Shanghai Scrap

Over the weekend the Daily Mail reported that the British Olympic Association [BOA] was planning to require that all participating British Olympics athletes sign a contract “promising not to speak out about China’s appalling human rights record – or face being banned from traveling to Beijing.” And this can mean only one thing:

It’s pretty much guaranteed that at least one British athlete will speak up about China’s human rights record at the Beijing Olympics. In fact, I’d place serious money on the proposition (even now that the British have announced that they are reconsidering the policy). And if August is too long to wait, Richard Vaughan, a British Olympian in 2000 and 2004 – and a hopeful in 2008 – is already talking. Would he be talking if the BOA hadn’t floated this perfectly stupid gag clause? I don’t know Vaughan, but I do know media, and I’m pretty sure there’s more than one British reporter out there now under general orders to find politically outspoken British Olympians. Odds are, that’s a beat that didn’t exist a few days ago.

As China likes to point out, Article 51 of the Olympic charter prohibits political demonstrations and propaganda in Olympic venues. The British Olympic Association [BOA] proposed gag cause actually referred competitors to article 51. At the same time, though, seems to have missed the irony here; namely, that requiring political silence of British participants (also preferred by Beijing) is as much of a political act as the (feared) raised fists and voices of athletes against Chinese government policies. Only the naive, or the hopelessly cynical, would deny that simple fact.

Anyway. I can’t remember who, but a wise person once said something along the lines of: “When people say it’s not about the money, it’s about the money. When they say it’s not about sex, it’s about sex.” So, in that spirit, let’s add this timely amendment: “When Beijing says it’s not about human rights, it’s about human rights.” And when organizations like the British Olympic Association try to corner their athletes into keeping their mouths shut about what is so obviously in front of their faces, they’re just reminding their athletes – for the most part, I’d guess, not the most politically motivated people – of their role in a pageant staged partly to burnish the ruling credentials of a political party.

Being that it’s Chinese New Year, and filial-minded Chinese everywhere are either fulfilling – or planning to fulfill – their duty to honor passed relatives by burning ghost money, I thought I’d share an email received over the weekend from a friend in Shanghai.

3:45 this afternoon and I’ve just wakened from a nap, still lazing on the bed with [W] and… I smell smoke. I ask her, but she’s sure I’m just my dopey self. A few more minutes and… yep, that’s smoke, and even my wife is up now. First I think it’s our heat pump giving way and the compressor is burning up but, nope, nothing in the room but the smell of smoke and a glance outside the window shows the heat pump operating as well as it can in below freezing weather. I open the apartment door and the smell is unmistakable, there’s the smell of smoke and it seems to be coming from the apartment next door. I put on my shoes with wife now nervously shouting behind me to hurry (am I that dumb? I need to be told to move faster?) and take the elevator 13 floors downstairs (In Case of Fire Do Not Use the Elevators) and tell the guy on duty in the lobby there’s smoke on our floor. He grabs a walkie-talkie, I thought it was a flashlight so you can understand my state of mind, and we go back up in the elevator (will flames lick through the doors?) to the 13th floor and, yep, smoke alright. He’s on the walkie-talkie pounding the apartment door, rattles the cowbell they use as a door knocker but no one’s home, so he leaves to go back downstairs and find out their phone numbers. Some while passes, the smell of smoke is still there, we’re in our apartment wondering just how severe this will be, and after some while longer someone pounds on our door. Breathlessly my wife opens expecting to see the fire department, but it’s only the building management telling us someone on the 7th floor was burning paper money in the stairwell.

The old woman who lives next door to my Shanghai apartment likes to burn ghost money in the hallway in front of my door – and our relationship suffers badly because of it. Just to be clear: I think the burning of ghost money is a wonderful, beautiful tradition. It’s just that I have issues with doing it indoors. Last Spring, in advance of the tomb sweeping festival, China Daily did a piece on internet-related means of honoring relatives. Given, electrons speeding to the router aren’t as otherworldly as smoke rising to heaven, but at least one is safe to do indoors.

I’ve been in the US for a little over a week now, and – among other things – I’m overwhelmed by the wall-to-wall coverage of the US Presidential Race. Outside of a national disaster, I can’t think of such sustained, in-depth coverage of any other event in my lifetime. And yet, with so much coverage, much of it overlapping, I’m more than a little surprised that the US media is still tip-toeing around one of the most interesting and important issues to emerge from the California Super Tuesday primary: namely, why are Asian Americans supporting Hillary Clinton by a 3 to 1 advantage over Barack Obama? This is in rather stark contrast to the deep coverage devoted to Hispanic voters and their roughly 3 to 1 preference for Clinton over Obama. So what’s holding back the American media?

One possible reason is that “Asian American” as a term encompasses several nationalities. But, then again, so does “Caucasian” – and nobody hesitates to talk about white voters. Fact is, in California and elsewhere, the exit polls are tracking how this vaguely defined ethnic group is voting. (more…)

I’m not sure how many readers I have in Central Minnesota, but if you’re out there, this post is for you -

On Sunday, February 10, I’ll deliver this month’s Second Sunday lecture at St. John’s Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minnesota. The announced title of my speech is “Catholicism with Shanghai Characteristics: Faith’s Future Meets Its Past.” I’ll be talking about the past and current state of China’s growing Catholic population from the perspective of a foreign journalist covering those developments. My hope is that my audience will leave knowing a bit more about Chinese Catholicism, and a bit more about the challenges of being a foreign journalist in China.

Anyway, the event begins at 7 PM, sharp, in Petters Pavilion. Directions to St. John’s can be found here.

And, if you’re interested, you can read my 2004 profile of the St. John’s community here (it remains one of my favorite stories of the last five years).

Blogging has gone unexpectedly light due to a burst of non-blog related inspiration AND the concurrent need to complete work on a presentation (more on that, shortly). So, as filler and penance, I hereby announce Shanghai Scrap’s first annual Chinese New Year Contest. But first: this blog has gone a long way without making sport of Chinglish and funny typos on Chinese signs/menus, etc. So, a promise: after this contest, no more making fun of Chinglish until I can pass the advanced HSK (don’t hold your breath).

Now onto the contest. Below, a menu item from a well-known Shanghai restaurant.

Those who read Chinese characters will immediately recognize that “Human” is actually a typo for “Hunan.” But for the purposes of this contest, that’s no matter. So here’s the deal: the first person to tell me which Shanghai restaurant is serving human pickles wins a dinner – with or without me, your choice – at that restaurant (in March). For those outside of Shanghai, I’ll award something of value (I haven’t come up with it yet) to the first person who can come up with a decent couplet incorporating “human pickles.” All entries should be sent to me via the Shanghai Scrap contact form. I reserve the right to publish the human pickles couplets (if there are any). Contest ends … I dunno, February 14.

[To be honest, I've been looking for an excuse to post this photo for months. This seems as decent an excuse as any.]

North American companies have been entering the Chinese market for so long that rarely – if ever – do they warrant coverage beyond a one or two paragraph slug in the back of the Wall Street Journal, anymore. The problems, the strategies, and the narrative remains – with some variation – largely the same. And that’s why, in my opinion, Best Buy Corporation‘s splashy entry into the Chinese market is so interesting, important, and unusual. As the first foreign electronics retail chain to enter China, Best Buy needs to prove that retail atmosphere and – above all – quality service are advantages that can successfully compete against traditional “price-first” Chinese retailers. This is no small trick, as I write in “Best Buy Booming in China,” published (today) by MinnPost.

I don’t often post links to the work that I do on China for media in Minnesota and the Midwest, in part because that work usually has a limited audience. This one is an obvious exception, and I’m glad to link to it. At the same time, I’m also glad to be sending my readers over to MinnPost, one of the more important recent experiments in American journalism (MinnPost’s account of its history can be found here; outside accounts can be found here and here). (more…)

The January 30 issue of the New Republic includes a short essay on China by Nathan Glazer, one of the great American intellectuals of the last sixty years (really, he is, and deservedly so). It is written on the occasion of Glazer’s first trip to China, and includes his impressions of Shanghai and Beijing. I don’t always agree with him (I definitely don’t agree with naming his article “Shanghai Surprise”), but he’s Nathan Glazer, and I’m not. Still, opinion is one thing, and facts are another, and when it comes to facts – like, what you see when you go to Tiananmen Square – I have to interject. Here, then, is Nathan Glazer on his Beijing:

… I tried in vain to see evidence of the Communist influence. Red flags? We saw some. But they seem to mark banks and other commercial establishments. Red stars? We saw one or two on buildings. Pictures of government leaders, heroes? None. Slogans? When we asked for translations, it seemed they had no political content at all …

Where are the government buildings, I asked, where are the monuments? In Washington, with its grand public buildings and monuments, one cannot be unaware one is in the capital of a great world power. In Beijing, there is only evident the Forbidden City, which once served as the seat of government. The emperors and their attendants lived in those uncomfortable-looking grand pavillions, but there are no government offices there now – only masses of tourists, mostly Chinese (The one portrait of Mao we saw was mounted on one of its huge walls) … the government is not in visual evidence, whether through buildings or monuments or police or military facilities.

Where are the fact-checkers, I ask, where are the foreign affairs editors? And where the !@#$ is this version of Beijing??? I’m not going to pick this apart (I’ll leave that to the Beijing blogs), but I do think its worth pointing out that – while Glazer was looking at that Mao painting pinned to the Forbidden City – his back faced Tiananmen Square, the Great Hall of the People, Mao’s mausoleum, China’s National Flag, the Monument to the Heroes of the Revolution (or whatever they call that thing) and all the police and military his heart could have desired. Below, a satellite image of what Glazer’s back was facing (if one goes by his piece, Glazer stood at the far left of the image):

For those who’ve never been to Beijing – imagine staring upwards at Washington D.C.’s Washington Monument, with your back to the Mall and the Capitol, and wondering where all the government buildings and monuments are. It’s pretty much the same thing.

In retrospect, the 2003 SARS crisis really did define both the abilities and limits of China’s resident foreign journalists in ways that – five years later, in the midst of another crisis – are still being tested. The abilities, in the way that a few brave individuals covered a dangerous story without being deterred by personal safety or heavy-handed government restrictions. And the limit, in that the foreign media failed to pick up on the disease until several months after it emerged and was recognized in Guangzhou (there were reports of a “bad flu” in Guangzhou starting in October and November of 2002; the foreign media started running with the story in January of 2003). And this limit was, to a very large extent, the result of the fact that foreign news organizations continue to run their south China coverage out of Hong Kong, and not out of Guangdong properly. Though the distance between them can be covered in under two hours, the cultural distances are so much greater. No reporter – foreign or otherwise – can expect to cover the subtleties of the Pearl River Delta without actually living in it (I’ve toyed with the idea), or spending extended period of time there. It’s amazing, actually, that more reporters and news organizations don’t base in Guangdong. After all, it is, as we are so often reminded, the Workshop of the World, headquarters to much of China’s export capacity (and thus, the world’s), and home to some 30 million + migrants (in addition to 80+ million locals). But that’s a subject for another post.

Anyway, this all comes to mind as I try to determine – from an Internet connection based outside of China – what is happening to the reported 800,000 migrant laborers stranded – for reasons having to do with the weather and inadequate transportation infrastructure – at the Guangzhou Railway Station. And, for that matter – how 100+ million in south China are reacting to power outages and food shortages caused by a weather-related disaster that – from my reading – only seems to be getting worse. No surprise, none of the major Western daily papers have reporters down there, and those papers covering the disaster are doing so from bureaus located north and east of the real catastrophe (for example, the Washington Post). Obviously, with transport links severed, few reporters are capable of getting down there, even if they wanted to go. At the same time, many – if not most – of China’s foreign journalists are now out of the country (including me), taking a brief break during the news lull that – typically – occurs during the Chinese New Year. (more…)