I was just reading a pretty fascinating article over on The Guardian’s website entitled How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room. Whether China was actually at fault here, I can’t say for sure. I suspect they are, but of course I was not in the room.
The one thing that I did take notice of in this discussion was that the Chinese reportedly used a tactic that I had seen before many times when I worked in China. They imposed a delay:
The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country’s foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world’s most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his “superiors”.
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With the 20th anniversary of Tian’anmen approaching, I anticipate we’re going to see more and more stuff like this in the news:
A group of mothers of those killed in the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square has urged China’s leaders to fully investigate the deaths. Their call was issued as the 20th anniversary of the massacre approaches, and days ahead of the annual session of the National People’s Congress.
The Tiananmen Mothers want the government to name the dead, compensate families and punish those responsible. In an open letter, Chinese leaders were also urged to “break the taboo”. BBC News
Speaking of important anniversaries, I wrote a little about this over on Inventorspot.com. I encourage you guys to add my new Inventorspot China Tech blog (RSS) to your blogrolls and feed readers if you’d like to follow my occasional China-related thoughts and ramblings. As it’s a paid blogging position, I’ll be putting significantly more effort and thought into those articles, so you’ll likely find them far more insightful lengthy than past PandaPassport posts.
This video made the front page of youku today. It features a bunch of kids who are the product of “Sino-Foreign” cooperation, as the title says:
The responses to this video show a pretty clear division. Many Chinese people approve of this kind of “cooperation,” and while others show themselves a little less tolerant:
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Why are they all Chinese women with a foreign [man] (there are many old ones, the same as Zhang Ziyi)
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I also want to find a foreign wife~~
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They’re all very strong! I’m not sure I could satisfy a foreign women!!!
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In dogs, purebreds are valuable. How about people?
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I think if we are to talk of beauty, French-Chinese are the most beautiful of all the half-bloods.
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Mixed people are really beautiful.
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Some Chinese girls give themselves to old foreign men, I’m totally against it!
Some company in Hong Kong has come up with this brilliant scheme of selling full-moon cakes. As opposed to the regular Chinese mooncakes that you can buy leading up to mid-autumn festival. Mid-autumn festival of course is when the moon is at it’s fullest, so these cakes are especially appropriate. Check out the pics below:
Cheers to Grace for sending me that one!
From the Seven Castles Blog comes 130 signs you’ve been in China too long. I won’t re-publish the whole lot here, but instead I encourage you to head over to Seven Castles and read them all for yourself.
Here are a few that I found myself guilty of:
9. You buy a round trip air ticket in China.
11. You start calling other foreigners Lao Wai.
22. Your body no longer needs dairy products.
27. You have to pause and translate your phone number into English before telling it to someone.
34. You see some real cleavage and think WOW!
35. You ask fellow foreigners the all-important question “How long have you been here?” in order to be able to properly categorize them.
62. Firecrackers don’t wake you up.
67. You (male) wear white socks with your business suits.
76. The shortest distance between two points involves going through an alley.
113. You draw characters on your hand to make yourself understood.
117. You aren’t aware that one is supposed to pay for software.
119. You get offended when people admire your chopsticks skills.
121. Your collection of business cards has outgrown your flat.
One of the things that struck me when I initially came to China was how many wrinkly old men were walking around with far younger – and not-so-wrinkly – women on their arms.
While this happens, of course, in all cultures, it seems that China is far more accepting of sizable age gaps than most western countries are.
Here is a video that I just found on youku which show many famous couples, most of whom are comprised of a very old man, and a much younger, beautiful woman. I should note that not all of these examples are Chinese, there are some foreigners in there as well.
Who knows? Maybe the fact that this video is popular reflects a change in Chinese attitudes towards this situation? Is a ten or twenty year age gap more curious than it once was?
At 2:28 pm a nation-wide 3 mins of silence was observed, for those who died in the recent Sichuan Earthquake.
If the rest of the country was anything like Dalian, this is what it sounded like:
MP3 File
Noisy. But very touching when you hear a country express its emotion in unison.
