New Sounds of China （中国新声) is an (*ahem*) new bilingual Chinese-English radio show presented in collaboration between Resonance FM and London Chinese Radio. Their first episode features a solid cross section of studio and live recordings; some of the latter come from a recent experimental music festival in Beijing. Adding to the appeal is an interview, in Chinese, with Glorious Pharmacy's Li Tieqiao. Well worth a listen. You can hear their first show here. Oh, and, surprise! You'll likely need a proxy or VPN to access this if you're in mainland China.
London Chinese Radio offers the following summary:
A new show devoted to Chinese contemporary music in its many surprising guises. Broadcasting in a mish-mash of the world's three most popular languages - English, Chinese and Music - New Sounds of China hopes to challenge orientalist perceptions of Chinese music, and prove that there's more playing on the iPods of the People's Republicans than just Peking Opera. Presented by Wang Weilin and Paul Kendall, as a joint collaboration between Resonance FM and London Chinese Radio. Please contact the show via (insert e-mail address), to record your requests, recommendations and rants, and in return, we promise to steal the best ideas and claim them as our own. The show will be broadcast live across London on Resonance 104.4FM on Wednesdays from 6-7pm. You can listen to it from this link.
伦敦华语和 Resonance FM 合作，即将拨出一系列的中国地下音乐节目，名为《中国新声 》这些音乐显然和大家熟悉的来自香港台湾的流行乐完全不同。该节目将通过调频 104.4 FM 在周三下午6-7点播出。同时，您也可以通过我们的网上链接收听。The show will include music by Meihao Yaodian, Li Jianhong (李剑鸿) among others, and an exclusive interview with Li Tieqiao. Tune in and prepare for ... er, something !
I wish I came up with that column title myself, but alas, it was one of the creative editors at the Times Colonist. This week's column takes a look at the explosive growth of China's luxury goods industry:
Aside from fashion shows, high-end cosmetics and fancy Fujitsu tablet laptops, the fair also showcased a private Sikorsky helicopter valued at US$200,000.
"This is much more reasonable than buying the Ferrari," the sales agent told me.
Sikorsky is one of the companies that has launched a joint venture with a Shanghai firm to market its private helicopters. They've sold more than a dozen so far and see potential for rapid growth.
Beside the helicopter sat the red Ferrari with beautiful Chinese models sprawling all over the hood.
If you wanted to be a bit more environmentally friendly, the fair sold the most quintessential of Chinese goods, the bicycle. This bicycle was made by BMW and sold for almost US$10,000.
The whole article can be found here.
In an unrelated note, readers may have noticed that our comments feature has been turned off. This is because of a massive volume of spam which hit our servers in the past few days. We will be changing hosting providers and blogging software soon, and comments should be back open then.
BEIJING - QQ News is reporting that two foreigners beat a Chinese man in Shenzhen who asked them not to urinate in public on the evening of May 7.
The website says the two men relieved themselves in the middle of Shangbu and Sugang roads in the city's Futian area. A Chinese citizen surnamed Zhang asked the foreigners not to relieve themselves in public, and noted the street had just been cleaned.
The website says the foreigners responded by beating Mr. Zhang, leaving his face bloodied. The two foreigners, whom local police say were intoxicated, were taken into custody. They refused to apologize to Mr. Zhang claiming they didn't understand Chinese. They also refused to pay an RMB 10,000 fine.
The full version of the story, in Chinese, can be found here.
BEIJING - As if going through airport security isn't enough (although it seems much easier in China than it does in the still panicky United States), now Beijing's subway security will be stepped up prior to the Olympic Games in August.
China portal NetEase (163.com) is reporting that security at all of Beijing's subway stations - including Lines 1, 2, 5, 10 (as yet unopened), 13, and the Batong Line - will see security guards, sniffer dogs, and x-ray machines in place by the end of June.
Passengers will be checked prior to boarding the trains, including personal checks of liquids, such as water, which passengers may be carrying.
With millions of people traversing Beijing's rapidly-expanding network of subway lines each day, one wonders what kinds of delays this might cause. Might be wise to leave a little extra time for that commute.
The full story, in Chinese, can be found here.
(Thanks to SY for sending the story, and XQ for translation).
Now that the torch is on home soil it was expected that the protests would die down. It seems as though this is not quite the case.
Unknown protesters in Shenzhen attack Olympic runners and extinguish the flame
In a stunning blow to China's prestige, two local protesters shocked hundreds of cheering bystanders when they unexpectedly extinguished the Olympic Torch today near the Window of the World, a theme park in the Shenzhen industrial zone near Hong Kong.
It also seems as though a video is going to be made available on the website a little later today - I'll keep you posted.
Full story available here.
UPDATE - As promised a video has finally surfaced - though what good it will do is anyone's guess. Personally I do not think that it shows the torch being extinguished by protesters, more likely due to over-crowding. The 'action' (if you can call it that) starts at around 2:00.
Ok so I realise that I've not contributed to ZNH for a little while (there's a variety of reasons for this - but I'll not bore you) and every now and again something passes my desk, or is whispered in my ear that is too good (or odd) to pass up.
I was casually surfing around when I found this blog post at the China Herald
And I have to say I was rather taken aback. Why on Earth would anyone feel the need to ban a performance of Pinocchio? What is it in the story that offends!?
Let me give you a quick synposis...
When the gentle woodcarver Geppetto builds a marionette to be his substitute son, a benevolent fairy brings the toy to life. The puppet, named Pinocchio, is not yet a human boy. He must earn the right to be real by proving that he is brave, truthful, and unselfish. But, even with the help of Jiminy, a cricket who the fairy assigns to be Pinocchio's conscience, the marionette goes astray. He joins a puppet show instead of going to school, he lies instead of telling the truth, and he travels to Pleasure Island instead of going straight home. Yet, when Pinocchio discovers that a whale has swallowed Geppetto, the puppet single-mindedly journeys into the ocean and selflessly risks his life to save his father, thereby displaying that he deserves to be a real boy.
Now, forgive me if I am wrong - but isn't this a story about the discovery of oneself? About being unselfish and telling the truth?
Somebody please tell me what I'm missing here.
John Kennedy at Global Voices Online has translated an interesting piece being circulated online (h/t to ESWN). An overseas Chinese student in Korea claims that Chinese people residing in and visiting the country are now potentially unsafe following last month's torch relay protests, which turned violent:
Near where we live there's this big lady who's always been really nice to me, stopping to ask how I've been whenever she sees me. I waved hi to her today, and then she suddenly turned her head in the opposite direction. Then later my roommate came home with red eyes and when I asked what was wrong, I found out that as she was taking the subway back, just translating some assignment work, the Korean male student sitting beside her saw her checking the Chinese, and immediately asked, "너 중국인요?" (are you Chinese?), and my friend asked, 'so what if I am?' He immediately replied, " 중국개새끼" (the Chinese are inbred dogs). My friend snapped right back, "너 개새끼잖아" (you, maybe), and didn't expect then that several Koreans standing nearby would suddenly rush over and surround her, saying all at once thing like, "they always say the Chinese people have terrible character, now today I sure enough see that it's true," until my friend had no choice but to run off as soon as the subway stopped, even though it wasn't her stop. Things like this have been happening a lot these past two days. I've been asking my friends, and most of them have more or less come across it, and now we don't dare go out alone, and don't dare come back too late. When we're alone we don't dare speak Chinese.
This video of Chinese protesters in Seoul beating Koreans has also been circulating online:
The full Global Voices post can be read here. It's well-worth a look.
BEIJING - This week here in China, the media coverage from the national media organs has been dominated, as one might expect, by President Hu Jintao's trip to Japan. And what is interesting to watch, particularly from a media awareness point of view, is just how additionally cautious Xinhua is being surrounding the content it's putting out surrounding the trip.
Xinhua is, by nature, generally very conservative. If there is even the remotest possibility of upsetting someone within the upper echelon of power in government, Xinhua will avoid it like 7 year old avoiding her creepy uncle. That said, even at the most critical of times, Xinhua will at least make mention of certain issues 'country X' and China have. But this gem from the state-run monolith, to me, epitomizes just how much pressure surrounds President Hu Jintao's trip to Japan this week.
TOKYO, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda held talks in Tokyo Wednesday on furthering the strategic and mutually beneficial relations between the two countries.
Chinese Foreign Ministry officials said the two leaders discussed bilateral relations and other issues of common concern.The two leaders are expected to attend a signing ceremony for mutual cooperation documents and meet the press following their talks.
Earlier in the day, the Chinese president met Japanese Emperor Akihito, who hosted a welcome ceremony for the visiting Chinese leader.
Hu arrived in Tokyo Tuesday for a five-day state visit aimed at boosting bilateral relations. This marks the first visit by a Chinese head of state to Japan in 10 years.
In a written statement issued at the airport upon his arrival in Tokyo, the president said the development of a long-term stable and good neighborly relationship between China and Japan is in the fundamental interests of both countries and both peoples.
Hu expressed the hope that his visit will help enhance mutual trust, strengthen friendship, deepen cooperation and inspire plans for the future. He added that China will work together with Japan to open up new prospects for comprehensively pushing forward their strategic and mutually beneficial relations.
Hu's visit to Japan is seen as a step to further improve the once-chilly relationship between the neighbors, which began to warm with former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "ice-breaking" visit to China in October 2006. That event was followed by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's "ice-thawing" trip to Japan last April and Fukuda's "spring-herald" visit to China last December.
In an interview with Japanese journalists in Beijing on Sunday, Hu described his visit to Japan as a "trip of warm spring" and wished for a "warm spring for the friendship between the two peoples."
Don't get me wrong. Xinhua has never been viewed as a bastion of hard-hitting information by any stretch of the imagination. However, the inherent lack of anything substantive seems, in my estimation, to show that the government is really trying to make sure that nothing offends the current Fukuda administration during Hu Jintao's visit. The larger question in my mind though, is why has Beijing all of a sudden decided to enter into this 'love-in' with Japan right now? Fukuda's current hold on the leadership of the LDP in Japan is tenuous at best right now. If the current political climate in Japan continues on the path it's on at the moment, odds are Fukuda won't be Prime Minster by the time 2008 comes to an end. And the odds of finding another LDP leader who is willing to placate China the way Fukuda has is pretty minimal. So, from a political perspective, this current state of rapprochement from Beijing toward Tokyo may well leave the Chinese government in a difficult situation if a hard-liner takes over as the Prime Minister in Japan.
I've always been in support of China and Japan building a stronger relationship. The mudslinging that's taken place between the two countries over the last 10 years has gone from sublime to ridiculous and back again. And while both sides should be applauded for at least trying to make the effort, the political realities in Japan are more than likely going to swing the pendulum the other way in the not-too-distant future.
BEIJING - I had the luxury of attending Beijing's Pine Valley golf course last weekend, and it's definitely impressive. The course holds the Pine Valley Beijing Open, and was designed by none-other than Jack Nicklaus himself.
We were there to tape an episode of Tianjin Business Traveler focusing on golf. We visited the Yangliuqing Golf Course in Tianjin (which, for my money, beats the stodginess and pretension of Pine Valley any day) and wanted to showcase what a real members-only luxury club looked like.
Pine Valley charges USD $150,000 for membership, and only 400 members are admitted to the club (making it China's answer to Augusta National). As the club is situated in Changping County, a good 90 minute drive out of town, plans were made to sleep in the club's luxury hotel for the night as we needed to continue shooting in the morning.
Somewhere along the way, however, our crew seemed to anger the management at Pine Valley. While my Chinese is passable at times, whatever it was that caused such an uproar was beyond my limited listening scope. Of course, my crew didn't notify me that we had a problem. Once we wrapped up shooting around midnight, I asked my producer if we were staying in the hotel. Only then did he let me know "there might be a problem."
Sure enough, there was. We were being sent out to fend for ourselves in the dusty suburb of Changping County. The PR advisor at the course was helpful, and took us to "the best" hotel in the area. It was about a 15 minute drive away. By now, it was approaching 12:30am.
She checked us into the hotel. Our crew of 5 people took three rooms (with me, the lucky laowai, getting his own private room). They asked for my passport. Not anticipating this situation, I hadn't brought it (yes, I know, it is law for foreigners to carry passports at all times... but who really does that?!?).
Whatever, they seemed to let me stay anyway, because the golf course PR manager passed me the room key and we all went upstairs. I walked into my room and saw a hand-print on the wall, above the bedframe, that I hope was done in chocolate -- but I couldn't really tell. Whatever, I was exhausted, closed the door, cleaned up, and crashed on the bed.
That's when I got a knock on the door. It was my producer. He said the PR manager booked my room under her name, and when she tried to leave downstairs the front desk asked where she was going. It turns out my failure to bring a passport wasn't the problem at all, it was this: this particular hotel had not received approval from the local Public Security Bureau to allow foreigners to stay.
The PR manager and my visibly tired producer told me to try and sleep while they went out and searched for another hotel. I indeed did fall asleep, until there was another knock on my door. This time it was two fully-uniformed police officers, who wanted me out - now. It was 2am.
To their credit, the police officers weren't rude about it. I told them where I live, how long I've been in China, my passport number, and the fact I was with an entire crew from the TV station. Still, it wasn't good enough. I argued that I had stayed half the night there anyway, there was nowhere else to go, and couldn't they just let me sleep? Nope. I had to leave.
My producer and the PR manager returned empty-handed... there was no other hotel they could find in Changping, let alone one that would accept a foreigner. With no options, I had no choice but to head back to Beijing. It was about 2:30am.
I've spoken to a person who works at a law firm in Beijing who claims that a law requiring hotels to receive approval before admitting foreigners was struck from the books back in 2003. She argues that foreigners should legally be allowed to stay anywhere now, but that some hotels may not be aware of the change.
Oddly, this isn't the first time this has happened. I once had a reservation (made through my girlfriend) at a Home Inn south of Guomao in Beijing. When we walked in the front door and tried to check in, they bluntly asked if I would stay. I said yes. And they said I couldn't because I was a foreigner.
I did a quick search online to see if I could gather any information about this apparent regulation, but turned up nothing. If anybody knows, I would love to hear how this works. I only hope that Olympic visitors don't get caught in this mess.
That night in Changping County certainly wasn't one of my best times in China. There were no taxis in Changping to take me home, so the producer and driver decided to take me to North 5th Ring. One the way there, we got into a car accident with one of those giant rigs.
It was sure nice to hit the pillow... albeit sometime after 5am.
By Saul Symonds
HONG KONG - Hong Kong is constantly striving to uphold it's image as one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world. Earlier this year the Hong Kong government launched a city-wide WiFi program that planned to turn the entire territory into a WiFi hotspot. Priority was given to busy public places, including libraries, public inquiry service centers, community halls and centers, as well as parks and Government buildings.
These measures have now been extended to Olympic coverage by Hong Kong's i-Cable Communications, who have exclusive new media rights to the Beijing games. This week the company announced the launch of a free WiFi service at around 800 hotspots for Cable TV's official Olympic website.
In Hong Kong's bustling metropolis, such a move will enable locals and tourists to keep up to date with the Games using their laptops, mobile phones or other portable PDA devices on a regular basis.
