British panda lovers delighted as Kung Fu Panda 3 to feature Christian Bale and Chen Guangcheng
Christian Bale announces he will star in Kung Fu panda 3, a prison escape featuring Guang Guang, a blind self-taught Panda who was imprisoned after aiding damsels in distress using a rare but useless Kung Fu technique called " The Law"
This year has been a great year for China and for British panda lovers. In December, after months of anticipation, Tian Tian and Guang Guang finally left Sichuan province, and began to settle into their new home in Edinburgh. Known as China's national treasure, it was a great honour for Scotland, which is still part of Britain, to be allowed to rent the pandas for 10 years at a cost of only ¥6 million, plus $100,000 per year of bamboo. The British people will always remember the generosity of China in loaning national treasures to us. According to British intelligence, Tian Tian will be "in the mood for love" in February, and we hope that she will give the British people a son or daughter. Many Britons would like to be Chinese one-day, and know this is not possible, so it is a great consolation for us to know that the Chinese pandas may give their only son to Britain. The British people would like to do their bit to preserve the panda race, and we are all rooting for Guang Guang. According to Chinese law, as members of a minority nationality, Britons are allowed to have more than one child, and the Chinese government have generously extended this generosity to pandas residing in Britain. Maybe Tian Tian will bring "double happiness" to the Britain, which since 2008 has been suffering from a deep shortage of pandas.
Manwhile, Christian Bale finished his movie the Flowers of War, a movie about the Nanjing massacre, in which tens of millions of people are massacred by the Japanese Anti Panda Party. After he had finished filming, Bale decided to publicise his coorporation with China by paying a visit to China's national treasure Guang Guang's home village in Shandong province. Unfortunately, on the way there, he met some amateur actors rehearsing for a Kung Fu movie who thought that he was a stuntman and, before the misunderstanding could be cleared up, they practiced their kung fu on him, causing him several minor cuts and bruises.
According to a reliable source who did not wish to be named, Hong Kong Kung Fu writer Zhong Zhong ( 钟祖康) has been inspired by this to audition for write the script for Kung Fu Panda 3, an animated action epic in which hordes of Chinese pand-izens, led by Hong Kong pandas Zhong Zhong (种种) and his prodigy Tang Tang (唐唐) descend on the village where Guang Guang is being held in captivity, and fight their way past the evil Japanese sentries who are holding Guang Guang hostage, in order to free Guang Guang, who belongs to a subspecies of Chinese pandas, known as "dissident pandas", of which there are very few left in the wild, their mostly being held in various forms of captivity for their own safety and for the benefit of stability and prosperity the National Chinese Panda breeding programme. In the story, Guang Guang was imprisoned after attempting to help damsels in distress using a little used Kung Fu technique known as "The Law". "I told them we are all equal before the Law", said Guang Guang during rehearsals "but they just told me to shut up and punched me! "
There are opportunities for extras and anyone who would like celebrate the Chinese New Year of the Dragon in kung fu fighting style is welcome to join rehearsals this Christmas. "We will be enacting the crowd scenes where Guang Guang is rescued. We will need hundreds of extras; basic Kung Fu training will be provided, please come in full Kung Fu panda costume. "
A former master of Guang Dong Kung Fu, Zhong Zhong has been resting and in semi-retirement since 2009 after giving birth to two twins in a remote zoo in Norway. Recently rumours have spread that he has been seen in the a remote Norwegian Fjord, training the novice Tang Tang in the ancient art, but rumours persist that Tang Tang is a "shanzhai Panda", belonging to a rare species which are not pandas at all, but in fact are expatriate Britons hiding under the guise of panda lovers.
The Chinese government responded positively to the news. A government spokesman told reporters today : "Guang Guang is a national treasure. He is a learned panda and has rescued many damsels in distress. Due to his extreme rarity, and tendency to disrupt traffic, it may be necessary to keep him in captivity indefinitely. "
The British government was also pleased by the news, saying, " we welcome any initiative which brings jobs to Britain."
British panda lovers queued all night for the preview of "Flowers of War".
Chinese wannabe
My satirical article in Hong Kong Open magazine "I want to
be Chinese" is now on sale all over town. It is also on the Open Magazine site and can be read here It is a call for China to relax its immigration policy, by allowing foreigners to attain Chinese citizenship in the way that immigrants do in most countries. China now has a large population of expatriates, many of them whom have married into Chinese families or set up businesses. These people have no political rights at all, and in some ways face an even worse human rights predicament than citizens of the PRC
Censorship on youku
Yesterday I tried to upload another video on
the theme of attaining Chinese nationality to
Youku.com. But for some reason, not only was
it immediately censored, but it also
triggered the censorship of both the
previously uncensored videos on the same
theme on the site, which I had uploaded last
week. I'm not sure exactly why; one
possibility is that I was wearing a T-shirt
with the letters six and four in one of the
frames of the video. Apart from that there
was nothing very anti-Communist party.
This is not my first experience of having a
video censored in China, but it is the first
time that I have had a video censored which I
had taken a lot of time and trouble to make.
As usual there was no explanation for the
censorship.It's a learning experience which
makes me understand and sympathise with
mainland China users of such websites. It's
very disheartening to go to the trouble of
uploading video, only to find it has been
deleted, to the extent that it puts me off
wanting to use their website in future.
Websites in the West go to great trouble to
make it easy for users, and avoid
discouraging them. Websites such as this
would never have a chance to compete if they
were exposed to competition from uncensored
sites. It's so strange that a company like
this can raise hundreds of millions of US
dollars on the NASDAQ in New York
Chinese art
It must be fun to be a Chinese artist
Propaganda on the Roof
A woman hangs out her washing beside a large
rooftop propaganda poster celebrating the
foundation of the People's Liberation Army.
So propaganda does have a use after all; to keep the washing dry!
The flag of the Republic is stained with the blood of the the People
Someone once said that the flag of the Republic is stained
with the blood of the the People, but this one
looks like a foreign victim. I saw this in an
art exhibition in Chai Wan, Hong Kong a few days ago.
Modern art has been successful spreading ideas which are subversive and new; Ai Weiwei is just the best-known example of this trend.
Bauhinia flower
This flower is on the Hong Kong flag and it is one of the symbols of Hong Kong
The Deaf Dumb and Blind Kid
I added myself to the picture with eyes that
cannot see and mouth that cannot speak. That
is what I used to be like! This picture is
composed of 10,000 banknotes, composing
another ironic artistic statement about the
late Chairman Mao.
Please Censor Yourself
Pillar of Shame
Monument to the dead of the Tiananmen massacre
of June 4th, 1989, outside the students union at Hong Kong University. I heard that this would be moved to another
site recently, to make way for the
building of the west island Mass Transit
railway, but as of last month it was still unmoved. It remains a powerful monument to the unjustly dead, their families, and their dreams of a fairer world
Nurse Thompson
As a young woman,Isobel Thompson worked as
Volunteer nurse along side Norman Bethune in
north west China during the closing stages of the
civil war in China between 1947 and 1949.She is
now retired in New Zealand and her memoirs
have been translated into Chinese. Unfortunately although she shares a surname with me she's not a close relative. Otherwise perhaps I could claim to be from a family of old friends of China, and belong to that small category of foreigners who are genuinely welcome
Student anger at Hong Kong University
Tibetan money
Yen and Yuan
With out the Japanese invasion, the CPC would
not have come to power, said Mao Zedong on
several occasions
The Road to 1911
An exhibition of photos relating to the end of
the Empire 100 years ago is being shown at
Hong Kong University
Election Poster
Demanding the reversal of the verdict on June
4 1989 and the release of all political
prisoners
A large market specialising in counterfeit
clothes, bags and watches can be found in the
basement of Science and Technology Metro
station. There was a lot of publicity about the closure of the previous market in another street, which supported the notion that the Shanghai government was getting serious about cracking down on counterfeiting. But it's alive and thriving underground; you can see it as soon as you pass through the ticket barriers. Shanghai,China Counterfeit-paradise.html August 26th, 2011
HKU 110th anniversary marred by political repression
Heavy handed policing during the visit of Li
Keqiang on August 18th led to claims that
freedom of speech at Hong Kong University was
dead. Students were prevented from going anywhere near Li, and reporters were prevented from filming this. Even so, a government spokesman claimed that it was completely rubbish that Hong Kong people's rights had been infringed Hong Kong, China HKU-110th-anniversary-marred-by-political-repression.html August 26th, 2011
An English translation of the popular banned book Shengshi (盛世) by Chen Guanzhong (é™ˆå† ä¸) has now been published with support from English Pen and financial help from Bloomberg. Reviewing it in the Guardian, Jonathan Fenby calls it "a dystopian portrait of the world's most deceitful superpower"
The hysterical tone and US-centric perspective put me off what could other wise be an interesting book Hong Kong, China Death-by-China.html August 23rd, 2011
Appallingly bad service used to be universal in China, but I've almost forgotten what it was like until I stayed at this hotel.Hoping to get an early flight, I stayed in this hotel 10 minutes drive from Pudong airport. It had a curtain-less window painted blue which gave the impression of dawn, so that I woke at 4:40 AM.
The toilet was smelly, the hot water took ages to come on, there was no information in the room about the Wi-Fi password all the reception telephone number and the shuttle bus to the airport left at 7 AM, the same time as breakfast was served.
I decided to complain but the manager was absent so I left this note in the visitors book.
In future I will remember to stay in one of the business chain hotels which are reliable and avoid imitations like this one
The window was painted blue which made me think that dawn had arrived in possibly the worst hotel near Pudong International airport.
Unable to sleep in the airy light, it reminded me of room 101, the room where there is no darkness, in Orwell's 1984 Shanghai,China Worst-Hotel-in-Shanghai.html August 23rd, 2011
I was pleasantly surprised by Shanghai library. The big open space in the middle reminded me of Hong Kong Central library. There were plenty of foreign newspapers to read, although they seem to be rather out of date. They even had the China quarterly! Shanghai,China Shanghai-library.html August 23rd, 2011
One of the nice things about visiting Japan is that it is the only country in the world I know of where nobody makes cellphone calls while using public transport. Tokyo, Japan Polite-Japan.html August 23rd, 2011
I took this photograph shortly after taking off from Pudong International airport late in the afternoon Shanghai,China Pudong-from-the-sky.html August 23rd, 2011
At this small cosy Indian cafe I had a ball of spinach curry and a piece of cheese Nan for 850 Yen. Cheap food and cheerful service. Harajuku, Tokyo The-British-Indian-cafe.html August 23rd, 2011
A short propaganda video was repeated every
few minutes on this copy machine in Pudong
airport to celebrate the 90th anniversary of
the Communist Party. In the picture, Mao and
early party members Shanghai,China Coffey-and-propaganda.html August 23rd, 2011
To me, few things are more English than a cup of tea accompanied by a chocolate Kit Kat biscuit after a game of football on a rainy day, but in fact this is fusion food par excellence. Tea in Britain is usually drunk with milk and sometimes sugar in mugs more often than cups. The British prefer black tea to the green tea grown in Fujian province of China from where the word tea originates and where the best Chinese tea is grown.
Kit Kat is made by Swiss company Nestle which pays almost no UK tax. Today I found a Japanese-style Kit-Kat for sale in Tokyo; it is green tea flavoured and green in colour.
The Japanese are known for studying and perfecting many Chinese customs, including the tea ceremony. I wonder whether they need any lessons in British tea drinking culture? Tokyo, Japan Japanese-Tea-Flavoured-Kit-Kat-biscuits.html August 23rd, 2011
This meal had a bit too much meat for me.
heart disease and cancer are increasing in
China; food for thought Shanghai,China Meaty-meal.html August 23rd, 2011
Fancy a wee dram to get you on your way?
Chivas seems to be pushing hard to sell
Britain's number one export, Whisky Shanghai,China A-wee-tot.html August 23rd, 2011
70 percent of doctors in China do not want their children to join the profession
70% of doctors in China are so unhappy with
the profession that they don't want their
children to join it.What the newspaper did not
and could not say is that nearly 70% of
Chinese people do not want to be Chinese; that
would cross the border line between
constructive and systemic criticism Shanghai,China 70-percent-of-doctors-in-China-do-not-want-their-children-to-join-the-profession.html August 23rd, 2011
Foreigners and self-censorship. It is surprising how often I find foreigners who are more scared of the Chinese authorities than many Chinese are. People who fought fascism and campaigned against apartheid without hesitating to think of their personal safety seem to think that I should keep my mouth shut if I want to carry on working in China, without considering the price of surrendering liberty But it should not be, because not long ago I was also much more cautious about speaking my mind. I never expressed my personal views, even when I heard Chinese criticise their government, I tried to think of a polite answer. But in 2009 an article I had written on sport sponsorship was censored by the Shanghai propaganda authorities, and I felt I had reached the limit of my tolerance. After years of learning Chinese, working for the Society for Anglo Chinese Understanding and excepting everything China through at me, I had had enough. I had spent two weeks writing the article without payment, simply for the publicity I thought it would bring my company's breast cancer charity sponsorship event. The only controversial argument in the article was that China's sport sponsorship market is constrained by state control of the media. This last straw came after I had been wrongly advised by local lawyers not to sign an employment contract with my company, which resulted in my losing my job, my visa and my right to stay in China. I was left without any legal recourse. The stress caused me to lose my memory, and I suspected a mini-stroke, but the company had not been required to provide any medical cover for me. I had spent months applying for the work visa, even submitting myself to an HIV test in the knowledge that if I tested positive I would be booted out of China permanently. And all this happened just months after the Chinese government suddenly and arbitrarily suspended access to China for foreign residents of Hong Kong like myself by withdrawing multiple entry visa access. In the summer of 2009 we also lived through the farcical attempt of the government to install censorship software on all new PCs manufactured in China. This they abandoned after it was discovered that the code was stolen. Then at the end of the year they resumed executions of foreigners and sentenced Liu Xiaobo to 11 years for his Charter 08 call for political reform. In the aftermath, they kidnapped and bullied his supporters into silence, and sent me a trojan horse virus after they found my email on a PC they had confiscated. I was impressed by the bravery of many Chinese who continued to speak out in the face of this repression, and when I learned that it is rare to be visa-blacklisted, I decided to speak my mind in future too. After all, I have so much less to lose than them and it would be no great loss if I could no longer visit China. There are so much better places to visit. I would miss only my friends China gagged.html August 17th, 2011
Last year I took a train ride on the Wuhan-Guangzhou rail line and enjoyed it.
I wrote this about it: China has many fast comfortable new train services, like this three-hour, 1,200 km service from Wuhan to Guangzhou. At first, the Chinese government opposed railways and the first one was bought by the Chinese government and destroyed. They said railways were western things unsuitable for China. Today, the Chinese government opposes democracy, freedom of speech and human rights. They say these are western things unsuitable for China...
About 400 people watched the video and I got some angry criticism from those who said we are pushing China into democracy too fast.
I am glad that I was not on that train from Wenzhou, the one where 40 people died, 200 were injured, and 200 just disappeared into thin air, or were buried inside the train...
A bottle of spirits called Viagra. I found this for sale in my local convenience store. Could it be that this is a copyright infringement? It may console Pfizer to know that drinkers of this kind of cheap alcohol do not read much English.Wěigē, ( 伟哥 ) meaning big brother is the Chinese name they more easily recognise. You can buy viagra without a prescription in chemists in Shanghai and Shenzhen. But last year before I went back to London, Ia Shanghai friend asked me to bring some Viagra back for him, saying that the local stuff was fake. As chance would have it, I bumped into a black market viagra dealer on my trip to London, but also heard stories that fake Chinese drugs were turning up in public hospitals. So had I bought the black market UK viagra and taken it back in Shanghai, chances are it would have been a re-import. London,England A-bottle-of-spirits-called-Viagra..html April 2nd, 2011
This franken-montage of my head and Ai Weiwei's body was created by a friend who prefers to remain anon. While Ai was in prison, he was kept in a tiny cell with lights on 24 hours a day and two guards glaring at him. This reminded me of room 101 in 1984, by George Orwell. See here http://www.stephen-t.com/The-place-where-there-is-no-darkness.html Hong Kong Franken-montage.html August 16th, 2011
Not a bad meal for just 3 pounds. In austere times, Britons must tighten their belts. The government is cutting expenditure in the middle of a recession, ensuring things will get much worse before they get better Finchely Road, London,England 3-pounds-meal.html July 29th, 2011
Lamma Island is a peaceful, healthy place to live but not from the centre of Hong Kong. It has beaches to swim and hills to climb, and its many paths are almost untouched by motorized transport. The hills provide good views of neighbouring islands and the busy shipping channels around Hong Kong. Woods and bushes cover much of the island and provide shelter to the many reptiles, amphibians and birds who live here. But where is perfect and the locals are busy spoiling the place by building rubbish dumps and toilets at key points. They plan to finish off the beach with an unnecessary concrete road between the ferry and the pier.Even so, there are still lots of places on the island they have not got to yet. London,England Lamma.html August 14th, 2011
This is one of my favorite trees on Lamma Island, the Banyan. The Chinese name is æ¦•æ ‘ róngshù，(Yungshue in Cantonese) and our local village Yongshuwan (Banyan Bay) is named after the tree Lamma Island, Hong Kong Lamma-Tree.html August 14th, 2011
This is where I spent the night of July 13th, 2011. It is reasonably priced and quite clean, and is conveniently located near Marine Drive.
I left India the following day, and tried to gain re-entry on August 9th, but was refused, because according to my double entry visa "There should be a gap between visits of 2 months except for neighbourhood tourism" Mumbai, India YWCA-Mumbai.html August 11th, 2011
Your site is most likely NOT accessible from within mainland China
After checking with greatfirewallofchina.org, I found that my new Travel Photography Blog has already been blocked by the GFW (Great Fire Wall). At first this was puzzling, since the content is similar to the other sites, such as photocol.org and shanghaidiary.org which are all accessible, and all have a kind of basic self censorship built in; blog posts with prettier pictures are shown first to readers with simplified Chinese browser settings. But I had forgotten about the sensitivity of Tibet. The photo of Tibet which I had ranked highly as a photo, and which had Han porters carrying tourists up the mountain on sedan chairs, in a place where Tibetans are not allowed to work, a fact I commented on in the post, was definitely sensitive.
My initial reaction was that perhaps the explanation is that the url may be sensitive because it has the word blog in it. The url may indeed have attracted attention, not only for the blog word but also for the co.uk, because Britain is a country about which China has special historical grievances. These may have attracted attention, but when I looked at the photo, I realised immediately that the main reason for the block was the photo of Han Chinese workers struggling up a hill with with tourists on their backs, and the accusation of racial discrimination towards Tibetans in the text. . Here is the offensive photo Here is the article on the subject in Trends Magazine London,England Your-site-is-most-likely-NOT-accessible-from-within-mainland-China..html August 3rd, 2011
Deng Xiaoping famously declared the greatest ideological u-turn of history by saying that it does not matter if a cat is black or white as long as it can catch mice.As the state got out of peoples lives, the economy started to grow, and the Communist Party was praised for doing nothing. This so-called economic miracle was an accident waiting for the energy of the Chinese people to be unleashed. In the 1980s, the so-called four dragons, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan showed how so-called Confucian work ethic could lead to rapid growth. Of course the biggest benificiaries of the boom were the Communists Party themselves, who control the biggest companies and their profits. The politbureau now resembles a board meeting of a large conglomerate rather than a revolutionary party. Powerful ruling families have interests in industries; the Li family dominates the power sector, Wen Jiabao is strong in the gem sector, Zhu Rongji is big in finance. And in recent years, they have been strengthening their monopolies
This photo was taken on 2011-08-01 at London,England London, England Black-cat-and-white-cat.html July 15th, 2011
Orwell worked here and foresaw the future of China
Ai Weiwei was kept in a tiny cell with the light on 24 hours per day, according to the Washington Post. Why do Chinese dictators behave like caricatures from George Orwell's novel 1984? For those who don't remember, in Orwell's dystopia, undercover police agent-provocateur O'brien tells would-be dissident Winston Smith that they will meet again, 'in the place where there is no darkness'. This turns out to be a harshly lit interrogation cell, rather than a bright post-dictatorship future, where O'brien ruthlessly tortures and brainwashes Smith until he loves Big Brother and dies.
Orwell was a lifelong socialist who had the courage of his convictions; he fought in Spain for Republican Spain's popular front government in 1937 and was wounded there; he described the experience in Homage to Catalonia, including the persecution and murder of 'heretical' communists there (such members of the Trotskyite POUM ) by Stalin's agents. Returning to Britain, in the early 1940s Orwell wrote Animal Farm, an allegory in which the animals unite to overthrow their farmer, and found an animal's republic in which all are equal. However, the revolution degenerates when the pigs make themselves the new farm bosses, claiming that 'all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others'. This was a thinly-disguised parody of Stalinist Russia, then an ally in the war against Nazi Germany.
Orwell felt a deep hatred of Stalin's corrupt revolution and his next and final book was a stronger attack on Stalinist Russia and those countries, like China, which followed the Stalinist model. Orwell wrote it while he was dying of tuberculosis, and called it 1984, an inversion of the year it was written, 1948. The book is probably still the greatest anti-fascist, anti- totalitarian work of literature ever written in the English language. Concepts such as doubtlethink and newspeak were borrowed from it by political scientists. Thoughtcrime and memory hole also entered the language. Orwell died before the IT age, but he foresaw that dictators would use new technology both to spy on people and to spread propaganda and lies. Many features of the dystopia are still clearly recognisable in Communist China, in particular the constant re-writing of history, which is Winston Smith's job at the Ministry of Truth. When Oceania switches sides and declares war on Eurasia, all media references to the past must be rewritten, so that it appears that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
In a recent example of this, Hu Jintao said on July 1st that the Communist Party was founded on this day 90 years ago, when in fact the Party was founded some time afterwards. Some people say that this does not matter, after all it is only a minor revision of history; other revisions such as the one after June 4th 1989 matter more. But Hu's attitude is typical of a party for which changing the past to build the future has become second nature. The CPC is also obsessed with use of language, which it refers to as tifa, especially when referring to the non-nation of Taiwan. Oceania, the Party-state inhabited by Winston Smith, is constantly at war, just as China can not drop it's belligerent attitude to Taiwan, the US and other countries. As Ai Weiwei once said, 'they need an enemy'.
Readers of 1984 today also recognise another feature of Chinese propaganda: statistics are constantly broadcast with positive stories about increasing production. Had he not died in 1949, Orwell would not have been surprised by the Great Leap Forward, when fake statistics of bumper crop yields were used to starve millions to death.
As for doublethink, it simply means the ability to hold contradictory beliefs. Psychologists today refer to it as cognitive dissonance. It is not hard to find examples of it in the arguments of the apologists of dictatorship, including foreign apologists such as Kuhn.
In the 1930s, there were many in Europe who sympathised with Hitler and Mussolini. Hitler had built roads and Mussolini had made the trains run on time, they said. When the Oswald Mosley-led Fascist marched in London, Britain's popular Daily Mail celebrated them with a front page headline: Hoorah for the Blackshirts!
In the political desperation which accompanied the economic depression of the 1930s, many saw salvation in extremism. In Japan, militarism took hold, leading to the invasion of China and ultimately to the conquest of China by the CCP. China's present political system dates to the era of fascism, Nazism and Stalinism, remarkably unmodified.
Let us hope that children born today will not have to wait til 2084 to see a more democratic China, and that dictators everywhere can learn some new lines! London,England The-place-where-there-is-no-darkness.html July 20th, 2011
When Britain sunk the Argentine ship Belgrano in the Falklands war, there were complaints about the needless loss life of five hundred sailors. Critics pointed out that the ship was outside the 200 mile exclusion zone and heading in the opposite direction when attacked. Yet the Sun Newspaper rejoiced in the bloodshed with the famous headline Gotach! 30 years later, Private Eye got it's revenge this month with this front cover, as the Murdochs were compelled to close the gutter rag News of the World with the loss of 200 jobs. They were also dragged through a publicity storm regarding the hacking, improper political influence and paying the police for information by News of the World. London,England Gotcha.html July 31st, 2011
Lack Of non denominational schools in Belsize Park
What option is there for parents who want there children to have a secular education in this part of london? Parents, many of whom are hardly religious themselves, have been fighting to get their children into religious schools lately, whether they be Catholic, Jewish,Islamic etc. Has this led to increasing religious intolerance and conflict in society? London,England Lack-Of-non-denominational-schools-in-Belsize-Park.html July 26th, 2011
A Korean cyclist is hunger striking outside Parliament Square
One year ago I visited Parliament Square in the last hours of the so called Democracy Village, a group of anti-war protesters and other protesters camped opposite the houses of Parliament. Yesterday I returned to see what has happened there in the meantime, and found that the square is still fenced off and out of bounds for the public. It seems the British state has not found a way to release the square for public use and has adopted a dog in a manger attitude. Along edge of the pavement, protesters are still camped on the pavement, just inches from the swirling traffic and constant exhausts fumes. It is in this harsh environment that veteran cyclist Okhwan Yoon has been staging his hunger strike for a month already. His aim is to attract attention to the plight of the 20 million North Koreans trapped for sixty years in what he describes as a prison camp, ie the Democratic People???s Republic of Korea.
A year has passed the eviction of the anti war protesters. Time to look back on the dramatic events of those last hours. The first shots show the square and the large statue of Churchill a few hours before the eviction, the daylight shots are from the morning after.
Chinese article, published in Trends Magazine, in Hong Kong.
Democracy village London,England democracy-village-one-year-after.html July 24th, 2011
As I'm planning a trip to the former Portuguese colony of Goa in India, I was intrigued by this restaurant, just off Tottenham Court Road. I wonder whether they speak Portuguese? London,England Goa-Restaurant-in-london-.html July 23rd, 2011
A classic shot of the author from my year as a Chinese language student in 1984-5.Those days, the whole of China was technically off limits to foreigners, and you would find these signs on the edges of cities. The whole Fujian province was off-limits. We were told we were not allowed to go Tibet, but one we got chatting do we found the local Public Security Bureau more interested in our permit fees. I was twice made to leave places in North West China deemed too poor for a foreigner London,England No-foreigners-allowed-beyond-this-point.html July 22nd, 2011
I have often read about CPC officials fabricating statistics during the Great Leap Forward, and this FT article confirms the practice still goes on. Meanwhie, what the Chinese are saying about the Murdoch scandal? According to this chat room, WenDi Deng, wife of Rupert Murdoch, is a spy. London,England Doubts-about-Chinese-statistics.html July 18th, 2011
On my first day in India, I stayed at the YWCA in downtown Mumbai. Too excited to stay in bed, I got up about 5am and headed down to the waterfront promenade known as Marine Drive, one of Mumbai's hallmarks. It was full of people jogging, strolling, or just sitting and watching the view of the "Queen's knecklace", as it is called; the bright lights which ring the bay. After about half an hour, the lights went out the day had arrived! Mumbai, India Marine-Drive-at-dawn.html July 1st, 2011
I was hanging around Aldgate Station waiting for a friend, after reading the book Street Photography, which features work by a dozen photographers. It inspired me to take some shots of pedestrians with my cellphone. I was impressed by the variety and colours of umbrellas. The British know how to enjoy rainy weather! London, England A-rainy-day-in-London.html July 20th, 2011
A part of the top thirty best sellers (non fiction) in WH Smith at Heathrow Airport. There was not a single book on China. In the quality papers today there were no stories on China, apart from a few in the FT companies section. Why is this? Isn't the rise of China supposed to be a world-shaking event? So why no so little interest? London, England British-are-not-interested-in-China.html July 20th, 2011
This is my first post from Mumbai, India, where I arrived this morning. My timing was bad; three terrorist bombs have gone off in the city tonight, killing several, and spoiling my initial impression of the country.
My initial impression of India was much better than I expected. I have long been warned off India by people who told me tales of gastro-intestinal woes. I imagined Mumbai to be crawling with beggars, snarled with endless traffic jams, grindingly poor.
I arrived just after midnight, and booked a taxi to the YWCA at the airport. There was some rubbish in the streets, but they were not very dirty. There is an elevated flyover being constructed, but as it is not completed, we went the whole route on the ground.
The taxi seemed only and wasn't very comfortable, mainly because the ceiling was rather low, so that I could not see very well. It appeared to be a 1950s model, like most of the taxis in the city. But what it lacked in convenience it made up with antique style, and later on I found this applied to other aspects of life, such as the slightly run down colonial architecture.
The driver spoke little English, and I was slightly worried when he stopped the cab several times and left me setting there. I assumed that he had gone to ask for directions. The drive went on and on, but just when I was starting to worry that he was driving me to a remote place to rob and kill me, he stopped in front of the YWCA. The 350 bill, about five pounds, seemed very reasonable.
After checking in, I was shown to my room by a white suited gentleman who the reception rerered to as 'the boy'. This must be a colonial custom. In any case, this middle aged man politely explained things, most of which I have now forgotten, apart from the tea and coffee room service.
I would have thought the bed some what expensive, as it was in a room to be shared with three others, but since I was the only guest, it seemed fair value. With no aircon, I slept with the fan on.
Waking at five in the morning, I decided to catch the bright lights on Marine Drive before dawn, and caught a taxi there. The taxi driver asked for 200 rupees, about ten times the correct fare, but then dropped to 50, which seemed reasonable. It turned out to be a two minute ride to Marine Drive, which is a long, wide promenade on the sea front popular with joggers and strollers, even at that time of the morning. I took a few photos but then it started to rain, and I decided to go back to the hotel to look for an umbrella. The clerk advised me of a shop which opened at nine, so I had a two hour wait.
In the meantime, I had breakfast at the Y, which was quite tasty and a mixture of east and west; oat meal porridge with milk, eggs and toast, accompanied by veggie samosas, coffee and tea. I also had a look at the papers which were refreshingly free of government propaganda which I have got used to in China. One article which caught my eye was a comparison of several free web mail services; GMAIL came out with the best recommendations and I learned several new GMAIL features in the article. In China, the propaganda department does not allow any positive coverage of gmail at present.
The next few hours are already a blur in my memory as I got rather exhuasted walking around in the rain. Eventually I found an umbrella to purchase and paid 200 rupees, a bit more than I would have paid in China, but it seemed slightly better made than those ones. It was made in India. I think I would be happy to pay a bit more in general for things made in the free world, if it could encourage governments to behave in a more liberal way.
As I wandered around, I passed the Modern Art Museum several times, and eventually I found it open, and had a quick look. It was a bit disappointing, with somewhat derivative works on the whole. Probably the best aspect was the building itself, with seemingly endless staircases leading to a large circular hall under drum-like roof which echoed as I walked round.
After this I needed a rest, so I checked back into the Y, and slept for a couple of hours. When I woke, it was after three and the rain had finally stopped. I took a taxi to CST, the main railway station, expecting to feel inspired about visiting the rest of India. After wandering around and taking a few snaps, I was approached by a woman named Sandy, who offered to be my guide for the rest of the afternoon. She took me to a Jain Temple, a bookshop, the so called hanging gardens and other tourist sights. These were all interesting, and she herself was good to talk to. She seemed to be quite a feminist, and critical of the attitude of Indian men to girls. She said that they prefer to abort female fetuses to such an extent that the ratio of girls to boys is 900-1300. She said husbands beat their wives if they give birth to girls. When I got back to the hotel, I had supper and asked the clerk where to go to enjoy the evening. Better stay in the hotel he advised, since there have been terrorist bombs going off in the city...
This news spoiled my impressions of Mumbai. Up until then I was surprised by how safe the city felt. Even so, I still have a positive impression of India than China. India is not so much poorer than China, and I would prefer to take my chances with the occasional terrorist bomb than live in daily fear of a dictatorial government. Mumbai, India India-vs.-China.html July 13th, 2011
This 2009 documentary by Peng Xiaolian and Louisa Wei tells the story of Mao's 1955 anti-Hu Feng campaign, when he attacked, persecuted and imprisoned a group of leftist writers who had written for the July 1 and Hope magazines in the 30s and 40s.Peng's father Peng Boshan was imprisoned until the Cultural Revolution, when he was beaten to death by Maoist "Rebel Faction" members.
In order to gain the allegiance of Chinese intellectuals before seizing power ,Mao Zedong praised the leading leftist intellectual Lu Xun in the 1930s. But after taking power, when Mao was locking up Lu Xun's friends and colleagues, Mao remarked that if Lu was not dead, he would have to either shut up or be thrown in jail as well.
Hu Feng inherited the leadership of the leftist intellectuals after Lu's death and was a fervent supporter of the Chinese Communist Party. But he was also a writer and unable to except that art should be totally subjugated to Mao's politics.
The director describes the campaign as the practice run for the Anti-Rightist and Cultural Revolution campaigns. She interviews the survivors and their children, who tell interesting and often moving stories. The son of one writer cries when he describes how, when his father was dying in prison during the Cultural Revolution, he felt unable to visit his father, for fear of retribution, or even to accept his father's personal belongings, when offered by the police. Another man describes how when he returned home after 20 years in prison did not recognise his mother; he complains that he received no compensation or backpay for the 25 years of lost employment, even though the Public Security officials who were reinstated after the Cultural Revolution were reimbursed.
Hu Feng could never believe that Mao had turned on him. He thought that Mao had been misled by others. Hu Feng and others wrote a long document to explain their views and presented it directly to the politburo. Mao had it published and used as evidence to incriminate the authors. In order to gain the allegiance of Chinese intellectuals before seizing power, Mao Zedong praised the leading leftist intellectual Lu Xun in the 1930s. But after taking power, when Mao was locking up Lu Xun's friends and colleagues, Mao remarked that if Lu was not dead, would have to either shut up or be thrown in jail as well.
Hu Feng inherited the leadership of the leftist intellectuals after Lu's death and was a fervent supporter of the Chinese Communist Party. But he was also a writer and unable to except that art should be totally subjugated to Mao's politics.
The director describes the campaign as the practice run for the Anti-Rightist and Cultural Revolution campaigns. She interviews the survivors and their children, until interesting and often moving stories. The son of one writer cries when he describes how, when his father was dying in prison during the Cultural Revolution, he felt unable to visit his father, for fear of retribution, or even to accept his father's personal belongings, when offered by the police. Another man describes how he returned home after 20 years in prison did not recognise his mother; complains that he received no compensation or backpay for the 25 years of lost employment, even though the Public Security officials who were reinstated after the Cultural Revolution were reimbursed.
Hu Feng could never believe that Mao had turned on him. He thought that Mao had been misled by others. Hu Feng and others wrote a long document to explain their views and presented directly to the politburo. Mao had it published and used as evidence to incriminate the authors. Hong Kong,China Storm-under-the-Sun.html July 5th, 2011
There is a famous Chinese expression; renshan, renhai; 人山人海 it means people mountain, people sea, or in other words; a lot of people!
I remember when swimming in the lake at Dingshan new Shanghai in the 1980s being struck how people used to take inflated inner car ties in to the water. These days you can buy an inflatable rubber ring for just 10 yuan. But I couldn't help thinking, after the government spent 44 billion on the Olympic Games, and beat the United States in the gold-medal tally, many Chinese still don't know how to swim. Perhaps the money would have been better spent on encouraging sport at the grass roots. Which reminds me about the Chinese national soccer team which didn't get a single goal in its last World Cup appearance in 2002...
When I first went to China in the 1980s China had 300 million less people but it felt more crowded. The buses were so crowded then that you couldn't get off unless you started manoeuvring yourself three stops in advance. Housing is also far less overcrowded these days; after the recent housing boom the average floor space per Chinese citizen has doubled to over 30 m?! In those days long queues and shortages of everything were the norm. This scene at the beach the other day reminded me of those times. The water was literally so full it felt more like a swimming pool than the sea. A part of the beach was also cordoned off for use by boats, and speedboats aggressively circling this territory to stop swimmers encroaching which they nevertheless did. .
On birth control in China, it was only after I had talked to people who told me directly about forced late term abortions and I began to believe it... Hong Kong,China People-Mountain-People-Sea.html July 7th, 2011
In Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway stations, you can often see air pollution warnings like this one. On the other hand, in China the government tries not to publicise the subject. They even went to the extent of forcing the World Bank to censor a report which links lung cancer deaths with local air pollution statistics.some information does slip out; last December when the air pollution index in China touched 300, a local newspaper reported that the government was advising people to avoid going outdoors. The WHO maximum safe limit is 20. Hong Kong,China Hong-Kong-air-pollution-warning.html July 7th, 2011
On the July 1st 2011, the 90th celebratory day for othe anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party, the China daily published this articlea bout the history of the Chinese Communist Party.This illustration shows the general theme of article; I happy march through the decades, as though the history of the Communist Party was one of continuous progress rather than a series of abrupt U-turns. The tragic anti-rightist campaign is not mentioned, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution are skipped over Hong Kong,China The-happy-march-towards-communism.html July 7th, 2011
I have read on the Internet about the popularity of Ossam Bin Laden in China, but yesterday I found a bit more anecdotal evidence; these copies of Chinese ID cards with Bin Ladens photo were being sold on the street. According to the vendor, idea is to peel off the sticky backing and stick it on the back of your travel card. Or, she said, stick it on the back of your cash point card. Either way, you will have the pleasure of imagining that you are a Chinese Bin Laden every time you swipe your card - and all for just 2 yuan. Hong Kong,China Stick-Bin-Laden-on-the-back-of-your-travel-card.html July 7th, 2011
