April 19, 2008

Two Good Analyses...
There have been a lot of things going on around China, the Olympics, and Carrefour (a French grocery store, with branches in China).

There has been a wave of anti-French SMS messages going around China, trying to mobilize a mass boycott of Carrefour for 17 days in May for its supposed links to the Dala1 L@ma 'clique'. It's almost too much to believe, except that I lived in China for a year. More of the story is on Lost Laowai, including a translation of the latest SMS messages going around, and what the original platform/reasoning is. A few paragraphs from it include:
法国政府准备拿出两千万美金,家乐福自己再拿出五百万美金,用于五一降价促销,听说家乐福高层很狂妄,让中国人在五一降价中挤破家。
The French government has prepared 20 mil and Carrefour has prepared 5 mil to use for a May Holiday sale. The owner of Carrefour is very arrogant, believing Chinese people during May Holiday will buy excessively at Carrefour.
[...]
我们的努力可能微不足道,但大家团结起来一定要让外国人看看我们的力量,有良心的中国人转发一百个朋友,爱国的中国人转发二十个朋友。
Our individual efforts maybe mean nothing, but if everyone unites, we can show foreigners our power. If you are a Chinese person of conscience, you’ll send this message to 100 friends, if you are a Chinese person who loves your country, send this message to 20 friends.

Continuing, there is a girl named Grace Wang who was severely criticised for being a Chinese student in the US and for having her own thoughts about the T1bet issue. She has been called "Most hideous Chinese student abroad" by CCTV (Chinese government media), "race traitor" and comments much worse that I won't repeat, on Chinese web forums. Her parents have gone into hiding, and she has had human feces dumped at her door. Danwei has a good summary of the situation, and The Humanaught has a good analysis of her views and the Chinese media/government/people's views.

April 15, 2008

Exams...
It's that time once again -exam time... I've just written my first exam, contracts, and I've got four left until it's the summer and I'm off to Europe and Morocco!
Anyway, back to the books.