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November 2000, I was in Henan Province. I wanted to vote but was not able to because I didn’t think far enough ahead. Oh well. People asked me, why vote? I told them it was very important and that it is every American’s right to vote. Then the inevitable question pops up, “will you vote?” Then I have to sheepishly say, well, not I can’t because I live in China.
Fast forward, November 2004, I find myself in China again. This time in Shanghai. On my blog that day I wrote this:
I have totally slacked off and here I am in far off China not being able to vote for the second presidential election in a row!! You see 4 years ago I was here in China and I didn’t vote and miraculously I didn’t learn my lesson and now 4 years later I am back in China with no ABSENTEE ballot. AAAAARRRRRGGG!
But the difference between 2000 and 2004 is that I was home in 2001 till 2004. So I have many reasons to have registered and gotten things sent to me. That kind explains this year.
Fast forward to today. November 4th 2008. I will miss another election. Perhaps one of the most important elections of my life, or at least my voting life. But perhaps everyone who is 31 years old with a family and who is paying taxes would say something like that.
So just like the first year in the Henan Province, China, and like my second missed Election Day in Shanghai, I will scan the internet, I will listen to the radio, I will talk to people and most likely try and call home to find out the winner as soon as I can.
Let’s hope it’s a clean and good election this year with a good outcome. And no craziness.
The boy is growing and growing. It is quite simply amazing to see him do everything that he does. He is definitely not a mass of cells. He is a living breathing, sometimes crying, handful but so much fun. He is learning daily and with every new thing that he learns he remembers it and files it away. We love sometimes just watching him.
Having the boy here in China was something of a crazy situation for me. For my wife though… having the boy wasn’t so bad since she used to life here… But for me and for my family back in the states it was nerve-racking to hear about what was happening. Recently I found someone else who has gone through a similar situation with having a baby in China. Their story is different because they were up in Beijing and both foreigners, but the story of bureaucracy and the feelings of a new father and mother are all too familiar. One of the classic lines was this one when they had to go to the police station and register their “illegal baby”… the policeman asked them:
“Did you break the law intentionally or were you ignorant of it?”
So there it was. Are you a criminal or an idiot? Even I could see which way this one would cut, so I cast my lot with idiot.
“I had no idea.”
He grunted and finished the paperwork…
Just makes me laugh because I had a similar visit to the Entry/Exit bureau here in Shanghai. They were nasty to my wife, I think the guy woke up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, but they were nice as could be with me. It’s kind of hit or miss with these kind of places anywhere you go! After the initial visit I had to go back for further questions. I got the same guy who had been nasty to my wife. I guess that day he had also woken up on the wrong side of the bed. Too bad.
Do Chinese celebrate Halloween?
Of course not. That would be an American asking. The question is as silly as “Do American’s celebrate Spring Festival?” Of course not. Must be a Chinese asking.
But there are thousands of Chinese in the West who celebrate Spring Festival and there are thousands of Americans in China who celebrate Halloween. Especially those with children.
This week we’re trying to use our imagination to think of funny or interesting costumes for people to wear that are inspired by China. Perhaps you can write your own ideas of Halloween costumes! The sky is the limit.
Also don’t forget if you have lived in China and you’ve had funny stories about Halloween in China please go here and send us the stories. We’ll try and make them into funny cartoons.
The China Daily a couple years ago talked about how popular Halloween is in China. They make most of the stuff for Halloween in China anyway…just like Christmas! So naturally Halloween will become more and more popular here in China.
And if you are really interested you can find Halloween costumes all made in China. Feels like I’m looking at an American catalog… THis link is from CHINA SUPPLIERS supplying the world with stuff made in China!
I’ve been in China for a couple years now teaching English. For two of those years I was at a University here in Shanghai. In 2004 I was an accident victim. You can read and see how I dressed up and what we did. In 2005 I was a chef. You can also read and see what we did and how I dressed up.
So let me be the first to say… HAPPY HALLOWEEN! From CHina!
Google or BAIDU?
Google.com or Baidu.com
谷歌还是百度？
Which one do you prefer?
This week that is the question on M and MX .com. Tell us what you think. Answer the poll and see what people in China are talking about.
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Does your country have a huge “Blogosphere?” China does. And it’s getting interesting.
First let me state that we’re talking about the English China Blogosphere. The actual Chinese blogosphere has completely exploded over the past couple years and broken a lot of these “WESTERN” blog rating websites. This is from the International Herald Tribune back in 2005.
China now has a 14.2 million-site “blogosphere,” with a new blog, or Web log, created every second, according to Technorati, a Web site that tracks blogs.
Western people want to find out which blog is the best and it turns out to be a Chinese website. They just shrug, scratch their heads and say, “well, that’s China.” Since they don’t understand Chinese and think that the language is insurmountable they just disregard it all and move on with their own lives. This is from 2005:
Something else happened as well. The Chinese showed up.
The new rankings, which feature recently popular blogs, have some similarities - especially at the top of the rankings. But they’re radically different outside the top 20. Of those 20 new blogs in the top 100, 11 are in Chinese.
Here is a European perspective but it sounds like an American speaking. Basically because the top blogs out there are in Chinese the guy just disregards them because, “they’re Chinese.”
I speak absolutely no Chinese, as a Dane I’d probably brush up my Spanish and French before learning a completely different language. That means that Technorati’s top 100 has lost value for me: As the list has become more diverse, it looses value for me, because my interests are not as diverse.
Well, stinks to be him and the rest of the people with that idea.
Let’s start at or somewhere near the beginning. The dawn of our China Blogosphere dates back around 2002. How can you be so sure you might ask? Well, the information is on the China Blog list. This is an exhaustive and almost annoying list of blogs that are even in a map showing you where all the people are blogging from. This list has the good the bad and the ugly. It also contains the updated, the regularly updated, the randomly updated and the no longer updated.
Most of the descriptions are the same: Joe in China or My Musings on China or What I think about China or (my favorite) My random thoughts about life in China. Perhaps the most traffic for a lot of these sites are from family and friends. Honestly it’s a lot easier to just write a blog about what you are doing than to write e-mails to a million of your friends. Plus you might miss one or two of your friends or family members and that might cause problems. It’s easier to pop a link into the e-mail and hope their internet skills are halfway decent.
There was a blog/news website that came out sometime in 2003 which updated a couple times a day and is always apolitical and fascinating for the foreigner. The name is even funny for both foreigner and Chinese. It seems like, from the archives, the first post was October 24th 2003 with the death of Song Meiling. Perhaps according to the Chinese that wasn’t a very auspicious story to start with but I’m sure the website, DANWEI has been going strong ever since.
According to another website conglomerate called Gothamist, they started back in 2003 too. But the archive system on their website is harder to figure out than my taxes last year, which was really hard, so I was unable to find out the first post of the Shanghaiist website. Funny how they don’t have a Beijingist. It wouldn’t be the same. Shanghai seems to fit. They focus on everything that happens in Shanghai. From new musicians coming to literature and old stuff to new stuff.
But it seems that the first blog out there to hit the blogosphere was around April 2002. The website has a clever name, one that you can’t really make fun of because it is very creative and cool. The American guy who writes the blog demands your respect right away. He’s the guy who also runs the China Blog List mentioned above and also writes in Chinese and speaks both Chinese and Japanese. His Chinese blog, hosted on the same site, started in January of 2003 and stopped somewhere around 2007. Understandably so, maintaining an English website, Chinese website and working full time would burn anyone out. The one thing I can’t figure out is at the top of his website he has an ever changing sentence of how long he’s been in China. Everytime I actually log on and not just read the RSS, it has a different number. Pretty cool.
The problem is this: most of the foreigners in China have read the vast amount of books that are on the local bookstore’s shelves. Books about life in China, (on Amazon there are more than 800 books) traveling in China, (on Amazon there are over 900 books) people who came to China, business in China, (a shocking 26,046 results!!!) crazy times in China etc. etc. This gives most foreigners an idea. “I’m going to live in China. I could write a book like these!” The first couple years their heads are swelling with ideas about how the life is fun, hard, easy, nice and different than home. They write a few things here and there but after a while they are too busy. We all get that way with teaching, tutoring, working, dating or just living. I think the most popular blog post out there on the English China Blogosphere goes like this:
Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. So much has been happening. I’ve been so busy with _________________…
or…
I’ve been home lately and I’ve taken a break from posting. Life in ___________ is ok but I miss China.
In other words they don’t take it seriously. There are millions of bloggers out there who say that you can make a good steady income from blogging. Can the people on the China Blogosphere do it?
Actually blogs are a good way, if you’re plan is ultimately to put the material in a book, to give yourself a creative outlet and see how the world reacts to your posts, writing and ideas. But there are a lot of people who are writing blogs who adopt an overinflated ego. Since they have traffic on their site and people are commenting, they post about different things that are irrelevant to China or the Chinese. They are able to slip in their political ideas and their problems with their home countries. I don’t want to link to them because they don’t need the traffic to continue to inflate their egos. But they know who they are. Politics should continue to stop at the shores even more so when you write a blog.
By the time my son can sit up at the computer, and by the time he is able to write his first post, the China blogosphere will be mature. Not fully mature but it wil be more mature than it is now. Actually I’m wondering if I really want my son to write on this blog or even spend a lot of time on the computer. But that is the way life is now and I’m sure that is the way it will be in the future. Even more so.
But so much has been written about experiences of foreigners in China. So much has been written about our misunderstandings. So much has been written about our foibles, faux pas and our friends. So what do we do with all this stuff? It’s content that is just sitting there and simmering. Somebody has to come along and put it all together. I’m envisioning a Hollywood blockbuster that takes the best of the best from all the stories that have been written and squishes them all toghether into a movie about the best and worst of life in China for the foreigner. It would be blocked of course but it would come out on the street for 5 yuan. Your names would be in the credits and I would make the money for thinking of the idea. Hopefully the check is in the mail.
Today’s cartoon is a bit of an exaggeration. I know. I’ve flown a couple times in China and I’ve had nothing but good experiences. At least nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to plane travel.
There was waiting. Delays. Cramped seats. Bumpy flights. Just like any other airline across the world.
The only thing they didn’t have was…
soggy baozi…
Have you traveled by air in China? Have you had good experiences? Bad experiences?
A nation's treasure is in its scholars.