Maggie in the Middle Kingdom

Unhappy Anniversary

(If you don't care what I have to say about this--and you probably shouldn't--skip to the end of this post, where I've linked to the musings of greater minds).

This Thursday is the 20th anniversary of a tragic date in Chinese history. If you don't know what I'm talking about, keep reading and you'll figure it out--or just Google the date. It is an historical moment that's not officially spoken of on the mainland.

The date came up in my Chinese class a few weeks ago, when we were talking about obtaining visas. This year is a lot like last year in the visa hassle department--harder to get, shorter stays allowed, etc. Last year, it was out of fear of Olympic protests. This year, my teacher Wang Laoshi told us in class, it is because of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and fears that rabble rousers from the China-hating West will ruin the birthday party. My classmates and I were quick to correct her--the government here likes to focus on the PRC anniversary as the reason for tightening of restrictions, but in reality, it's much more about that other anniversary, the one that the party pretends does not exist. It's also one that conjures up vivid images for lots of Americans, and one that elicits a lot more emotion and frustration.

She said to us, "I know something happened on that date, but I don't really know what. My parents and aunts and uncles won't talk about it." A long discussion ensued, with people in the class explaining some of what they know about the massacre, and promising to bring her books about it. I was thinking about what it would be like to be in her shoes. Take a really ugly piece of U.S. history--say slavery or the Jim Crow South--and imagine finding out about it from a bunch of foreigners when you're 22.

I told an American friend about my experience in class and his reaction was basically, "She's a plant. They know all about T-men. She's just feigning ignorance to get you all to talk about it and find out if any of you are troublemakers." He's got several more years of China experience than me, so I sort of believed him at first. Silly me. Over the next couple of weeks, conversations with Chinese friends and reading of posts by old China hand bloggers have made it pretty clear to me that the powers that be have done a pretty good job of erasing history. Sure, the information is out there to be accessed by the curious and industrious, but that's a small segment of the population.

A few years ago on June 4, a well-informed journalist friend from Guangzhou asked me, "Do Americans remember this anniversary?" I was touched by the way she asked the question--it was clearly important to her just to know the rest of the world cared. When I think back to 9/11, I remember being somewhat comforted by the shows of collective grief exhibited by our brothers and sisters around the world.

The whitewashing job that's happened is its own tragedy. And it doesn't just stop Chinese people from understanding what happened--it keeps people everywhere from understanding the situation, the real demands of the students and what actually happened.

Ok, enough from me. Here is my reading list if you want to learn more. Some of these sites are well worth bookmarking if you want good sources of China news and commentary. All are accessible without a proxy (at least for now) in China:

Lost Memory of June 4, Update #1 (from The Atlantic's James Fallows. I had the privilege of hearing him speak to a small group at a Beijing university a few weeks ago, and it was like a delightful time warp, putting me back at Northwestern in a fascinating class for three hours. I am guessing he will blog from the square on the anniversary, so check back in with him)

Lost Memory of June 4, Update #2 (short but sad post from Fallows)

Wear White on June 4 (a subtle protest option)

Sensitive Anniversary, Edited Memories - CN Reviews on the collective forgetting

T-Men at Twenty (Jeffrey Wasserstrom at The Nation)

Ban the VIIIIXVIIV Shirt (a creative protest against censorship)

In China, a New Breed of Dissident (WSJ on what's protested today in China, and how)

NYT's Op-eds for June 4

 
 

Scattered thoughts on labor, human rights and inevitable change

When I got to Beijing in March of 2008, I saw something that I hadn’t really seen in Kunming—the legions of migrant workers who are building the new China. A week or so after getting there, I listened to this heartwrenching interview with two sanitation workers who went on strike in Memphis in 1968  (listen through to the end for a great Mahalia Jackson performance). I had never had a real conversation with Beijing’s construction workers or visited their homes, but I knew enough to see a striking similarity between a key group of civil rights agitators in America, and an especially disenfranchised portion of the Chinese population. Living in a country so in need of a courageous and inspired leader brought new meaning to all of the coverage I was listening to of the 40th anniversary of MLK’s assassination, and it occurred to me that if radical change is to come in China, it will come from these guys who work long hours for low pay, face huge physical risk on the job and live in inhumane conditions.

Fast forward to late 2008 and early 2009. The troubles of the U.S. economy are definitely impacting China. Factories are closing by the score in Guangdong province (the factory floor of the world’s factory floor). And as everyone who had the means traveled home for Chinese New Year last week, speculation was rampant about whether migrant workers would return to the cities, and whether jobs would be there for them if they did (Guardian UK video: Rising unemployment hits migrant workers). Three days into the first week of the new year, many of my friends here are still speculating as to whether their favorite DVD shops and street food stands will reopen.

That all brings me to the real reason for this post—to point you toward some interesting and timely thoughts from  activist Han Donfang, who argues that China needs collective bargaining--now. Happy reading.

Inauguration Speech Cut Off

It's a good thing that I was watching Obama's inauguration in a French-owned restaurant with a CNN feed, because China's state television cut off our new commander-in-chief when he mentioned facism and communism in the same sentence. Here's a video of the CCTV broadcast and cutoff. Transcripts of his speech have also been edited in China. Read the lines that the CCP has "harmonized" here: Shanghaiist.

In the above video, the anchorwoman cuts him off and then asks the analyst about what challenges Obama faces as president. According to Adam Minter of Shanghai Scrap, CCTV then switched to a rerun of the NFC championship game. I'm sure the NFL welcomed the airtime, but would have preferred its bonus exposure to come in different circumstances.

Bacon, Eggs and the BCS in Beijing

last week...

It’s Thursday night in America, and thousands of people are ordering pizza, settling down on couches and crowding into bars to watch college football’s national championship game. But I’m just waking up in Beijing, where it’s already Friday morning. There are a handful of sports bars in Beijing, but only one that I know will show the game.

After a quick skim of the morning news, I walk out of my dreary yellow apartment complex, pass the old woman selling egg and scallion breakfast cakes on the street, weave through the legions of bicycle deliverymen carrying five times their body weight in everything from fish oil to furniture, and join the office workers making the morning commute on the city’s pristine new subway.

As Beijing’s professionals are herded into their cubicles, I sit down on a wooden bar stool at the Goose and Duck pub, a Beijing institution managed in the daytime by a Floridian with a handlebar mustache and a beard down to his sternum, to watch the Orange Bowl. Instead of chicken wings and a beer, I order a cup of cappuccino and a plate with pancakes, a small cheese omelet, bacon and sautéed mushrooms. Beijing’s sports bars are open 24 hours, and they all serve breakfast.

In a city of 15 million, there are about 15 of us who care about the game, have no obligations that keep us away from it and don’t have a satellite feed at home. I am with a friend who just started an English teaching job, and our fellow fans seem to be a collection of consultants and entrepreneurs. I’m not sure what I expected—a bunch of Gators on a study abroad trip, maybe, with their faces painted blue and orange. We’re a pretty subdued crowd, but we’re also a bunch of die-hards who made sure we had no meetings or deadlines this morning. Most of us came alone, and our American hometowns stretch from coast to coast—we come from Baton Rouge, New Jersey, Nebraska, even Vancouver.

There are no Chinese patrons, except for one guy who went to OU, which means he doesn’t really count. This isn’t just because it’s nine a.m. on a work day, and Chinese people care so little about football that they haven’t agreed on what to call it (is it American football or American rugby?). It’s also because people here opt to watch their sports at home with home-cooked food and beers that cost 30 cents instead of the seven dollars that people are shelling out back in New York. No wonder we owe the Chinese so many billions of dollars—they’re holding our bar tab.

We watch the game the way you watch most international sports in China—via a four-seconds-delayed satellite feed from the Philippines. That means ads for a Manila casino and for other programming on the satellite service, and no halftime show. But we are still graced with some fawning commentary in English, telling us what a blessed event it is to spend five minutes with Tim Tebow.

When Jonathan Phillips punches through Florida’s go-ahead field goal with more than 10 minutes to go in the fourth quarter, I’ve been in the bar long enough to forget that I’m in China and it’s not noon yet. Maybe that’s the reason that most of us start ordering beers--or maybe we just can’t stand the idea of watching a new champ get crowned without a little hops in our system.

The Chinese Oklahoma grad and the buddy he came with leave the bar when Florida scores again with three minutes left. When the game ends, the rest of us head out to the street, where the sun reminds us it’s daytime, and the hazy sky it barely shines through reminds us we’re in Beijing. Well-fed and a little buzzed, we all head off in different directions, getting back to work in a city that doesn’t know a Heisman from a garden gnome.

Harbin Photos

I'm having some trouble getting photos to display how I want. So for now, here is a link to photos I took of my New Year's trip to Harbin, a city up near Russia.

Fall with family and friends

I'm back in China after spending the fall back in the United States. My brother got married in October, so I visited Michigan, in addition to New York, San Antonio, DC and Boston. The trip kind of kept on getting longer and I don't regret one day that I stayed. I got to be at Mike and Emily's wedding. Mike is the first (and I'm guessing only, but you never know) one of us to marry someone who he's known since he was a kid, and Emily's brother is actually an old friend of mine. I also met my two new nieces for the first time. Gabi (above) and Veronica (below) are both about one year old and just as cute and brilliant and awesome as all my parents' other grandchildren. Another highlight of the trip to Ann Arbor was seeing my new Mom. She's the same wonderful woman she's always been, but she's been working out and eating really healthy for a couple of years now and she looks and feels great. She'll be embarrassed that I'm writing about this, but I am so proud of what she's done and how she's done it--by adopting and keeping healthy habits.

I spent most of the rest of my time in New York. I played a lot of water polo, and it felt great to be back in the water with my teammates, who are like a second family to me. I got to celebrate Halloween with them, too (it's kind of like our Christmas). And I did stupid things like celebrate Halloween again a week later, in full costume with a few spontaneous friends. I watched the election returns come in at WXOU, along with a friend with whom I'd spent lots of late nights in China chatting online about politics. We found an after party once the results were in, and stayed out dancing until 3:00 a.m. I was so glad to share this historic moment with a dear friend who wanted to see it just as badly as I did. I also enjoyed the American sports world--spending a few Saturday afternoons and Monday nights on the couch watching football, going to the Michigan-UCLA game at the Garden, and seeing a handful of boxing matches.

Yeah, I got a lot of living in during my fall in New York. I even fell in love--with the sandwich roll at Nagoya Sushi in Long Beach. Thanks for that, Sarah, and thanks for giving me a comfortable temporary home. Thanks to everyone who made time for me during my visit. I felt so loved. I am happy to be back in China, but you all reminded me just how much I am giving up to be here.

Busy Busy Bee

There's been a big lack of posts on here for a while, and that's made a couple of you sad. The reason why is simple: I am just way too busy.  The site I created with the GoKunming guys, China Sports Today is chugging along and the business of keeping it updated and promoting it is very time consuming. We are looking beyond the Olympics, because we believe that the  games are just a starting point for a lot of great stuff on the sports scene here. Our chances of having a mega breakthrough before the games are very small, but this is still a key time for us to get our name out there.

We've made significant strides in promotion--I now post to Danwei.org (a news/media/marketing blog based in Beijing) and Shanghaiist.com (part of the Gothamist family of city sites). Working with the people who run these great sites is not just a great way to get publicity, but also an opportunity to get to know some of the most informed laowai in China, who are doing very important work in keeping the public informed here.

I've also had the opportunity to cover some great stories and more are coming. Last week, I started writing a sports column in a Chinese newspaper, the 21st Century Business Herald. Here is a link to the Chinese homepage for my column. Its name, Zhenpin Tiyu, is a play on my Chinese name that sort of means "Rare Sports,"... it's one of those translations that can't really be translated. Maybe if I stay here long enough, I'll understand what it really sounds like to a Chinese person. The English version of my first column is here.

Anyway, all of that should give you some idea how busy I am. If you want to know what I'm up to, the sports site is a better bet than here for a couple of months.

Earthquake!

The answers are "Yes," and "Yes." Yes, I am okay. And yes, I felt the earthquake. But no, I did not know what it was when I felt it.

Here's what I experienced:

Around 2:30 in the afternoon, I was sitting in my apartment working when I suddenly felt really queasy and off balance. I thought it was because I hadn't eaten lunch yet, so I put on my shoes and went out to get something to eat. Outside, the 250 or so migrant workers who are constructing this building across the street were all standing around in their yellow and read hard hats. I walked up to some of them and asked, "Why are you all taking a break at the same time?" They laughed so hard at me. "There was an earthquake!" I had to ask them a few times, because it's a new word for me.

Anyway, my stupid story aside, initial reports we were hearing for the first several hours were that maybe 10 or fewer people had died. Now I am hearing about 8,500 people. That's more believable for a 7.5-7.8 quake in a highly populated place. It's also more sad.

How Many? How Many?

There is a serious obsession here with counting things. People like to talk about how many English words they know and they want to know how many characters you know.

Random acquaintances often ask me how many countries and how many Chinese cities I have visited. When the topic of drinking beer comes up, men always ask how many bottles of beer I can drink. This once led to a very boring night of tediously downing lukewarm Budweisers in a bar in Lijiang's  ancient city, just to prove that I could in fact drink that much beer-flavored water. When my new roommate found out recently that I swim, she instantly asked, "How many meters can you swim?" Who wants to know how many meters they can swim?

The fact that you have never considered these questions is unacceptable.

+++++++++

As an aside, I am loving my new apartment and roommates. I live with a German guy and a newlywed couple--Chinese woman, Taiwanese man. Everyone seems completely reasonable, sane and easy to live with. The Taiwanese guy is a painter and we have these beautiful, huge, brightly colored canvases hanging in the living and dining room. The couple both laugh a lot, and it's great to be using Chinese at home. I also have a swimming pool and gym right here in the complex.

Visa Mafan

First, mafan is a word that anyone who plans to talk to me for the rest of my life should learn. The standard translation is "trouble," but of course it's not quite that simple. Here's an example of typical usage:

Friend 1: Did you register for the fall semester at Yunnan University?
Friend 2: Nah, too  I can't deal with all that paper work. Too mafan. I'm going to hire a private tutor.

Now I just want you all to know the new mafan that foreigners in China are dealing with ahead of the games. I've read a lot of small stories on it but this NY Times story does the best job so far of summing it all up and putting it in context.

Most critical to me at the moment is the visa mafan. Rules have become more obnoxious over the past few months, but last week they suddenly got really bad. Whereas it used to be easy to renew all kinds of visas from within China or to jet down to Hong Kong or Bangkok for a few days to get sorted out for another three to six months, now some reports say you have to go back to your home country and then can get only a one-month visa.

Before you get all excited about me coming back to NY for a visit when my current visa expires next month, check out this from a friend of mine who is a liaison for the New School's China program:

First - the regulations change and are not posted or communicated so people have shown up to pick up their visas to find out they need more info. In addition to the standard stuff (purpose of stay, duration,
etc) they have to show: hotel reservation, airline ticket (return ticket), bank statements, letters from the university in NYC.   As of today, I have sent them two letters from Yunnan Univ. and they are scrambling for another from The New School.  Not even sure if that is enough.

It's crazy.