chriswaugh_bj

bugger

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 04:23:20 GMT

So a couple of weeks ago Live Journal gets blocked and so I switch my main blogging over to blogspot, keeping my over-blog account as backup. Then yesterday afternoon blogspot is suddenly blocked.... yet again. Actually, I can get to blogger, log in, and apparently blog easily and happily, but I can't open anything.blogspot.com without a proxy. A couple of days ago I decided to use a dormant account at canalblog to open a Chinese study blog as a way to keep up my motivation to study (wangbo.canalblog.com) and this morning I can't get to canalblog directly, but using a proxy it opens up miraculously. So now all of a sudden my only blog account that is completely open and accessible without a proxy is chrislzh.over-blog.com. Blogger I can use, but I can't see without a proxy, so fuck it, I'll keep using that for the time being at least.

I'm hoping this latest crackdown on people living their lives as they see fit without the express permission of certain dinosaurs who have yet to move past 1976 will blow over soon, but you never can tell. Anyway, you can find me at:
bezdomny.blogspot.com
chrislzh.over-blog.com
wangbo.canalblog.com (Chinese study blog)
and occasionally here, too. If you're in mainland China you may need to use a proxy to view some of those sites.

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 08:01:58 GMT

Still occasionally lurking around by proxy. Don't forget:
bezdomny.blogspot.com
chrislzh.over-blog.com
If you don't like Google's evilness when you comment on blogspot sites, remember: You should be able to comment under a non-google id or anonymously. Otherwise go to the over-blog site to comment there. For those who don't speak French, to add a comment click "ajouter un commentaire". The form should be easy enough to figure out: Votre nom/your name; votre email/your email; votre site/your site (website,that is). Put your comment in the obvious space, click "publier". Shit, I don't know why I'm explaining this, you're all smart enough to figure it out, and French isn't that different from English, especially when it comes to computers and the internet. To read comments (highly unlikely since the only comment that site ever attracted was spam that I deleted immediately) click "commentaire".

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 07:00:07 GMT

Just a reminder, you can find me either here:
bezdomny.blogspot.com
or here:
chrislzh.over-blog.com
Don't forget!

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 01:02:45 GMT

Don't worry, I'm still lurking around LJ by proxy. But don't forget I've moved most of my blogging to: bezdomny.blogspot.com, backed up, as always, at chrislzh.over-blog.com.

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 01:10:58 GMT

So it looks like I will have to move this blog. Yesterday morning I couldn't get here directly through the 95963 dial-up I use when China Unicom's CDMA service craps out (which has been happening less frequently lately) and then after we got the new SIM card and I got back online through the CDMA service, same again. And again this morning. Well, I don't 'have to' move, but I hate using proxies (although this one seems to work alright) and I'd much rather have my blog somewhere open. The good news is that I've been keeping a backup for some time now here: http://chrislzh.over-blog.com/ and I've been playing around with blogspot just to see what it can do. Unfortunately, that blogspot account is full of really embarassing shit, so I'm going to delete all the old posts first.

Anyway, none of you will be able to see this until all the embarassing shit is removed from that blogspot site, so I'll just put the address here now before I forget:
http://bezdomny.blogspot.com/

Oh, and yes, that blogspot site actually has a title, like a name, a real one, not just this lame-arse chriswaugh_bj.

So, yes, I'll still keep this lj running, but I think I'll keep blogspot for my main blog and over-blog as the eternal backup.

And those links, just to make sure everybody gets the message:

http://bezdomny.blogspot.com/
http://chrislzh.over-blog.com/

Update your bookmarks and links and all that guff, but don't worry, I'll still be hanging around lj as well.

Just getting those two sites ready for active service....

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:54:32 GMT

So what is going on? Has livejournal been blocked? I'll be most pissed off if it has. Using proxies to update is just one major pain in the arse.

Anyway, what I was going to say:

I'm sure you all think I'm a total arsehole for forgetting my wife's birthday. Well, you're all wrong. I may be an arsehole, in fact, some people think so, but I didn't forget. I got it wrong, yes, I fucked up, this is true, but you lot don't even know half the story.

See, I could explain how it is that I've never yet figured out when her birthday is exactly. I could explain the chain of events that led to me getting the wrong day. I could explain that because of the way she's been talking this week, I thought her birthday was this weekend, that we would be going to the village (as it turns out, we didn't) and that I could arrange with her mum to get her a cake and a decent birthday dinner like last year. I could try to explain the circumstances that led me to spend Friday either sitting around doing nothing or in class, or that once I heard that Friday was actually her birthday that I started thinking about taking her out for a decent birthday dinner. I could also explain that up until now, even though I have never managed to figure out exactly when her birthday is, I have never yet forgotten or missed it in any way because, like Spring Festival, even though it's on a different calendar, there's always plenty of reminders. I could also explain that this year's reminders were rather more vague, leading me to get the wrong day. But none of that matters 'cos you all still think I'm an arsehole for forgetting her birthday, anyway.

Anyway, it is true, I did fuck up (note to self: Should this happen again, at the very, very least, run out and get a cake. Even if the mere smell of the icing makes you want to vomit, she still expects a cake. A birthday without cake is like Spring Festival without jiaozi, or visiting Gufu without drinking baijiu. Note to current and possible future employers: it's the thought that counts. I know that when you give me a birthday cake you're trying to be friendly and hospitable, but really, just think about giving me the cake, I'll be much happier that way). Yes, I could've and should've done better. But I didn't and it was not entirely my fault and I was not an arsehole, despite what you may believe. I was under the impression her birthday was this weekend, not Friday.

So, hate me if you want to, criticise me all you want (just not here), but I don't give a fuck.

Yes, the whole birthday incident still has me pissed off. Don't worry, I'll get over it.

Anyway, we managed to rescue yesterday, sort of, and today, even though my temper is running on a much shorter fuse than normal for no obvious reason, we sort of managed to make up for the loss. The plan changed to: If it rains, we stay in Beijing; if it doesn't, we go to the village. It's raining, so we opened the 'not going to the village plan', and it said: "Go to Big Pizza for lunch, get a new SIM card for the China Unicom CDMA wireless internet doohickey so Chris doesn't waste too much money on the 95963 dial-up, send money to Didi to pass on to Ba and Ma." Walking past the Wudaokou Cinema on the way home I thought, hey, I wonder if by some miracle 'Still Life' is still playing.... no of course it's not... Oh well, let's have a look and see what's on, anyway. Then, having crossed the road, we were suddenly closer to a DVD store, so we stopped in to see if they had 'Still Life'. They did. We bought it and 'Green Hat'.

And Big Pizza is always a safe bet for treating lzh. She loves their all you can eat buffet, I like the fact that it's also all you can drink, and that includes beer, and lzh has become expert at pouring a pint.

Anyway, I hope lj becomes unblocked soon, otherwise I'll have to shift this blog somewhere else. I just hate using proxies.

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 03:19:23 GMT

It's lzh's birthday today. She's the grand old age of 25.

Unfortunately, everybody forgot, including me. In my defence, she uses the lunar calendar to mark her birthday, which just gets me confused. I have to remember: Two days before Lantern Festival. Trouble is, that still means keeping an eye on the lunar calendar, at least over the holiday period. Anyway, I think she'll forgive me. Sometimes she remembers I'm just a dumbarse laowai.

So: Happy birthday lzh!

In which Chris indulges in a little name dropping

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 01:07:20 GMT

So I started blogging about three years ago. It's strange, because in that time I've gotten to know a few people online through their blogs and yet, until last night, I'd never met them. I'm sure that we'd passed on the street or in a bar, probably several times, but somehow....

In fact, until last night, the only bloggers I'd ever actually met in the flesh were people I met before I knew they blogged.

So for about three years now I've been communicating off and on with guys like Kaiser Kuo, Brendan O'Kane, Prince Roy, Richard the Peking Duck and Joseph Bosco through blogging, but until last night, for whatever reason, I'd never met them.

Anyway, Brendan persuaded me to join the bloggers' dinner organised by Richard, and so I memorised the map that was emailed around and I went, and I finally met all these people I'd made friends with in that surreal online way, and it was good. I didn't get a chance to talk much to all of them, there were a lot of people there, and I was under orders to not be late home (lzh didn't really fancy joining in the fun, so I went alone), but at the very least I finally met all these people. And others, as well, and it was a lot of fun.

So, thanks, Richard, for organising dinner. It was a good time, even if I had to bail a little early.

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 04:33:36 GMT

There probably aren't too many people out there interested in Pacific history, let alone prehistory, but just in case:

An ANU researcher claims to have found the Lapita people.

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 12:16:30 GMT

Of all the Chinese people I've ever met, lzh is the one who swears the most fluently in English. By far. She even swears more fluently than those Chinese I've met in New Zealand. She swears this is all my fault. And she agrees that it is all my fault.

Having said that, her parents, especially her mother, have taught me a lot of Chinese swear words.

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 06:58:19 GMT

WTF?!?!?! A stand-in mistress to be beaten by the wife in place of the real mistress?!

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 05:16:35 GMT

Oh no, please, don't.

James Cameron thinks he's found Jesus', Mary's, Joseph's, Mary Magdalene's, and Jesus' and MM's son Judah's coffins. Ridiculous.

Now, before we proceed: I do not want to start any theological debates. Don't do this to me. Really. This is not about theology. Really.

Now:

"Six of the coffins had inscriptions which, when translated into English, said "Jesus son of Joseph", twice "Maria", and "Judah son of Jesus".

"To a layman's eye it seems pretty darn compelling," said Cameron who is executive producer."

And that, Mr Cameron, is why the intelligent people of the world will be listening to the experts' opinions, and not the laymen's.

The first question I have to ask is: Why would the family of a Gallileean carpenter be buried south of Jerusalem? Has James Cameron ever looked at a map of Israel? And why would the son of a carpenter who spent the last three recorded years of his life (remember: no theological debates here) wandering around Israel apparently penniless be buried in such a fancy-looking casket?

Fortunately this article ends with a note of sanity:

""It's a beautiful story but without any proof whatsoever," Professor Amos Kloner, who had published the findings of his research in the Israeli periodical Atiqot in 1996.

"The names that are found on the tombs are names that are similar to the names of the family of Jesus," he said.

"But those were the most common names found among Jews in the first centuries BCE and CE," he added.

Osnat Goaz, a spokeswoman for the Israeli government agency responsible for archaeology, said: "We agreed to send the ossuaries, but it doesn't mean that we agree with the filmmakers.""

It's a pity, though, that this article doesn't bother telling us exactly what the findings of Professor Kloner's research were.

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 02:23:06 GMT

So a friend sent me a link to a post on China Travel Guide forums by one griz326 entitled Is the Chinese language dead? She asked for my help in setting this Griz character straight. I don't know why, she's a professional linguist, has been studying Chinese, and is more than capable of doing the task herself. In fact, she had already done a decent job of showing Griz up for the fool he is before I got to see the offending post. Anyway, I checked it out and decided to add my two fen worth just for good measure.

Well, I decided to post the offending post and my reply here, just for good measure. But before you continue, please remember: It's early in the morning, I'm still recaffeinating, and I'm still fighting off this cold. I may well have made a few mistakes myself. I would appreciate it if you could correct my mistakes, though, because the more accurate my reply is, the more effective it will be.

Here is the original post, for those who don't want to click through to the forum:

"No offense is intended here.... But in discussing the Chinese languagewith a friend yesterday, the question I posed here came into my mind:

Is Chinese a dead language?

Obviously, it is still in wide usage...so in that regard is certainly is NOT dead.

However, does the Chinese language invent new words? Or does it only use existing words to describe new things?

Consider these words:

network - 联机.....联 - unite/join 机 - machine

radio - 无线电.....无 - without/nothingness 线 - line/thread 电 - lightening/electricity

airplane - 飞机.....飞 - fly 机 - machine

skeet - word not found in the Wenlin dictionary - however my translator gave me this meaning "shooting the flying disk"

biotechnology - word not found in the Wenlin dictionary

bytes - word not found in the Wenlin dictionary

How would the Chinese language invent new words?

Wouldn't new characters need to be created?

Is the lack of such a mechanism an indication that the Chinese languageis dead? Or is there such a mechanism in place and I simply do not knowof it.

What happens when China - which is educating far more citizens in the sciences than the United States - over takes American dominance of technology and begins to be the creator of new technologies...

How will those Chinese inventors pick new words for their inventions?

I hope you have as much fun thinking about this as me... "

And my reply (minus a brief intro only relevant to the thread itself):

"My two fen worth will start with taking Griz up on one of his own points:
无线电. Let's look at this properly: 无线 is a common prefix equivalent to the English 'wireless'. For example, I am currently using a 无线网卡/wireless internet card to get online. But wait! How can this be? English has used the exact some process as Chinese to express this new concept! 'Wireless' means without wires, just like 无线! So is English dead too? As Stocktov [a previous commenter on the thread] said, all languages (except those that are dead, of course) evolve. That process of evolution includes recombining words or 'particles' (as in the prefix-root-suffix model common in European languages) to create new words to fit new concepts.

"biotechnology - word not found in the Wenlin dictionary" Two things:
1: Not all words in any language are to be found in the dictionary. And why check Wenlin? Sure, it's a good resource, but it's hardly the authority on the Chinese language. It's not the Chinese OED.
2: Clearly your knowledge of Chinese isn't what you would have us believe. I don't know the word for biotech either, not off the top of my head, but if I were translating for someone and had to make an educated guess, I would say "生物技术." And you know what? The pinyin input system gives me the exact characters I want without me having to change any, which is a good indication I have the right word. And just to confirm, I look in the dictionary, and although 生物技术 itself is not listed, there are plenty of other words using 生物 as the equivalent of the English prefix 'bio-', which makes me feel pretty confident I've got the right word.

"How would the Chinese language invent new words?"

As you yourself have demonstrated, one method is the same as that used in any other language- rearranging or recombining old words to form new words.

"Wouldn't new characters need to be created?"

Not always, but yes, sometimes. When paper was invented, the Chinese people needed a word for it, and that word needed a character, and that's how we wound up with 纸.

"Is the lack of such a mechanism an indication that the Chinese language is dead? Or is there such a mechanism in place and I simply do not know of it."

Well, you've answered your own question: You clearly don't know enough about the Chinese language. As Rogerinca pointed out, Chinese does have a mechanism for creating new characters. All but the simplest characters are made up of 'radicals'. Radicals are basically simple characters, sometimes stripped down or altered to fit comfortably in a more complex character. Radicals are combined to form new characters. Chinese has been doing this since the days of the oracle bones. A good example would be the Table of Chemical Elements. Obviously many elements required a new character as the were unknown to the Chinese (indeed, to everybody around the world) only 100 or 200 years ago. If you look at the table, you will see many (most? all?) the metals contain the radical 金 in their character. Why? 金 (meaning metal or gold) indicates that this character is the name of a metal. The other radical is usually there for it's phonetic value.

"What happens when China - which is educating far more citizens in the sciences than the United States - over takes American dominance of technology and begins to be the creator of new technologies...

How will those Chinese inventors pick new words for their inventions?"

Well, clearly, the world will stop spinning on its axis, the Earth's magnetic field will reverse, the laws of thermodynamics will no longer apply, and we'll be reduced to grunting like Neanderthals or chimpanzees. Or, more likely, English will start to take on a lot more words from Chinese (and you'd be surprised how many we already have), words that were 'invented' in all the usual ways new words are coined, words that will have new characters or new combinations of characters just like all the previous words that have at some stage been new to Chinese, and life will continue on as it always has."

Well, like I said, I would appreciate any corrections to my rant that anybody has to make. I don't consider myself an expert on the Chinese language.

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 04:21:09 GMT

Interesting, and well worth a read. Farmer or peasant? Feudal or not? Feudal as a technical descriptor or a metaphor used to fuel revolution?

It got me thinking because I'd never thought about how or why we use the words 'farmer' and 'peasant' to translate 'nongmin'. And what is the best translation of 'nongmin', anyway? I mean, the most accurate translation. 'Rural person'? Sounds a bit clunky, but.... At least 'Rural person' covers the full range of people and their occupations in rural areas.

And the argument that pre-revolutionary China was not in fact feudal, at least not in the technical sense, was interesting. Obviously, my understanding of Chinese history and, well, history in general, is pretty shallow.

But I should stop rambling. It's about lunchtime, I'm running low on fuel, and I'm still fighting off the dregs of this cold.

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 03:38:10 GMT

What an odd idea: Six people volunteered to live like monkeys in a zoo for five days.

Well, not entirely like monkeys. They had two tents to sleep in, and judging by the picture, they weren't expected to strip off. But it seems they did live in an enclosure with monkeys and were treated as if they were monkeys- the zoo staff fed them the same way they fed the monkeys, and most of their food came from what visitors threw into the cage.

A very strange idea for an experiment, but it seems to have had some positive results:

"After five days of living like monkeys, six volunteers emerged fromcaptivity on Monday, each with a better sense of what it means to behuman."

and:

"Visitors paid more attention to the monkeys' health and did notcasually throw things like cigarette butts, bottles and garbage intothe enclosure during the experiment"

Strangest of all, apparently these six were chosen from among 2000 applicants from across the country.

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 09:05:28 GMT

Alright, so I did it. I finally left a comment on Time's China blog. This rather pathetic attempt at propaganda finally tipped me over the edge. Sure, it's only a blog, but the people who write it are supposed to be journalists, and journalists are supposed to at least pretend to make an effort at objectivity, and he's not blathering on like some fool of a tourist about the wonderful vege market down the road, he's commenting on two real issues of real importance in the world today.

I know, it's only Time, and we all know the quality of their blog. I mean, Bill Powell's last three posts to the Time China blog were little more than plagiarisations of other people's articles without even the decency of a link to the original article. I'm sorry. I have a bad cold and it seems to be clouding my judgement.

Rumour, treat it as such

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 04:18:10 GMT

So I'm hearing a disturbing rumour over Yahoo IM right now. After that paedophile Karr case down in Thailand last year, the government is cracking down on foreign teachers, getting rid of the bad eggs. Now, that much is good. All across Asia, including China, there are too many bad people of a bunch of varieties of badness abusing the foreign teacher game. Cleaning up is good. But this rumour I'm being told is that a lot of those being kicked out of Thailand can't go to Korea because Korea is at least seriously investigating them, so they're headed for China.

So far the only hard article on the subject I have is this, and I guess there's more to be found here, but these are the two sites my friend has sent me. The rest he's telling me based on what he's reading, but I haven't had time to investigate myself.

Now, if it is true that we have Thailand's rejects heading for China, then this can only cause trouble for those of us already here. Sure, many of our fellow foreign teachers need trouble caused for them: The instant plane ride home kind of trouble. Like I said, there's too many bad people here, and a whole variety of different kinds of bad. We need to get rid of these people. But a clean up will mean trouble for all of us in some way or another.

First of all, we'll be competing with Thailand's rejects for jobs.

Second, some of us may well find ourselves working with this rubbish, which many of us have learnt from bitter experience, is never a good thing.

Third, a crackdown will mean all of us subjected to unkind scrutiny and suspicion cast on us all simply because we teach in China.

Oh, but wait, we already have to deal with wanker business types assuming the worst about us just cos we teach.....

UPDATE: My attempt at a Google search (Thailand teaching crackdown) doesn't turn up much useful. Top of the list is a forum post of an article taken from the Phuket Gazette dated February 7 this year. That's already a couple of weeks out of date. And the first response in the thread amounts to "Nothing new here, move along please", although he does add: "The newest thing here seems to be an admission that in fact this qualifications crackdown will not really prevent sex criminals from getting jobs, even though a suspected sex criminal is the cause of the crackdown." Adding 'China' to the search terms doesn't get any new results.

I'm trying 'Thailand foreign teacher forums' right now: Once again, nothing new seems to show up.

So how much do we have to worry about? My own research isn't showing up much to back up this rumour.

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 02:20:44 GMT

Alright, so we're back. In fact, we've been back for three nights and two days now. I just haven't had a decent night's sleep since the 29th.

Quick note: All dates in this post are by the lunar calendar unless the word solar appears in brackets after the date. To convert back to the solar calendar, remember today (when I'm writing this) is the 23rd by the solar calendar or chu 6 by the lunar calendar, then do your own maths.

So, no decent sleep since the 29th by the lunar calendar. See, the dogs have developed this really annoying habit of barking at nothing at least once each night, waking everybody up. Then Ma and Ba get up really early in the morning, stopping me catching up on sleep lost to the dogs' insane noisiness. And of course, with all the bainian'ing that goes on over Spring Festival out in the countryside where things are still traditional, trying to get a nap during the day was impossible. And then, on the last night we were in the village, a cousin visited with her man and their six month old boy. Because the kang was the only warm place to sleep, they weren't going back to the county town where they live (they were stopping over on the way to her father's place up Zhangjiakou way), and I was the only one who remembered that an electric blanket has been found to warm up the bed in the other room, and I decided I'd really be pushing it if I started issuing orders, six adults and the baby piled onto the kang that last night. Of course, the baby did what all six month old babies do and woke us all up at least twice that night.

Anyway, the stupid bureaucrats at lzh's university who are responisble (or irresponisble, as would seem to be the case) for stamping a particular document she needs so she can wade through more red tape and eventually get a formal contract at her danwei (don't ask, I'm having a hard enough time keeping up with all this as it is, and the bureaucracy involved seems absurd even by China's formidable standards) weren't there when she went to get her stamp before the holiday, but they had left a note on the door saying they'd be back on chu 4. Or the 21st (solar). Actually, I don't know what the note said, I just never heard lzh say they'd be there on the 21st (solar) until we got back on chu 3. Actually, I hadn't heard any date by the solar calendar from the 29th, when we went to the village, until chu 3, when we came back to Beijing. That's why I'm sticking with lunar dates in this post.

So, these bureaucrats: Their note said they'd be back on chu 4, and because lzh got an extra couple of days off before the holiday, we decided to go up on the 29th and come back on chu 3 so she could get this stamp as early as possible so she can get a formal contract as early as possible. So that's what we did. Turns out the bastards couldn't be arsed showing up for work as promised, of course. She went there on chu 4, hung around the whole day hoping they'd show up, but obviously they had other ideas and doing their jobs as promised wasn't high on their list of priorities. Yesterday she just phoned every half hour or so to see if they'd shown up, save her the hassle of travelling all the way out there only to discover an empty office with that same note taunting her. Of course, only a fax machine answered. And because today is a Friday, there's probably no point in even bothering to phone.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate bureaucrats?

So, anyway, we're back. It's really quiet around here. Sure, there's lots of fireworks, as usual, but unlike others, I'm not going to complain about the noise. Really. Get hard and go to Hunan. Changsha was the best introduction to China's love of explosives possible. Honestly. So Beijing's rather pathetic attempt to impersonate a war zone really doesn't bother me. But it's really, really quiet around here. Apart from the cleaner and the door guy, all the other staff, foreign and otherwise, and the students are still off on holiday. I suppose there'll be a bit more life around the place on Monday, but I'm not expecting any real noise until March, which seems to be about a week off (I'm still getting my mind adjusted back to the solar calendar). But even though we're back and not being constantly woken up by dogs barking at nothing or babies crying and there's still plenty of time before this place will start to get noisy again, I still can't get a decent night's sleep. Most irritating. I should be using all this spare time to get back into studying Chinese and going to the gym and other good things, or at least just getting out and about, but I really don't have the energy.

And yes, there are better things I've been meaning to write about for a while, but this lack of energy has stopped me even attempting to write anything more than this rubbish. Sorry.

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 08:46:07 GMT

Wow. A 10-metre, 450-kg colossal squid.

I'd heard of giant squid before, but this article seems to suggest colossal squid are a whole different species.

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 03:34:09 GMT

A must read from Danwei.

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 06:53:32 GMT

So Ba put the illegal cable back in and for a few hours last night we actually got to choose what we could watch on tv. lzh made him take the cable out again because she's scared somebody will check and fine us 200 kuai.

Then, having seen how clear her uncle's satellite tv is, she decided we need that too. As it turns out, the only person in the village selling satellite dishes actually lives in an entirely different village, hasn't opened his shop here, and won't be able to set us up with a satellite for another two days. And we leave in two days, so we're leaving that until next time.

But that's ok, because somehow we've wound up with two channels to watch. CCTV 1 and Yanqing TV. Yes, it's lots of fun. That's why I decided to get online.

Well, I suppose I should be out visiting the family. I have an excuse.

Last night went pretty much as expected. I was stuffed full of jiaozi. And baijiu. And I washed that down with beer. After dinner the Spring Festival Gala came on. I guess I was kinda tired. I climbed on the kang and fell asleep about half an hour in to the gala. lzh woke me up just before midnight, and we went outside to light fireworks. I managed to not blow myself up this time. Then I got another beer and drank that while the gala was winding down. Outside, of course, resembled a war zone, as I'm sure pretty much the entire country did.

Then this morning I was woken up really early, as per usual, but I had a splitting headache and wanted to spew. After a bit of lying there trying to get back to sleep, I gave up and went to the toilet. After a bit of dry wretching and the shortest time possible spent squatting (it ain't pleasant when your arse is freezing), I wandered back inside and got back on the kang. I managed to drink some tea without spewing, and eventually got back to sleep. A while later I woke up again, and unfortunately lzh made me get up. I felt, well, not so much better as less bad. Still tired and achy. After some more tea, I managed to get permission to get back on the kang and lie down for a bit, and I was excused from bainian duty. Unfortunately, people decided to come visit us, so I couldn't possibly have gotten any sleep anyway.

Well, by about midday I started feeling a little more alive, but even so, I'm still not 100% now, and I'm still excused from having to trundle around visiting people. So I'm here alone, the Spring Festival Gala is being rebroadcast, Ba has taken the sheep out to graze, Ma and lzh have gone to visit..... somebody- I'm not so good at keeping track of exactly how all these people are related- and I'm here alone not watching the Gala on tv. It'll be rebroadcast several times this week, anyway, so I don't think I'll get to miss any of it.

I wouldn't mind seeing what Zhao Benshan did for this year's gala, though. He's usually pretty good, and I slept through his act last night.

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 06:41:00 GMT

From this article:

"About 70 per cent admitted they should plan their funerals to removethe burden from their loved ones, but fewer than one in 10 over 55s make any provision.

This figure rises to one in 20 for the population as a whole, the research by Mintel discovered."

I know my maths is pretty bad, but isn't one in 10 siginficantly more than one in 20? Like twice as many people? So how does a figure rise from one in 10 to one in 20? Isn't that a pretty drastic decrease?

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 06:15:26 GMT

Need a laugh? Apparently Chinese students do better on English tests than English students.

Gotten up off the floor? Changed your underwear? Ok then....

"They have the best results of all ethnic groups in national curriculumtests at 11, Eighty-six per cent reach the required standard - comparedto just 75 per cent of white youngsters."

Ok, then. Those of us with experience of the Chinese education system (be that as students or teachers, or both) know what is happening here. The laws of thermodynamics have not been reversed. Matter and antimatter have not collided in some cataclysmic anti-Big Bang.

And there is, of course, more:

"Youngsters of Indian origin also perform better, with 59.1 per cent,compared to 44.3 per cent pass rate for white British pupils."

So, basically, young Brits are just dumbarses. That's all. Nothing has changed.

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 05:33:05 GMT

So it's New Year's Eve again. It seems everybody else in the village stocked up enough explosives to supply the army of a small nation. Or perhaps the New Zealand Army, in which case they'd still have enough left overs to celebrate the New Year having done a good, charitable deed. They've been going since dawn, these guys, with no let up. Not quite the cordite-drenched explosive insanity we can expect about midnight, but certainly enough to make it sound like we're on the front lines of a small war.

We've just put up the New Year couplets and fuzi and pictures of door gods. Of course, that meant I was yet again on fuse-lighting duty, because a roll of firecrackers is needed to complete that particular task. No problem, I've got this down pat by now- hold cigarette to fuse, when it sizzles, run like hell. I get plenty of practice every Spring Festival, to the point where it's becoming almost instinctive. Somehow I remember us doing this earlier last year. I guess they felt they needed everybody here before they put the couplets up.

Everybody? lzh's brother, who, because his initials are the same as lzh's, we will refer to as Didi, won't be home for the Spring Festival. He's doing some kind of internship on a construction site (yes, this is related to his major. Not sure how, but...) and he's stuck keeping an eye on the machinery while everybody else buggers off home for the holiday. And his boss didn't even have the decency to make arrangements of any kind for the food and drink he would need. Bastard. If I could've had my way we would've phoned the boss and told him to look after his own damn machines and brought Didi back with us, but my opinion doesn't count for terribly much.

Anyway, Didi needs the experience and a good taste of the real world.

We got here yesterday. My arrival was delayed because Ma was still in the county town selling apples, so there'd be nobody home to greet and feed me if I came up on the day planned. lzh managed to get a couple of days off work, allowing us to come up together yesterday instead of me coming yesterday and she fighting her way through the crowds this afternoon.

The trip was perfectly normal, except that when we got to the county town bus station we discovered the bus route to the village had been changed and we had a choice of hiring a car or miandi or walking down to either 东关or 中心市场. We wound up hiring a car. The driver was a complete idiot, of course. She accosted us in the bus station. She was the first to tell us the bus route had been changed, but knowing all too well the kind of 'taxi' drivers who hang around bus and train stations, I refused to believe her and sent lzh off to ask one of the bus workers (I could've done it, sure, but getting her to do this kind of thing cuts down on a lot of unnecessary bullshit). Having been told by four separate people that the bus route had changed and we'd have to walk down to either 东关 or 中心市场 if we didn't want to hire a car, we crossed the road and climbed into this woman's Xiali. Did I mention she was a complete idiot? Well, half the conversation was about me, but naturally, did not involve me at all, even though had she had half a brain the driver would have noticed that I had already spoken to her in Chinese and that lzh told her perfectly clearly that I understand every word she says. But never mind, it was lzh who was subjected to all the usual complete fucking idiot questions, and all I had to do was sit there looking pissed off and occasionally rolling my eyes or groaning.

We took a different route to the village, one which had alarm bells ringing in my head as the car took a couple of unusual turns on it's way out of the county town. But then I realised that she was taking us along the north shore of the reservoir (which is not really much more than a river connecting small lakes and wetlands as it passes through the county town, so far as I can tell) and down some back roads, but in the right direction. And considering she was only getting a 25 kuai flat fare, it was in her best interests to get us home by the shortest route possible or have some large, strong men waiting to extract more money from us. Fortunately she was thinking more along the lines of "shortest route possible", and once I realised we were heading in the right direction, just by different roads, I relaxed. We wound up on the road that runs past lzh's middle school and the bath house, so we popped up on the highway in the middle of the village, meaning we we had to drive a couple of hundred metres back towards the county town, but apart from the last couple of hundred metres, we avoided the highway and its hordes of overladen, speeding trucks, which made the journey a lot more pleasant.

Oh sure, the highway is exciting, but sitting in a rickety miandi that sounds like it hasn't seen any maintenance since the fall of the Ming Dynasty and seeing a Steyr truck mere centimetres from your wife is not the kind of exciting I enjoy.

Well, apart from leaving the couplets until today, Ba and Ma have been busy getting the house ready for the festival. They've bought a small arsenal- enough to celebrate, perhaps enough to make a rifle company of the New Zealand Army feel like they finally have real weapons. Hopefully, unlike last year, none of our fireworks will blow up in my hand or anywhere close to me. I'm always on fuse-lighting duty. They're still thoroughly scrubbing and cleaning the house and everything in it (I half expect to be stuffed into the washing machine at any minute). Sometime soon Ma will start a mad-dash attempt at the Guiness record for the most jiaozi stuffed in a single hour. Then she'll try for the record for the most jiaozi stuffed into her son-in-law without causing him to explode (and I'll enjoy that, of course, she makes the best jiaozi on the face of this earth). Then I'll be sent out to blow shit up. Assuming the tv is working (somebody discovered the illegal cable connection and made them pull it out. Last time we were here we could still watch CCTV 1, though, so our tv watching hours were filled with mirth, merriment and excitement) we'll manage to squeeze in time for the Spring Festival Gala, of course. Well, that much I assume from previous experience.

It really feels good to be out of the city again. Well, after the trip up I was feeling pretty tired, grumpy and headachy. I dumped my pack on one of the armchair's in the other room sat on the kang, and two seconds later Ma was standing in front of me with a bottle of beer. Excellent! Just what I needed. After that bottle I was right back to normal again.

There are two bright, shiny, New Year-style posters on the wall over the kang. The higher one has a big, golden 福 on a red background, two fat, pink toddlers, a boy to the left and a girl to the right, holding scrolls. The boy's scroll says "福到我家来"; the girl's scroll says "年年大发财". In front of them is a massive pile of gold, 人民币 (oddly, the hundreds are a mixture of the old blue ones and the new red ones, but the fifties are all new) and other assorted treasures. The lower poster has 财神到 across the top, in sparkly gold characters on a red background, with a carp in each corner, a picture of the 财神 in the body of the poster, down the left edge, "新春福旺财宝聚", and down the right, "佳节吉祥富贵来", both in the same sparkly gold characters on the (obviously) red background. Both posters are pretty cool.

Pinyin input systems really should recognise New Year couplets.

In other news, two of Niuniu and Zaizai's puppies have been found new homes, but one is still here. She's really cute, really really cute. And tough, and intelligent, and active. She's reached that stage all toddlers get to- the Age of Terror- when she's running around getting into anything she can and causing merry havoc (as, I believe, I predicted she would), but she's so cute and provides hours of entertainment. Yesterday afternoon she dragged a cabbage leaf as big as herself back to her box, managed to break pieces off it, and use the bricks supporting the radiator next to her box to climb back into her box carrying the pieces of cabbage leaf, where she ate them. Doesn't sound like much, but it was a lot of fun to watch.

Anyway, I should stop rambling now.

祝大家新年快乐，万事如意。

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 03:25:53 GMT

Aiyo. I smell trouble brewing. Not trouble of a seriously important kind, but small and far too vocal for anybody's good.

"The draft statement, prepared for the Human Rights Commission byProfessor Paul Morris of Victoria University, affirms long-standingprinciples of religious freedom, tolerance and a "national commitmentto religious diversity".

Its first principle says: "New Zealand has no state religion. The state treats all faith communities and those who profess no religion equally before the law."

Another principle says: "Schools shall teach an understanding of the diversity of religious and spiritual traditions in an impartial manner."

The document is intended to be "aspirational" and would not have the force of law. But this weekend's Hamilton forum will include a presentation by a Nelson educationist, Rex Bloomfield, who is lobbying to have religious diversity included in the new school curriculum."

All well and good, and I approve completely.

But Destiny Church's self-appointed bishop Brian Tamaki disagrees quite strongly, and seems to think a secular state is some kind of treason. Well, sure, the head of state is Queen Liz the Second, and she is also the head of the Church of England, and that would seem to present some constitutional difficulties. I'll leave that up to the experts on constitutional law to discuss, though, becaue I don't know enough about such things to make a coherent statement.

But Mr Tamaki isn't content with opening mouth and threatening to put foot in:

"In addition, Christians still made up a majority of the New Zealand population - 51.2 per cent in the 2006 Census, although down from 60.8per cent in 2001.

"It's the same story - a small group, a minority in government, is pushing another agenda through and the majority of people don't want it," Bishop Tamaki said."

Might I suggest, Mr Tamaki, that considering how weak your claim to the title of bishop is, and that you represent only one church that, although it is apparently quite large, still represents a small minority of New Zealand's Christian population, that you really should refrain from claiming to represent the view of the majority of the people of New Zealand.

And besides, 51.2% is a majority only by a technicality. And that 51.2% is only the percentage of those answering the last census who claimed to be Christian and includes large numbers of people Mr Tamaki, in his bin Laden-impersonating mode, would label 'apostates' or 'infidels' because they dare take a more liberal, tolerant view of their religion and don't submit to Mr Tamaki's brand of religiously-inspired fascism.

And it get's worse:

"We don't deny people the right to come into our country with adifferent religion. All people are welcome to all religions, but they should understand that they are coming to a Christian nation where the national religion is being held as Christianity."

Please, until your little revolution is complete and you have appointed yourself Supreme Ayatollah of Aotearoa, just shut up. Christianity's claim to being the national religion is tenuous at best and revolves around constitutional technicalities involving a seriously outdated institution, the monarchy.

Of course, Mr Tamaki has his supporters in the evangelical/fundamentalist/fascist community.

"He objected to requiring church schools to teach other religions, and said all schools should teach "the significance of the Christian faith for our nation and the type of society we have""

So says Glyn Carpenter, director of the Vision Network. I suspect, though I have no proof, that like far too many of his ilk, he is talking about an entirely fictitious problem that exists only in his imagination. Nothing I saw in this article would require any school to teach anything new about religion. In fact, the article stated quite clearly that this would not have the force of law. And might I also suggest that church school's should teach the doctrine of their particular church (that is, after all, one major reason for their existence), just as madrassah's should teach the doctrine of their particular branch of Islam, and so on for all other school's with religious affiliations, but that state school's should be firmly secular- there is no reason why they should not teach about different religions and philosophies, but they certainly should not promote one view of the world over any other.

Fortunately, though, this article does have a breath of reason:

"However, another member of the working group, Anglican Bishop Richard Randerson, said the evangelicals were confusing "the significant role of Christianity in the life of the country", which he supported, with being the official state religion, which it was not."

Thank you, Bishop Randerson.

"Bishop Randerson - who last month infuriated many conservative Christians by describing himself as an agnostic - said the Anglican Church in New Zealand was independent and elected its own bishops. The Queen did not have a role in the church here."

Well, this bit is a little problematic- might I suggest that to be a bishop of a Christian church, you should probably be a Christian yourself- but the clarification of the Queen's role (or lack thereof) is most welcome.

As a Christian with my own, particular, quiet, and rather liberal faith, I have to say I am far more comfortable with a secular state than with one that in any way chooses one particular religion or philosophy as the "official" one. If I wanted to live in a theocracy, I'd move to Iran or Saudi Arabia, or maybe Kansas. And actually, I think I'd be treated better and have more freedom in Iran than I would in Mr Tamaki's wet dream of a fundamentalist theocracy.

Update: but wait there's more.