Posts Tagged ‘China’

(Biljana, Nikola D., and another gigantic dude who Nikola challenged to a Muay Thai battle – then we all made nicey-nice)

Dan Harris recently assembled this great post about why the Chinese national soccer team can’t play footy worth diddly.

Basically, the gist of it was this:

• the Chinese are too independent-minded in their sporting pursuits (egs. badminton and other racket sports, weightlifting, gymnastics) to be good involving a group approach to the game.
• the Chinese are best at sports using repetitive physical motions which can be practiced to precision and replicated on the court, field, etc.
• China’s education system seems to stress excellence at all costs fostered in a highly-competitive marketplace. As such, teamwork isn’t something the education system encourages and so overall team performance is hampered. China is not a team society (anymore), alas.

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(images courtesy: Matt Logue, TrendHunter)

I don’t consider myself much of a photographer, though I do have a good eye for the kinds of stuff I like and am not bashful about trumpeting other shooters’ consummate talents.

Lately, I’ve been spending long evenings in front of the laptop clicking through slideshow upon slideshow from the various collections of several pro- and amateur snappers I’ve been fanning over the course of several weeks.

Today’s post is more of a fanboy thing. So I promise not to be slinging any controversial ideas or making any bombastic statements about China, North Korea, Bam Bam, or the state of race relations in the Golden City of Prague. Just some good old-fashioned (and not so old-fashioned) art, a dollop of good fun, and a lineup of very gifted craftsmen and women who really know what they’re doing when they pick up a camera.

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(Bam Bam clinks grape juice glasses with Chinese President Hu during their “secret” May meeting in the PRC)

It has lately been my opinion that political punditry is rarely best dispensed immediately following a monumental bilateral event. This is doubly true especially when trying to second-guess the inner-workings of the Asian political mind.

Given how contentious high-level Asian confabs often tend to be — resulting in fatal blows delivered weeks – often months – down the track, Asian punditry and political analysis – very much like revenge – is best served stone cold. The optimal time to re-examine these events is when they can no longer be heard in the echo chamber.

In this case, I’m referring to the much-heralded meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao and North Korean supremo Kim “Bam Bam” Jong-il (pictured above), a tête-a-tête which took place during the Dear Leader’s hasty swing through the PRC aboard his custom-designed bulletproof locomotive. Billed as Kim’s “secret trip,” the North Korean dictator’s sudden arrival in China was likely a sloppy combination of a previously scheduled bilateral affair and the unexpected necessity of an 11th-hour rush job, brought about by the untimely sinking of the South Korean navy corvette, Cheonan, that lead to 46 South Korean sea deaths.

For the purposes of today’s post, let’s avoid an assignation of blame for the ship’s mysterious sinking. Given how the UN has already announced the results of its crack team’s investigative report on the incident, blaming the DPRK, it’s rather pointless, don’t you think> With the blame placed firmly at Kim’s feet, coupled with how, quite naturally and expectedly, the UN, South Korea, and their various allies have joined the loud chorus of anti-DPRK boos, while China – ever the wily Middle Kingdom, and crafty Middle Broke – hovers safely at the sidelines in its purgatory-like state of falling neither here nor there when it comes to vilifying Kim, I question the point in adding my voice to the ruckus. I’m sure you feel the same way.

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(the Dear Leader demonstrating his most sultry, open-mouthed ingénue pose – are you turned on?)

The time is soon upon us when Bam Bam will pass onto the next world. Yes, that “other” supernatural Paradise, but this one high in the sky, and not his beloved North Korean “Paradise On Earth.”

His possessions will be inherited by the North Korean state for posterity and rumors will eventually fly about the true nature and secret life of the leader of one of the most cloistered, inward-looking punchy statelets in the world. Speculation will brew as news of the Dear Leader’s private life becomes the sole obsession of Koreans of all stripes, on the net, on the news, and in the private conversations of bar- and cafe-frequenting Koreans, both north and south of the DMZ.

I got to thinking about the more popular items in the Dear Leader’s personal collection which scholars may wish to study and analyze for clues as to Kim’s personality. Items which will provide insight into the North Korean despot’s foibles, mannerisms, and affect, providing hints and clues about his leadership style or manner of governance. Items we’ll be writing about in books about the Dear Leader’s life in due time, the sorts of doodads and other tschotschkes which’ll fill the pages of books well into the next decade.

So which sorts of items, exactly?

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(the Former US President & his Veep, Bill Clinton and Al Gore, respectively. Laura Ling and Euna Lee embrace their families and their saving graces)

I was disturbed by some recent highly-critical remarks (pictured below) appearing the other day on my Facebook Wall concerning the Laura Ling/Euna Lee “captive in North Korea” saga.

So much so, actually, that I thought it was time to compile my thoughts and feelings into a small introductory post along with a promised follow-up, as you’ll shortly read, once I have a chance to do more homework on the issue.

Here’s what’s been eating me over the past forty-eight hours…

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At the Foxhole, Keeping “Careful Watch”
Approximately 15h CET
If you give me anything, give me a deadline and my publikum…

(the German marquee poster – note the gore and blood which is absent from the US version)

 
(a much more saccharine US version of the same poster)

Don’t ask me to tell you the news, kids – you likely already know there have been ten tragic deaths at the Foxconn component assembly facility in Shenzhen to date, with no apparent signs of stopping. A quorum of innocent lives snuffed out, just like that.

Like those harrowing scenes in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, young people seem to be defenestrating themselves – a phenomenon more suited to Czechs, mind you – or committing other forms of suicide to call attention to the devastating situation which is going inside the “city within a city” down in the former Special Economic Zone.

So what in sheer blazes is going on here? Is someone threatening these kids with death? Is there something wrong with the food in the canteen? Can the pulsing desire to want to earn money for one’s family overtake basic personal safety concerns?

Someone recently sent me a transcript of a suicide note that seems to be making the rounds of the Chinese blogosphere (not the Chinglosphere!) which pretty much tells this entire story in a nutshell. I have no idea where they got it from, but I’m going to continue investigating its source – with an attempt to track down the original Chinese – and maybe together we can figure something out here.

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Kai Pan, a member of the always hot ‘n spicy china/divide, assembled a nice scribble up the other day about my initial post decrying the weed-like spawning of “cat blogs” in the Chinglosphere (aka, the English language Chinese blogosphere, a godly genius phrase coined by brat-pack author Raz Elmaleh of the Holy Sliver (aka Israel) ).

In it, I devised a number of potential remedies for how to cut down on the endless array of essentially dead ringer China blogs: offering carbon-copy fast-food-like fare as they collectively take pot shots at almost the very same China news dish.

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Unidentified Blogging Location | Liking It, Nevertheless
13:30h CET
So what do those wily North Koreans have planned for us this week?

(weighing in at 130 pounds…standing 4’8” in the red corner…Bam Bam “Dear Leader” Kim!)

The good ol’ boys at new kid on the E-bang block china/divide chimed in this weekend about North Korea’s totally rude sinking of the Cheonan cutter, polling their readership on what China’s next move should be if the temperature along the always-tense 38th parallel rises any higher.

Some really incisive comments beneath Chucky Custer’s post, as per usual over there, though this time with little of that troll-like asskickery care of the Chinglosphere’s hoi polloi typically accompanying some of “the divide”’s more caustic all-about-China pieces.

Still, I was chuffed (did I just use that gay line?), because it gave me a chance to share my views about a country whose strategic intentions I’ve studied thoroughly and who (which?) I know a thing or three about.

But first, them poll results (29 votes, as of this date and time):

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I’ve been part of a great series of recent exchanges for a recent post of mine that was subsequently briskly picked up by the English-language Chinese blogosphere (heretofore to be known as the E-bang) and over at my Posterous page.

I’m reproducing several of those comments here which will form the topic of today’s post. So without further ado, here’s what David Wolf and others had to say about my initial remarks:

Adam, I think you make some good points, but I would say, with regards to China blogs a) better too much discussion than too little, b) any blog who does not offer unique news, great insight, pretty photos, or great discussion will likely die for lack of attention anyway, c) great blogs are made, often over time, they are not all born that way.

Whereupon I returned with:

@D | a) I stand corrected. Too true. b) true, though it makes the triage all the more difficult if go-to sites like Hao Hao Report don’t engage in at least a modest level of moderation/pre-approval. Otherwise the English-language Chinese blogosphere (dang, I’ve got to invent a better way of terming this! — perhaps in tomorrow’s post?) risks being flooded by pretenders and reams of copy that don’t contribute anything constructive to the conversation, c) too true, again, and there are standout examples of that, like Silicon Hutong […] Thoughts?

So David retorted by writing:

ADM, I think the answer is that at some point, if the blogosphere is to be more than a fleeting blip in the history of media, a set of standards are going to emerge that will define the minimums of what a blog should be. We aren’t quite there yet: we are in the latter stages of the experimentation phase with this medium, and I think debates like this bring us closer to those standards.

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At the Foxhole, Beginning My Afternoon Navel Gaze
14:00 CET
In search of grist…for the mill, of course!

Have you ever noticed how many English-language Chinese blogs (say that five times fast!) there are?

Sadly, I believe the time has come to drastically reduce the number of these truly redundant boards, these mostly paltry attempts to reinvent the wheel by reprising what’s already been written countless times online. We must begin to streamline these available offerings into a tight fist of “absolute-must-go-to” sites. Absolute online musts which shouldn’t be missed, in other words, with the rest somehow shunted off to the sidelines, clearly delineated as minor league attempts to achieve the same effect as the A-Listers.

I observed this recently while surfing through the offerings at Hao Hao Report, the creation of Ryan McLaughlin, a fellow “crazy Canuck,” and bionic blogger in his own right. I was astounded by the volume of stuff posted there, with seemingly less regard (not no regard, just less) for post quality or post appropriateness. It had been mentioned to me a few weeks ago by a China-blogging fellow and after devoting a considerable amount of time to Hao Hao during yesterday’s European afternoon, I couldn’t agree with the chap more.

In a situation of decentralized Chinese cities, say, where the wonders of the interwebs were unavailable to geographically-disparate expats in search of relevant information or in order to commiserate or seek out fellow-foreign succor, it made sense to have 20 different expatriate magazines or 35 different expatriate newspapers, each replicating the content of the rest. That made sense from an old world media perspective.

But in a Chinese marketplace where everything is being funneled around at the fingering of a hyper-sensitive touchpad, how many redundancies should the market allow?

Again, this seeming polemic piece might remind some of those “Top Ten” lists from a few weeks back, but it’s important to remember that just because one has a right to found and regularly publish to their own blog – thanks (or no thanks?) the decentralization of blogging tools – it doesn’t mean it should always happen.

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