped a Swedish man into paying nearly 5,000 yuan ($680) for coffee and whisky during a recent business trip to the city.”
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“One contestant, Zhang Jincheng, the Guinness record keeper, is a 23-year-old from Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province. His two challengers are 28-year-old Andorran Xavi Casas and 34-year-old Colombian Javier Zapata.”
“The city government issued new rules last week banning road expansion on most of the 144 downtown roads lined with historic houses. The rules also ban tall buildings from being built in conservation areas.”
China tech blog worth checking out.
Another China tech blog.
“Just over a year since their first mashup was released, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, headed by journalist-environmentalist Ma Jun, has just released its Air Pollution Map, complete with its own BBS and space for feedback forum.”
“The 22-year-old flight attendant and world-class schemer outwitted, outplayed and outlasted his competitors for 39 days to be crowned the $1 million winner of the reality show’s 15th edition and the youngest winner in the series’ history.” 15!-
“Three architectures in Beijing are on the list of 10 best architectural marvels (new and upcoming) selected by the Time magazine to be published on the Dec. 24.” None from Shanghai.
What they're saying about CCTV9 anchor Edwin Maher
The last time an anchor from our favourite TV channel made it to the news, he created such a brouhaha that culminated in the eviction of one coffee company from the Forbidden City. In the news this time is New Zealand-born anchor Edwin Maher who for many years before arriving in China was a weatherman with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Los Angeles Times published a profile of Maher that started it all off. It...
Around Asia: Singing presidents, straitjacket elections and the Asian space race
Locals cynically call him "papa," or praise him as their "king." Some expats, meanwhile, call him "big head." Whatever the moniker applied to him these days, Tajik President Imomali Rahmon is showing himself to be a man full of surprises.
More bragging rights for China as it launches its first lunar orbiter
Excitement is palpable among the crowd as China launched its first lunar orbiter, the Chang'e One satellite (named after the goddess of the moon 嫦娥), half a century after the Russians became the first to set out to space.
Only 2 more sleeps till the the 17th National Congress...
... and the rumor-mill is running in overdrive. Recent reports suggest that Shanghai Party Chief Xi Jinping's (习近平) recent entry into the race - apparently at senior leader Zeng Qinghong's (曾庆红) insistence - has shaken things up; forcing Hu Jintao to make some last-minute maneuvering.
Shanghai in motion: Lewis Hamilton, Rain and Nanjing Lu
Right: Walk down Asia's longest and busiest shopping street (did you know it was in our city?) with the guys from The Shanghai Show. Yes, Nanjing Lu remains as psychedlic, mesmerising and frenetic as ever.
Will the F1 Chinese Grand Prix be a wet one?
The Shanghaiist Weather Center is 100 percent sure the answer will be yes (although is Shanghai Circuit really in Shanghai?). It's dry now in the French Concession, but the dark clouds above suggest it won't stay that way for long. Here's the latest weather update from the official Formula 1 website: Thus far Sunday has been dry with a little wind, but no sign of the edge of Typhoon Krosa, which is sweeping through the...
Liu Xiang disappoints Shanghai fans
20 year old Cuban Dayron Robles stole the show yesterday at the Shanghai Golden Grand Prix yesterday with an impressive 13.01 sec at the 110m hurdles event. Together with Anwar Moore of the United States, he trumped Liu Xiang who disappointed a highly expectant home crowd.
New Shanghai party chief tipped for the Politburo
Shanghai is back in Beijing's good books. Or so an article published by the People's Daily two weeks ago indicates, claims the Associated Press. The article, titled "Glad to hear the new good tidings from Shanghai", lavished praise on Shanghai for it's recent successes. "A golden breeze refreshes Shanghai; one important, auspicious event after another" gushed the lead article. It is a sign, claims AP, that the fallout from last year's pension scandal has started to settle. As AP points out:
...such propaganda is a cue that top communist leaders have come to a consensus that the scandal was confined to a few "bad elements" and that China's biggest and richest city has Beijing's support.
Around Asia: Rap of Malaysian anthem, 60th anniversary of India and Korean Economic Community
The Youtube video shown here produced by Chinese Malaysian student Wee Meng Chee, 24, triggered torrents of invective from Malays, and support from some Chinese in Malaysia.
The race to build the Great Mice Wall
OK, we all know about the Great Wall, the Great Firewall and the Great Green Wall. All that is old news now. Get this: China is now building a 6 million yuan, 40-kilometer (25-mile) long, 1 meter (3.3 feet) high wall around Dongting Lake in Hunan Province to guard against the 2 billion field mice that have been on the run from the flooded Yangtse River. Already, the mice have destroyed about 520,000 hectares (1.3 million acres) of crop land when rising water drove them from their burrows. And even the enterprising businessmen in Guangdong who sought to help by bringing the mice en masse to the dinner table did little to mitigate the situation.
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