T-Salon

A couple of people I know have been writing and talking about earthquake relief and reconstruction efforts by ordinary people and local non-profit groups that are taking place at the forefront of the earthquake epic center in Sichuan - the actions they are taking and the challenges they faced.

This is among the many news that I read, translated into English as follows, from Hengge, Blogbus CEO, who had been planning to make donations to fund the construction of primary schools in Sichuan province prior to the earthquake. He has the latest news from volunteers and friends in the media sector who are at the front-line.

"Since the earthquake on May 12th, we did not make direct any donations to official organizations such as Red Cross and etc. But made in-kind donations through social channels, and wired money directly to local volunteers that are on-site to procure materials for the relief effort. Up until now, work in the disaster zone has progressed gradually from relief to post-disaster construction. As such, Sichuan
has become the top consideration for funding of primary school construction.

News from the volunteers and friends in the media sector: people who support relief efforts had already left the scene. Medical services, children and residents have been resettled. Currently children are getting ready to go back to school. Disaster zone has been sealed off due to weather and other reasons. As for making donations to rebuild schools, there are still a lot of uncertainties: there are some sayings that one cannot donate as they see fit. The government might centralize construction standards, etc. Presently the cost of funding primary school construction has increased tremendously compared to the past. It remains unknown whether there would be limitations on the "quality of capital"; and centralized coordination as well as
management. At any rate, better go there to understand the situation before making any decisions."

Labels: China, Civil Society, CSR, earthquake, non-profit, reconstruction, relief, sichuan, translations

A video put together by Michael Zhou who begs for 9 minutes of your attention. If, for any reasons, you do not have 9 minutes to spare for this, at least jump right to final 2 minutes of the video to see the thought provocative questions that Michael had.

Labels: China, disaster, earthquake, sichuan

New York Times: "an unexpected mobilization, prompted partly by unusually vigorous and dramatic coverage of the disaster in the state-run news media, has come from outside official channels. Thousands of Chinese have streamed into the quake region or donated record sums of money in a striking and unscripted public response."

Labels: China, Civil Society

It's sad to hear what had happened to Grace Wang (王千源), a Chinese freshmen student at Duke University, when she tried to forge a dialog between two groups in a very polarized debate on China's sovereignty over Tibet - she became the public enemy back in her home country; and her parents in China had received death threats and are now in hiding.

In an op-ed piece in today's Washington Post, Grace Wang provided a detailed account of what had happened during and after her attempt to mediate the protests on campus. While it's sad to hear about her experience, it's moving to hear about her aspirations and her parents' support.

Caught in the Middle, Called a Traitor

By Grace Wang
Sunday, April 20, 2008; B01

I study languages -- Italian, French and German. And this summer -- now that it looks as though I won't be able to go home to China -- I'll take up Arabic. My goal is to master 10 languages, in addition to Chinese and English, by the time I'm 30.

I want to do this because I believe that language is the bridge to understanding. Take China and Tibet. If more Chinese learned the Tibetan language, and if Tibetans learned more about China, I'm convinced that our two peoples would understand one another better and we could overcome the current crisis between us peacefully. I feel that even more strongly after what happened here at Duke University a little more than a week ago.

Trying to mediate between Chinese and pro-Tibetan campus protesters, I was caught in the middle and vilified and threatened by the Chinese. After the protest, the intimidation continued online, and I began receiving threatening phone calls. Then it got worse -- my parents in China were also threatened and forced to go into hiding. And I became persona non grata in my native country.

It has been a frightening and unsettling experience. But I'm determined to speak out, even in the face of threats and abuse. If I stay silent, then the same thing will happen to someone else someday.

So here's my story.

When I first arrived at Duke last August, I was afraid I wouldn't like it. It's in the small town of Durham, N.C., and I'm from Qingdao, a city of 4.3 million. But I eventually adjusted, and now I really love it. It's a diverse environment, with people from all over the world. Over Christmas break, all the American students went home, but that's too expensive for students from China. Since the dorms and the dining halls were closed, I was housed off-campus with four Tibetan classmates for more than three weeks.

I had never really met or talked to a Tibetan before, even though we're from the same country. Every day we cooked together, ate together, played chess and cards. And of course, we talked about our different experiences growing up on opposite sides of the People's Republic of China. It was eye-opening for me.

I'd long been interested in Tibet and had a romantic vision of the Land of Snows, but I'd never been there. Now I learned that the Tibetans have a different way of seeing the world. My classmates were Buddhist and had a strong faith, which inspired me to reflect on my own views about the meaning of life. I had been a materialist, as all Chinese are taught to be, but now I could see that there's something more, that there's a spiritual side to life.

We talked a lot in those three weeks, and of course we spoke in Chinese. The Tibetan language isn't the language of instruction in the better secondary schools there and is in danger of disappearing. Tibetans must be educated in Mandarin Chinese to succeed in our extremely capitalistic culture. This made me sad, and made me want to learn their language as they had learned mine.

I was reminded of all this on the evening of April 9. As I left the cafeteria planning to head to the library to study, I saw people holding Tibetan and Chinese flags facing each other in the middle of the quad. I hadn't heard anything about a protest, so I was curious and went to have a look. I knew people in both groups, and I went back and forth between them, asking their views. It seemed silly to me that they were standing apart, not talking to each other. I know that this is often due to a language barrier, as many Chinese here are scientists and engineers and aren't confident of their English.

I thought I'd try to get the two groups together and initiate some dialogue, try to get everybody thinking from a broader perspective. That's what Lao Tzu, Sun Tzu and Confucius remind us to do. And I'd learned from my dad early on that disagreement is nothing to be afraid of. Unfortunately, there's a strong Chinese view nowadays that critical thinking and dissidence create problems, so everyone should just keep quiet and maintain harmony.

A lot has been made of the fact that I wrote the words "Free Tibet" on the back of the American organizer of the protest, who was someone I knew. But I did this at his request, and only after making him promise that he would talk to the Chinese group. I never dreamed how the Chinese would seize on this innocent action. The leaders of the two groups did at one point try to communicate, but the attempt wasn't very successful.

The Chinese protesters thought that, being Chinese, I should be on their side. The participants on the Tibet side were mostly Americans, who really don't have a good understanding of how complex the situation is. Truthfully, both sides were being quite closed-minded and refusing to consider the other's perspective. I thought I could help try to turn a shouting match into an exchange of ideas. So I stood in the middle and urged both sides to come together in peace and mutual respect. I believe that they have a lot in common and many more similarities than differences.

But the Chinese protesters -- who were much more numerous, maybe 100 or more -- got increasingly emotional and vocal and wouldn't let the other side speak. They pushed the small Tibetan group of just a dozen or so up against the Duke Chapel doors, yelling "Liars, liars, liars!" This upset me. It was so aggressive, and all Chinese know the moral injunction: Junzi dongkou, bu dongshou (The wise person uses his tongue, not his fists).

I was scared. But I believed that I had to try to promote mutual understanding. I went back and forth between the two groups, mostly talking to the Chinese in our language. I kept urging everyone to calm down, but it only seemed to make them angrier. Some young men in the Chinese group -- those we call fen qing (angry youth) -- started yelling and cursing at me.

What a lot of people don't know is that there were many on the Chinese side who supported me and were saying, "Let her talk." But they were drowned out by the loud minority who had really lost their cool.

Some people on the Chinese side started to insult me for speaking English and told me to speak Chinese only. But the Americans didn't understand Chinese. It's strange to me that some Chinese seem to feel as though not speaking English is expressing a kind of national pride. But language is a tool, a way of thinking and communicating.

At the height of the protest, a group of Chinese men surrounded me, pointed at me and, referring to the young woman who led the 1989 student democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, said, "Remember Chai Ling? All Chinese want to burn her in oil, and you look like her." They said that I had mental problems and that I would go to hell. They asked me where I was from and what school I had attended. I told them. I had nothing to hide. But then it started to feel as though an angry mob was about to attack me. Finally, I left the protest with a police escort.

Back in my dorm room, I logged onto the Duke Chinese Students and Scholars Association (DCSSA) Web site and listserv to see what people were saying. Qian Fangzhou, an officer of DCSSA, was gloating, "We really showed them our colors!"

I posted a letter in response, explaining that I don't support Tibetan independence, as some accused me of, but that I do support Tibetan freedom, as well as Chinese freedom. All people should be free and have their basic rights protected, just as the Chinese constitution says. I hoped that the letter would spark some substantive discussion. But people just criticized and ridiculed me more.

The next morning, a storm was raging online. Photographs of me had been posted on the Internet with the words "Traitor to her country!" printed across my forehead. Then I saw something really alarming: Both my parents' citizen ID numbers had been posted. I was shocked, because this information could only have come from the Chinese police.

I saw detailed directions to my parents' home in China, accompanied by calls for people to go there and teach "this shameless dog" a lesson. It was then that I realized how serious this had become. My phone rang with callers making threats against my life. It was ironic: What I had tried so hard to prevent was precisely what had come to pass. And I was the target.

I talked to my mom the next morning, and she said that she and my dad were going into hiding because they were getting death threats, too. She told me that I shouldn't call them. Since then, short e-mail messages have been our only communication. The other day, I saw photos of our apartment online; a bucket of feces had been emptied on the doorstep. More recently I've heard that the windows have been smashed and obscene posters have been hung on the door. Also, I've been told that after convening an assembly to condemn me, my high school revoked my diploma and has reinforced patriotic education.

I understand why people are so emotional and angry; the events in Tibet have been tragic. But this crucifying of me is unacceptable. I believe that individual Chinese know this. It's when they fire each other up and act like a mob that things get so dangerous.

Now, Duke is providing me with police protection, and the attacks in Chinese cyberspace continue. But contrary to my detractors' expectations, I haven't shriveled up and slunk away. Instead, I've responded by publicizing this shameful incident, both to protect my parents and to get people to reflect on their behavior. I'm no longer afraid, and I'm determined to exercise my right to free speech.

Because language is the bridge to understanding.

grace.wang@duke.edu

Grace Wang is a freshman at Duke University. Scott Savitt, a visiting scholar in Duke's Chinese media studies program, assisted in writing this article.

Labels: China, intercultural, nationalism, tibet

Geoffrey York from the Globe and Mail reports the challenges and difficulties faced by Canadian International Development Agency in implementing aid program in China which encompasses local stakeholder involvement into the project process:

"The Canadian International Development Agency has been searching for new justifications for its assistance to China, knowing that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has been suspicious of Canadian aid to the world's fastest-growing economy.

Poverty reduction projects have been scaled back. Instead CIDA tries to leverage its money to stimulate Chinese action to improve its environment, governance, legal reforms and human rights. But achieving results in these fields can be problematic - and the project in Inner Mongolia is a classic case.

Bator the herdsman is baffled by the CIDA project. "I heard that Canada built this building," he says, "but I don't feel any benefit from it."

Internal reports obtained by The Globe and Mail reveal that Chinese authorities resisted many of Canada's ideas for the project, which was originally intended to improve China's ability to manage its environment and protect its wildlife.

The Canadian emphasis on community participation was seen by Chinese officials as a "necessary evil," according to a report by a CIDA consultant in 2004, when the project was three years old.

"The Chinese stakeholders did not clearly understand, nor did they necessarily support, the inclusion of a participatory, collaborative and inclusive process," the report states.

The assessment found that the CIDA project had been seriously damaged by two years of delays, misunderstandings, confusion, lack of trust, internal disputes and design errors."

Equally interesting are the comments by (predominantly) Canadians on this news report.

Labels: China, development

Photo by ooof

"Jiwai.de (the "Chinese Twitter") and the big screen dynamic BBS are hits at this meeting." Via blognationChina, who is doing live conference micro-blogging in Twitter.

This is one of the most interesting and surprising thing I find about the conference. The freewheeling spirit in all these public "back channel" chatters adds so much more fun to the conference.

Update: Messages posted on Day 1 are archived here and Day 2 here.
See also Thomas Crampton's Will China Twitter for more about this twitterish-like phenomena at cnbloggercon and in China.

Anyone who is interested in saying a hello or sending a message to the audience viaat the conference can simply do so by adding wo@jiwai.de in GTalk or msn008@jiwai.de in MSN Messenger and then send an instant message jiwai in the following structure: @cbc +[space]+[your message]

Labels: beijing, China, cnbloggercon, conference, internet

img_0339. Bruce and Zola distributing conference proceedings over multiple internet channels.
Originally uploaded by ZhangYining

"I wish I was at Chinese BloggerCon," Robert Scoble wrote.

"Next year I want to do a BloggerCon here at the same time and build a video bridge so we could talk about the same issues. Heck, let’s do it."

I like the idea. Yes, let's try to do this next year and we can have more cross-cultural conversations in two continent over the internet.

Labels: beijing, China, cnbloggercon, conference, internet

This year's Chinese Blogger Conference will take place in Beijing as well as virtually on the internet this coming weekend.

As in previous years, there are a wide variety of topics that would appeal to anyone interested in the latest trends and application of new media in Chinese media, education, business, etc. sectors.

Here are my picks (in no particular order) from this year's conference program:

Zhang Lei's talk on How does Social Collaboration Change the Practice of Translation? (社会协作力量如何改变翻译格局)

Art 1.5: "Digital" Art (艺术1.5:"电子"艺术).

NGOs in the Internet Era: Understanding and Realizing the Impact and
Value of Information Technology / Web 2.0 on Social Work (互联网时代的NGO——了解和实现IT/WEB2.0对于社会性工作的影响和价值)

Grassroots Media and Professional Media (草根媒体与专业媒体)

Micro-blogging and Its Potential (微Blogging和潜力)

Watch this space and space for live transcript which you may also subscribe to for live streaming transcripts and conference tidbits over any major instant messaging services.

Update: Conference transcript (in Chinese) will be broadcast over on IRC channel at irc://chat.freenode.net/#cnbloggercon

See also:
3rd Annual Chinese Blogger Conference - Fact Sheet for a quick overview in English about the conference.
Cnbloggercon on Netvibes to find out the latest photos, conference news, blog posts from the conference.

Labels: bejing, China, cnbloggercon, internet

This is insanity and paranoia to the greatest extreme.

Via Wang Jianshuo:

"The "very important meeting" is going to be held soon. To prepare a "good environment" for the meeting, massive websites in China were shutdown. This time, much different from the previous actions, it is the whole data center instead of websites or servers that were shutdown.

Let me take few famous IDCs (Internet Data Center) as examples. Zitian, an IDC in Luoyang was shutdown completely, and all the 500 servers were unplugged from Internet, and tens of thousands of websites hosted there were inaccessible on Aug 24. Among them is the largest traffic tracking site 51.la, and this infected a very big portion of Internet websites in China.

Soon, on Aug 28, Lanmang, the other IDC in Shantou faced the same situation. Again, tens of thousands of websites were complete inaccessible. An unconfirmed news said the data center closed in Shantou has 3000 servers, and they are all closed. Lanmang has to hire lots of trunks to put all these servers and distribute the servers into many other data centers across China."

[...]

It seems the pressure from top really makes people take it seriously. These days, all kinds of people are busy.

* Telecom companies are busy unplugging Internet cable for data centers one by one.
* Hosting companies that were already shutdown are either busy find out solutions for the closed sites, or handle waves of customer complains, or both.
* Those hosting company or sites which were lucky enough not have been shutdown are busy shutdown "interactive sites" themselves, to avoid the whole data center run into bigger problem.
* Bigger websites are preparing contingency plans about what they will do when they were shutdown.
* All kinds of small site webmasters, or independent bloggers are busy signing up hosting package from abroad (I would be interested to know how many more orders bluehost, dreamhost, or ipowerweb got from China these days)
* Bloggers hosting their blog on BSP can only keep their finger across and pray for their little blog.

[Read the entire post.]

Labels: censorship, China, internet

This is what I have heard from various IM conversations with friends in China tonight: "Chinese authorities have asked internet websites to switch off all social (interactive) functions, including BBS, comment and blogs ahead of the 17th National Party Congress."

Is the plan to turn the Chinese internet into this in the upcoming weeks?

Labels: censorship, China, internet

This year's Wikimania is going taking place starting this Friday (August 3).

Lots of interesting presentations and here are a few that I will definitely be looking at (some are China/Chinese-related):

Naoko Kizu: Translation for Community Building

Chia-Wei Chiu: The Study of Wiki Editing Behavior of China Wikipedian - A Case Study of Wikipedia

Haidong Pan: Democracy and business model: wikipedia and wiki ecosystem in China

Ward Cunningham, Valentin Jijkoun (TBC), James Forrester, Dirk Riehle: The future of wikis

Chao-Kuei Hung: Free Culture Advocacy: A General Strategy and Some Examples Involving Social Movement Groups and Community Universities

Isaac Mao: Knowledge Forming, Heredity, and Variation

KaKan Lo: Another role of Wikipedians: Guiding machines to do intelligent tasks

Isaac has burnt a mega feed that aggregates the latest blog posts on Wikimania. Very useful. I will skim through that from time to time as well.

Labels: China, wiki, wikimania

Contemporary Chinese youth, as seen by Pan Yue, deputy director of China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA):

"I don’t know if you will really listen to them or not, but here they are: your generation has grown up in a rich and varied environment, but has no roots or foundation. You have an excessive passion for the future, yet almost no interest in history. You have hardly any of the constraints of tradition, and you lack any real beliefs. To put it simply, idealism is rare in your generation. Pragmatism and individualism have won out. This is not really a question of individual problems, but of a wider social climate." (emphasis are mine)

I wonder what Chinese youth think about Pan Yue's comments above?

Me thinks the lack of any real beliefs might has to do with a not-so-free environment. Not enough free thinking, as my friend Isaac Mao often emphasizes whenever he tries to explain the challenges confronting China.

I also like Pan Yue's analysis on how irresponsible or bad practices in resource extraction by Chinese companies have an impact on inflation both in China as well as globally.

"Here is a classic example of what should be called environmental injustice: coal mine owners from Shanxi province indiscriminately extract coal and dig up the land, creating pollution. As a result they become extremely wealthy. Once they have polluted Shanxi, however, they do not stay there. Instead they move to Bejing where they buy luxury villas and push up house prices. They have also pushed up property prices in all the coastal regions of north China. If these areas then become polluted, they will no doubt move to the US, Canada or Australia and cause inflation there too."

Certainly an issue the world ought to give more thoughts on.

Labels: China, economy, environment, inflation, society, sustainable developement, values, youth

If you are reading this in China, chances are you won't be able to see this interesting image where Erning says as "The [Flickr] interestingness page becomes more interesting."

That's because Flickr is filtered in China by the "Great Firewall" very likely because many Chinese users have uploaded photos from a recent protest against a poisonously chemical plantin Xiamen.

"Currently, the flickr.com is not blocked but the image repository server(farm1.flickr.com and farm2.flickr.com) [is]. It means the blockage is not whole domain as target, but some subdomains which may be referred most by Chinese blogosphere recently on those "sensitive" contents...Right now, people can still access flickr web site but can't see any pictures there," Isaac noted.

So unless the site blockage is lifted, I am very well losing a very effective channel to share my life and communicate with my friends in China given pictures are better than a thousand words.

Perhaps the saddest part is what Keso wrote:

"In the global Internet, the better the website, the more likely it will get GFWed. This is the sorrow of all Internet users in this country. In the past it has been Google, Blogger, Wikipedia, Wordpress.com, Vix.com... Now it's Flick's turn ...... 

I just have one character to tell those bastards: Fuck!"

.

Labels: censorship, China, Flickr, internet

On the eve of the 18th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, Ding Zilin and more than 20 other members of the Tiananmen Mothers have released an abridged transcript of a roundtable discussion on the commemoration of their love ones who died in the massacre, their request to the government and the groups' future plans.

There are many touching stories and words throughout the transcript. I have translated one small paragraph into English as follow:

"In the times that have past, the Tiananmen Mothers group had experienced all kinds of difficulties and hardships. But that had also broadened our horizons. [We] learned a lot of things about both inside and outside the country, as well as in the entire world. We all have gradually formed our own views on issues that pertained to China's future directions. In particular, eighteen years of difficult fights have made us gradually understood many principles. We know how to seek justice for those who died and how to strive for the rights that we have."

Transcript of the discussion (in Chinese) is here. If you could, read the entire discussion.

See also:
Ding Zilin's Letter to Hong Kong Compatriots in 2006
Statement by Ding Zilin in 2005

Labels: China, history, June4th, political speech, translations