The Uyghur...
I'm assuming most people reading this blog by now have heard about the Uyghur "uprising" in Xinjiang (China). I've been following the news, and can't say that I'm really surprised by what's happening. For the past couple years I've referred to Xinjiang as the lesser-known version of Tibet (except the Uyghur are Muslim, not Buddhist), perhaps lesser-knwon due in part to the fact that the Uyghur don't have a popular equivalent of the Dalai Lama (though Rebiya Kadeer may play a similar role).
It's been interesting to follow the news, especially after Sweden kicked out a Chinese ambassador a few weeks back following the arrest of a Chinese-Uyghur spy.
In any case, there is an interesting letter posted at The New Dominion by a tourist who happened to be in Kashgar, and thus had a different allowance in what they were able to see compared to foreign journalists. Here's an excerpt from the letter:

The next day martial law came. The Uyghurs gathered in the Id Kah Mosque to protest the arrests, as well as the destruction of their city, etc. I was pretty close to the Id Kah Mosque. I heard the loud sounds, the screams, and honestly, the screams of people in great physical suffering. There was a stampede, and I knocked over a bunch of watermelons but got back to the hotel (the merchant didn’t hold it against me). The army marched in and all the Uyghur shops in the city were told that they would close for three days (the Chinese of the city were either leaving or behind locked doors). All the mosques were closed and the Uyghurs were clearly scared. Trucks with loudspeakers circled around the Old City, proclaiming: “Always listen to the Communist Party. Hate separation.” The Chinese news interviewed Uyghur women who happily said things like “Xinjiang has always been part of China for 2000 years. Uyghurs are Chinese, one of 55 minority groups. We hate independence and love the motherland.”
The police were just kind of amazed I was there, which is probably why they didn’t make me leave. One happily asked me if I had been to Shanghai yet. God. I asked a police officer what he thought of the situation, and he was optimistic, said that everything was going to be fine. He concluded by saying, “You know, in the next ten years, we’ll just send more Han here and that’ll just end the problem once and for all.”
Kashgar was amazing, and I’m glad I went. I wouldn’t tell anyone else to go to Kashgar in the future though, because I know that the Old City is going to be gone before next Christmas. Uyghur culture and Uyghur language are beautiful to hear and study, as all things become as they slowly disappear.

June 4...
Today is the 20th anniversary of the crackdown on the Tiananmen protests in the Spring of 1989.
It's an issue not widely discussed in China, and heavily suppressed by the government. Just before the anniversary this year, the government sent dissidents to the countryside, or stopped them from leaving their houses. Foreign journalists were forbidden from filming in Tiananmen square, plainclothes police threatened them in the streets around the square, and any foreign media coverage of the event is blacked out within China. There seems to be a new technique aimed at foreign journalists, which is rather clever. When undercover agents with earpieces see a foreign journalist's camera they walk in front of it and open umbrellas! There's a great video on the BBC (which often gets blocked in China). It's also interesting to read through comments left on stories about the Tiananmen Square massacre (most of the killing didn't actually happen in the Square, but in the streets around the Square). There's one comment that remarks how politely he was treated by the police for doing something that everyone knows is illegal in China (journalism?), and that he would've "being battened and ending up dead" in the UK for the same thing.
Of course some things in China have improved in the past 20 years -general education, the economy, and general access to the outside world. But there is still a lot to be improved, and it's a slow process for a country of 1.3 billion people. And it's slow from a government that has successfully quashed political interest in most of its citizens by promoting economics over other freedoms. Here's an interesting Economist article on the topic of The Party.

Study...
Second year final exams are rolling around. It's hard to concentrate when the summer is more or less here (it's 17 and cloudy today, but tomorrow is supposed to be 30C with sun). Although I've written one exam, I've got two more left before I start work for the summer.
One thing that keeps going through my mind is "You must convince yourself, study study day day up". There's a famous Mao saying in Chinese that goes 好好学习天天向上 (hao3hao3 xue2xi tian1tian1 xiang4shang4), which means "good good study, day day up", or study more and more every day. It's something that my students in China often quoted. And now I'm trying to tell myself that to keep studying through exams.
(Image courtesy of artwork.com.cn, which has a lot of old Communist posters)

Happy New Year! 新年快乐！

Winter Treats...
There are, from time to time, things that I miss about China. One of them is the winter treats that are found everywhere, called "tang2 hu2lu2" (糖葫芦).
These are little crab apple type things, that are usually stuffed with some sort of bean paste (red, green, or black), then covered with melted sugar. They're crunchy and chewy, sweet and a bit bitter. Plus they cost only a yuan or two ($0.15 to $0.30) for a whole stick of them.

Thanks to "A Modern Lei Feng" for the photo, since I can't seem to find my China photos at the moment.

Try the Great Chinese FireWall at Home Now!
I found this on the China Law Blog and Sinosplice. There's a new Firefox add-on that allows users to experience what it's like to surf the web in China. I haven't tried it myself, having lived in China a year and experienced the frustration first hand.
Apparently the web situation is better now (apart from spying on Skype users, etc.) and it's possible to access parts of Wikipedia and more blogs from within China than it was a few years ago.
From the add-on description:

The Firefox add-on China Channel offers internet users outside of China the ability to surf the web as if they were inside mainland China. Take an unforgetable virtual trip to China and experience the technical expertise of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (supported by western companies). It's open source, free and easy.

"Religious Freedom"...
China likes to tell people that they promote religious freedom within their country. For example, it was thought that putting Bibles into Beijing hotel rooms during the Olympics would help promote the idea that China is tolerant of religion (China Daily: Hotels told to stock Bibles for Olympic visitors).
It's currently the month of Ramadan, when Muslims around the world fast as an expression of their faith and religion. Except in China, where Uyghur Muslims in government buildings are being offered free lunches during the month of Ramadan, restaurants are being forced to stay open, Uyghur government officials forced to sign "letters of responsibility" to not fast or pray, and special groups to "educate" Muslims against fasting have been set up.

Free Press...
Due to the Olympic Games, China has promised that reporters would have free access to the internet. They've promised this for several years, and made the promise again only a few days before the Olympics start.
Never mind though, they still block internet access for reporters to scary sites like Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, dissidents, human rights, and pro-T1bet@n groups. Part of this is explained in that the officials are just following Chinese law forbidding access to such sites.
Reuters video (in English)
Read the full story (in French)
And also here (in French)

Cheaper if you´re Chinese...
Yesterday I went into a little corner store that happened to be run by a Chinese man. About half the items had no price tags or labels, so I picked up a box of crackers and asked the man in Mandarin:
Me: How much is this?
Him: Huh? (a bit of shock)
Me: How much is this? (still in Mandarin)
Him: Uh, 2.70. (€)
Me: Hmmmm (thinking it´s a bit expensive)
Him: Less expensive, I´ll give 2.40.
Me: OK.
So that´s 30 cents that I´ve saved by taking Mandarin class!

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.

Beijing's Blue Sky...
I just read an interesting blog post on SexyBeijing about Beijing's blue skies.
We keep hearing about how China is doing great things to improve the levels of pollution in Beijing in time for the Olympics, and how the air quality has dramatically improved since 1998. Turns out that, according to the Wall Street Journal, the government has simply moved the pollution monitoring stations to less polluted areas! Two stations in polluted and traffic dense parts of the city were removed and three stations were added in less polluted areas, to give a better (i.e. lower) pollution average. According to Peking University professors, cited in the same article, the pollution in Beijing caused 25,000 deaths in 2002 alone.

T1bet...
There's been a lot of coverage of the events happening in T1bet at the moment. I don't feel that I can contribute anything significant, especially since I wasn't able to make it there myself before leaving China. Instead, I thought I'd give links to some sites that I've found interesting in the past few days.

T1bet Through Chinese Eyes
An article about the "Chinese development missionaries" and how they view the situation in T1bet, and how T1betans view them.

Foreign nations voice support for China's handling of Lh@sa riot
Official Chinese newspaper touts support from Mauritania, Vietnam, Lesotho, and other foreign governments, regarding their good handling of the current situation.

More musings on T1bet propaganda drive
An article by an expat in China focusing on the Chinese governments propaganda and "thought liberation" drive withing the country. Includes an interesting quote by a internationally educated Chinese marketing manager, “I know the government cuts all the negative information and we can not see the true story. But it has to do this. Most Chinese are poor and not well educated. They are not capable of independent thought or making their own judgements. They need to be guided by the government.”

T1bet crushes conspiracies by D@lai L@ma clique
According to this article, T1bet has been working hard to crush conspiracies by the D@lai clique over the past five years.

China's tough line in T1bet...
An International Herald Tribune article including the quote "The Communist Party is like the parent to the Tibetan people, and it is always considerate about what the children need," Zhang said last year. He later added: "The Central Party Committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans."

Hu on Time list of 'influentials'
One of my favourite articles from when I was in China. "Hu [Jintao, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, and former Communist Party Chief in the TAR] explains plans for a 'peaceful rise' in seeking a benign external environment". "Hu's vision has been to build a 'harmonious society'".
Hopefully Hu Jintao can maintain a "Harmonious Society" through the use of tanks, troops, and the chasing of monks. (OK, that comment was a little biased.)

At Shuttered Gateway to T1bet...
A look at the situation, by the New York Times, from Chengdu, Sichuan Province, one of the main gateways into T1bet. There's a short video that accompanying the article. It's interesting that the article mentions Wuhousi and the T1betan area surrounding the temple, which I visited just over a year ago.

Canada T1bet Committee
A group representing T1betans in Canada.

The New Colonialists
An Economist article about China and their need for raw resources, and how it affects their policy.

Censorship and Privacy...
I was reminded of a post that I wrote a while back this week during my Torts class when we were talking about the alleged tort of Invasion of Privacy (it's recognised in some jurisdictions under Common Law). I didn't want to post this until after I left China for obvious reasons, so here's the post more or less in its entirety.
It's well known around the world that China has a lot of censorship in many areas and it's been evident living here. It's been rated in the bottom 10 countries for censorship. Even this blog is blocked from time to time by the Great Firewall of China. There seem to be two types of blocks in China -soft blocks and hard blocks. Soft blocks are easy enough to get around using an anonymous proxy (i.e. to read my blog when it's blocked), but hard blocks are pretty much impossible to get around.
Starting off with personal anecdotes, I have friends and have met travellers who have had their Lonely Planet China guides confiscated at overland border crossings, but not when entering by air, with the excuse from the border guards that the books are "wrong". They have a map of China which doesn't include a certain highly-disputed island/province. You can't buy Lonely Planet China in bookstores that sell LP for every other country, but there are a few places in Beijing with secret imports.
A friend of mine was entering the country overland from Vietnam when the border
guards went through her bag. They of course removed her LP China, but also a history book she had about China. When asked why they confiscated it, the border guard said "it contains 'wrong' history" and that "maybe [she] should buy a book with 'correct' history at the government controlled XinHua Bookstore". The real reason for confiscation? The book had a photo of a man in front of a tank from a certain 'incident' in 1989.
I've been reading an interesting blog lately called Truth About China, which has as itstagline "Truth About China, for people who want the truth". They recently ran a story about a French website blocked for warning of risks of investing in China. A section of the report that gets the site hard blocked in China is:

"The Middle Kingdom has managed to divert international investments for its benefit, obtain technologies without anything in return other that the promises arising from our own imagination, gag its dissidents - including those abroad - and ensnare the west in its golden clutches (...) Perhaps it is time to realise this before we are closed in the Chinese trap for good"

Supposedly you can read the whole story, but it's hard blocked in China.
Another example is Google.cn, the site that you get redirected to after typing Google.com within China. Massive amounts of information are directly censored, and some of the sites listed end up being blocked anyway. For example, even though Wikipedia.org comes up in some searches, it's always blocked (some pages about China are hard blocked, the rest is soft blocked). A funny joke I found referring to Wikipedia and China goes like this:

Question: What do you call a cooperative community of individuals, each granted use of the means of production, working as equals not for profit but to produce something that is collectively owned by all?
Answer: A threat to Communism.

The perfect example though is in the image section of Google. Go to
Google.com and type in Tiananmen Square. What's the image that appears? Now check out Google.cn's versions of Tiananmen Square. At the time of writing this there are apparently only a few photos of Tian'anmen Square on the internet, showing photos of happy soldiers, ethnic minorities, and tourists.
There was an interesting article on Yahoo!news not too long ago about blogging in China, and how it scares the Central Government. They're worried in part because "blogging is a disruptive technology that helps open up people's minds". I keep reading that in the near future China will make it necessary forbloggers to register with their real ID before they can post.
All in all though, things are much better than they were just a few years ago. Here are a few more links in case you're interested:
Danwei on Television censorship in China
Business Week: The Great Firewall of China (2006)
CNN: Tech execs get grilled over China business (2006)
CBS: China's Internet Censorship (2002)

Problems With Chinese Goods...
In the news recently we've been hearing a lot about problems with imports coming from China. Things like lead in paint on children's toys, toxic fillers in dog food, potentially toxic toothpaste, and more. And these are just a few of the things that we've actually heard about! Of course, China rejects the FDA claims that the toothpaste had problems, but that's China for you. Even the Taipei Times has criticized the Chinese media coverage of these scares saying

"This common story line of a US-driven plot to discredit China and Chinese products has run into difficulty, however, as Japan, the EU, certain Southeast Asian countries and even Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory, have all announced tightened controls or stricter inspections of Chinese consumables".

I can't pretend that all this surprises me. While in China I heard about cheap lead put into meat to make it weigh more, therefore charging the client more money. Officials in South Korea even found 500 pounds of lead in blowfish imported from China in one week in 2000! Luckily though the U.S. is starting to put some pressure on China to clean up its act, and hopefully China will. After all, they don't want to damage their image too much before the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing which they are incredibly proud of, as was seen by the quick arrest and deportation of two protesting Canadians last week on the Great Wall.
More links to "The China Syndrome" from MSN Money, talking about pollution in China, Chinese Wal-Mart, and problems with China's super-heated economy. They've got an interesting article talking about how the levels of pollution actually negate all the growth the country claims.

Stolen Mail...
One thing that annoyed me at the school where I was working in China (Number 17 Foreign Languages Middle School in Baoding, Hebei) was the amount of my mail that was stolen. I know that it wasn't ChinaPost that lost the mail because everything I mailed home or to friends, from postcards to letters to big parcels, arrived with no problem and more or less on time. Instead, the problem had to be at the school where I was working because friends at other schools didn't have problems either.
While in China I knew there was a problem with my mail, and figured that up to half of it had 'gone missing', but when I got home I realised that it was well over 50% of my mail that was stolen at or by the school. Postcards from grandparents and friends, letters from people in various countries, and even a number of parcels from my parents. It's not that the letters were addressed incorrectly either, because I don't think that my parents would write the address correctly one time then incorrectly the next time. And they knew the letters were for me, being the only foreigner at the school for 6 months. One friend even wrote "laowai" (foreigner) in Chinese characters just to make sure.
I don't know who has my mail, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a combination of people including my students. On Christmas Day I was lucky enough to catch one student with a package wrapped in Christmas paper, from my parents, walking into the dorms and almost up the stairs. I just happened to be leaving my room and in the hall as he saw me and said, "oh, this is for you." Suspicious?
Of course I mentioned this to the school, who effectively did nothing because my mail still went 'missing'.
So if you mailed me something while I was in China and I never thanked you or replied, you now know why. It was stolen.

One Year to Go...
There's only one year left until the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, PRChina. There was an excellent article on yahoo.ca entitled "Beijing's yearlong party begins as Olympic countdown clocks reach 1-year mark " which is worth the 2 minutes to read. It's fairly well-rounded, especially after all the Chinese propaganda I read while living in China about the 2008 Games.
The article highlights the Chinese excitement for the games, noting a speech by Wu Bangguo "laden with communist jargon such as 'Deng Xiaoping theory' and the building of a 'harmonious society'."
It also mentioned a few of the difficulties China will have. Some of these difficulties were noted by Jacques Rogge, head of the International Olympic Committee, who "said the dirty air in Beijing might force some events to be postponed". That can't be good.



A beautiful, sunny summer day at Houhai in Beijing!



But the Communist party is making things better by moving polluting factories away from Beijing and closing some down for up to 3 months before the Games. They will also force up to 1/3 of Beijing cars off the roads during the Olympics, as they did during the African Leader's Summit in the Autumn of 2006. They're also hoping to help the pollution situation by "control[ing] the weather. Meteorologists began tests last month, firing rockets to disperse rain clouds - a move to guarantee sunshine. They've also fired rockets containing sticks of silver iodide to induce rain to clean the air." [More about Chinese controling the weather!]
Other difficulties faced are "old habits, such as spitting in public, jumping ahead in line and littering", all of which are being addressed by special committees to improve Chinese behaviour. I can attest to the bad behaviour -I don't know how many times I was spit on, shoved out of the way, or had someone literally point right in my face and shout "LAOWAI!" But on the positive side, Rogge says "preparations for Beijing 2008 are truly impressive in every regard."

Pigeons...
When I lived in China I noticed that Chinese parks are conspicuously pigeon-free. At first I thought maybe they just didn't have pigeons, but then I found out from a Chinese friend that the pigeons have learned not to land in parks. If they do, there's a high probability they'll be caught and eaten.

Random (Laowaiing) Conversation...
This one happened during the May holiday at the Summer Palace in Beijing. Walking along a little boy points his grubby finger into my face (no more than 5cm away) and shouts at the top of his lungs:
Grubby: LAOOOOOWAIIIIII! (Foreigner)
LaoWai: (Pointing back in his face) ZhongGuo Reeen! (Chinese person)
Family: hahahahaha
Yup, I had a Chinese moment by pointing my finger and shouting in a little kids face. At least I didn't make that hoarking noise followed by a big spit wad.
But his family really seemed to enjoy the speaking foreigner. Haha. Ain't that funny?

Banned, again...
It seems that blogspot.com blogs are blocked again in China (or maybe it's just my school?). I'm curious to see how long it lasts this time.
Long live the Great Firewall of China!

Ups and Downs...
Everything has it's ups and downs. I was rather down in the dumps when I got back from my holiday, but things are looking up now. I've only got 7 weeks left before I can travel around China a bit more. This weekend we're hoping to make it out to some local old emperor's tombs, and have a picnic in the park. My class today went really well and the students were surprisingly enthusiastic about it, though that might have been in part that I had a foreign friend sitting in the back watching. I had a great dinner with some friends at a little place outside on the sidewalk, and the flowers are blooming!
I know I tend to go up and down, but the light is at the end of the tunnel and I'm looking forward to making the most of my dwindling time here in China.