The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas

I just watched this film, which I had never heard of before, but is aparently the cinematic adaptation of a well-known novel.

It is an emotional tale of a brutal Nazi, who moves his family into the German countryside, near the labour camp for which he is responsible, only for his 8 year old son to strike a bizarre kinship with a boy in the camp. It's a little like the Kite Runner from this point of view, where the two boys share a common childhood innocence, yet in circumstances that we are constantly reminded of.

Its a brutal and harrowing film, yet endearing and thought-provoking at times as well....
It was around at the similar time of other, more covered, World War 2 films Valkyrie, and Defiance.
It's been overlooked and probably under-rated because of this, I would recommend it to anyone who believes that often the most inspiring tales are born from the cruelest times....

The Philosophy of "Just".....

This morning, I had a class for Political Communication, to discuss the use of 'fear tactics' in political campaigns and in the media. We were asked 'what are we most afraid of?', as students who are on the verge of graduating from University after 4 years. Most people agreed that the biggest 'fear' facing them was the prospect of not getting a job. Given the economic environment at the moment, we can hardly move for someone telling us that unemployment is at an all time high, and that we're all doomed to a life of soup-kitchen sandwiches and dole cues. An example is given that a student who graduated with our degree last year is yet to find a job, despite consistent performance at university and having the 'nice guy' quality that always wins in a job interview. I'm pretty sure though, that say 3 or 4 years ago when the economy was at it's brightest, there were still a few graduates floating around in no-mans land a year or two after completing their degree, in fact I'm sure of it, I know a bunch of people who "couldn't find a job" or said that "there are no jobs" and ended up working flat out at bars, supermarkets, restaurants and so on. I really don't think the situation has changed much since then, if you're employable then you'll get employed; OK maybe you'll have to put more effort into making yourself more employable, but the principle remains the same.

The conversation drifted into a bit of a tangent there-after, when questioned as to why they wanted to "just get a job", consensus was that "a job" was really all that mattered, hence the "just". "Just" getting a job, so that we can "just" buy a house and a car, and "just" earn money. Why? Because "at the end of the day", paying the bills is what matters. It's hard to argue against this, because we all do need to survive, and paying bills helps. People always back-down when money comes into play, especially if the argument is with a single mother against a tv chef who is hell bent on persuading her not to "feed her starving children" with battery powered chickens. "But I'm a single mother, I don't have that much money" - "Oh, OK, fair enough".

It was suggested that adopting the philosophy of "just", was at the root of anti-social behavior and alcoholism in Britain. As people use "just" in their day to day life, they are driven positively insane at the weekends to the point of mindless violence and anger. This gets even worse when we go on holiday and smash up a small Greek island for a couple of weeks in summer. Britain is an achieving country, that is in small doubt, we've had a consistently strong economy, arguably due to the fact that we have one of the longest working days in Europe. Yet we have persistent social and cultural deficits, arguably due to the fact that we have one of the longest working days in Europe. The philosophy of "just" works in some domains, whilst leaves others in ruin.

Do something you love, something which you're passionate about, wealth doesn't have to mean money, love, family, friends and life happiness are true wealth.

1989

"it was true that the 1989 student movement was being manipulated by someone, wasn't it? The students had nothing but boiling emotions and superficial knowledge of politics. We started only the cleaning up of corruption and smuggling by officials, yet the slogan were somehow led through a transformation into ones "demanding democracy". There is huge difference in political implication between these two classes of demands. So what was democracy? What kind of democracy was practiced in the west? What kind of democracy would benefit China? Frankly, I (we) didn't know".

written by a former student who took part in the student protests in China in 1989, which eventually led to the now infamous incident at Tiananmen Square on June 4th.

Beyond perfection, is destruction.

Today's lesson: Fen Qing

'Fen qing' means literally "angry youth" in Chinese, and refers to a particular type of individual playing a particularly significant role in contemporary Chinese society. They are typically young men, often students, who appear to spend the majority of their time patrolling the Internet for potentially defamatory comments about their homeland. An important characteristic of a fenqing is the unquestionnable loyalty to and complete acceptance of what the Party says. They are most notibly active during times at which the country is on the defensive, the national media tend to launch an offensive on whichever country has pissed them off (last year's Tibet protests for instance, increasingly saw France on the recieving end of the fenqing's attacks).

Some of the current viewpoints of the fenqing:

- U.S. is a monolith. America is bad, bad and bad because Bush is bad.
- Anti-Japan and call for boycotting Japanese products while enjoying Japanese AV or cartoons.
- China’s stock market slumps because of the conspiracy of the imperialist western countries. The price of housing in China skyrocketed because of the hot money of the international speculators.
- Western countries led by the U.S. are trying to encircle and contain China.
- The Internet should be censured and any bad information, like the flies or mosquitoes outside the room, must be screened and filtered.
- CNN is evil because it lied, but it is fine for CCTV to modify the information to maintain the stability of the society.

This post from ThinkWierd goes into greater detail on this interesting phenomenon.

What is discourse analysis?

I've been struggling with discourse analysis, and the difference between textual/content/critical discourse analysis. My interpretation of texts seems to be too simplistic, so I've started trailing through books and journals to try and get a clearer understanding of what it's all about.

Firstly, Wikipedia says that in discourse analysis the word "discourse" is often used as shorthand for "discursive formation" meaning large heterogeneous discursive entities. In social sciences, discourse is considered to be an institutionalized way of thinking that can be manifested through language, a social boundary defining what can be said about a particular topic, as Judith Butler puts it, "the limits of acceptable speech".

A few journals I came across talk about Fairclough's methods of discourse analysis. He formed the branch known now as critical discourse analysis, which has a 3-tier framework: analysis of texts, interactions and social practices at the local, institutional and societal levels. Furthermore, each discursive event (discourse): it is a spoken/written text; it is an instance of discourse practice; and it is part of social practice.

- The analysis of the text involves the study of language structures (which I take to mean grammar, vocabulary, sentance structure etc.) produced in a discursive event (which I take to mean a discourse)
- Analysis of the discursive event involves examining the production, consumption and reproduction of texts
-The analysis of socio-cultural practice (what's being done/said) involves an exploration of what is happening in a particular socio-cultural framework (what's going on at the time).

Critical Discourse Analysis, according to Fairclough, attributes 3 dimensions to every discourse: text, discursive practice, and social practice. (Titscher et al. 2000: p.149-150)

I have this information, but I still don't know how to put to use when doing my analysis of the China blogs.........

~~Keep reading~~

Britain, let me Love you again

I'm torn, when it comes to describing my feelings towards my country, between the love of a Great nation that has historically proved itself to be one of the free-est speaking and pioneering in the world, and of frustration and sadness with a nation in which the frown is fast becoming the facial expression of choice. I love Britain, we are a dilligent and wise persona with roots in the very creation of a free harmonious society, despite what David Cameron might say about Broken Britain. Yet, something has tripped us up in recent years that has seen our nation descend into paranoia, madness, fear and greed. I can't go anywhere without having to show an ID card to a security guard, a bus ticket to an inspector, a passport to a banker, I need to provide ID to get more ID, soon enough I'll have to pay for an ID that I don't need or want, but will needless to say be demanded to show at all of the aforementioned instances. I hear on the news that a doctor thinks taxes should be raised on chocolates (!), and that alcohol prices will go up, and that legal drinking age will go up, for our own good (what?).

I love Britain, why? I love some of the small traditions we have: I love fish and chips, not a healthy meal by all means, but then again no-one would seriously think about eating it all the time (right?). I love a pint of beer down at my local pub, but I wouldn't drink every night, and when I do drink I don't keep doing so until I think I can fly and/or bottle/knife someone.

Poor health and anti-social behaviour are problems in Britain, to solve this, it is suggested that booze and chocolate are made more expensive. I refute this; money cannot be used to solve a cultural deficite that has initially been created by money itself. Abundance and lack of self control have meant that people who like a drink or a slice of cake don't know where to stop in their indulgence and in doing so have lost what made our country Great to begin with.

Putonghua

I made a note of these phrases that I came across last year, whilst browsing the older pages of my notebook during a particularly dry afternoon, productiveness-wise, in the library today, I was reminded of them. I feel that these words will come into play quite soon in my life.....
In the order that I wrote them in my notebook....
bi yie - graduation
da xue bi yie - university graduation
yi zhuan yen - in the blink of an eye
you qu xi - have good future prospects

shang xue de shi ho xiang gong zou - when I was studying I wanted to work

xien zai bi yie le, bu xiang... - now that I have graduated, I don't want to...

ban shi - knowledge and skills

ming zhong zhu ding - it's destiny

Zhao Ziyang's 3 significant concepts

"Under the leadership of Zhao Ziyang, the thirteenth National Party Congress in October 1987 put political reform, and as part of it, journalism reform on the national agenda. Significantly, in Zhao's report to the Party Congress, mention of the press' role as the mouthpiece of the Party, which reportedly had been in early drafts, was dropped after extensive debate. 'Political transparency', a glasnost-like phrase, was used to advocate greater openness in government and more reporting of the political process. Zhao affirmed three significant concepts:

1. That the Party should have "Supervision by public opinion" (yu lun jian du)
2. That the Party should inform the people about important events (zhong da shi qing rang ren min zhi dao)
3. That the people should participate in the discussion of important issues (zhong da wen ti jing ren min tao lun)

While these notions did not challenge the Party's fundamental assumptions, they did suggest significant moves towards less paternalistic and more democratic communication and decision making."

Zhao (1998: p.35,36)

Chinese - on Ken's terms.....

I've been listening to Chinesepod lessons from this guy for the past 4 years, admittedly probably not as frequently as I could have, but who has the time. Ken Carrol has a full page write-up in the FT paying homage to his successes. Chinese is becoming a popular choice for language learners these days, I'll see you all on the band-wagon.

From the Financial Times:

Ken Carroll is challenging a basic tenet in the global economy: that we all need to learn Mandarin Chinese to conquer the world’s largest market – but that learning Chinese is boring. Mr Carroll, a Shanghai-based language teacher turned internet entrepreneur, says that does not have to be so: he has pioneered a painless podcast method for learning Mandarin, and nearly a quarter of a million people worldwide are using it on Chinesepod.com, which sends daily Man­darin lessons to iPods and Google phones around the world.

Chinesepod revenues have defied the global economic downturn, too, rising 250 per cent from December 2007 to the same month last year and climbing strongly again in January, according to the company. Study without suffering may sound too good to be true, but there seem to be plenty of people willing to listen to this particular siren song, especially now that more professionals are taking enforced vacations from the workforce, giving them time to learn new skills such as languages.

Investment analysts think education in China could even prove to be a recession-proof business. Bejing’s National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language says 40m foreigners studied Mandarin last year. Chinesepod is riding that wave: with China’s economy expected to grow by 8 per cent this year – compared with a flat global economy – learning Chinese has rapidly begun to look like a clever investment.

Photos, past, present and future.....

Yesterday looked through some of the photos we've taken over the past few years: a week in Spain in 2006, relaxing at the beach and eating tapas in the afternoons; a month in China the year after, cruising on a bamboo raft down the tranquil Li River, strolling through Jiuzhaigou valley gazing at the crystal waters and the cloud-covered mountains, drinking whisky all night in Shenzhen with Lin's relatives. Last March, a week in New York sight-seeing that resulted in painful legs and crooked necks, however it remains one of the ultimatly 'coolest' cities I've ever seen. Summer was spent travelling to Shanghai - which was a bit dissapointing, if not a bit surreal - a contrast to Hangzhou and Suzhou, two cities that despite thriving tourist industries retain their own charm and mystery, then we went to Xingning; a small city in Guangdong to see more of Lin's relatives. Finally, to Greece in October with old friends; street-side tavernas and ancient ruins in Athens, and peaceful tranquility and sunsets in Santorini.

So many photos, so little time, so many memories: A reminder perhaps that two souls are born to travel forever together.

This journey inspires another trip, several places already on the wishlist: Norway, Bruges, Istanbul, Taiwan, Japan, Xinjiang, Thailand, Cambodia, Isle of Wight....

Jiu Zhai Gou

This months edition of National Geographic has run a piece about JiuZhaiGou, a nature reserve in China's Sichuan Province. Reading it a few days ago rekindled fond memories of the summer of 2007 when me and Lin went to Sichuan, and to JiuZhaiGou; its mysterious, idyllic and romantic landscapes are truly a breathtaking sight, and its generally a humbling place to spend time, however this article suggests deeper and more sinister roots to this thriving tourist haven. Here are some extracts from the article:

China's Mystic Waters

"Jiuzhaigou means "valley of nine villages," because it once harbored nine, but other numbers are more significant now. About 80 hotels are clustered cleanly at the mouth of a Y-shaped, 20-mile-long valley in the Min Mountains of central China, where 280 buses wait to shuttle this day's 18,000 or so visitors up the very pretty route, past a chain of flower-colored, ribbony lakes and fingery waterfalls, underneath escarpments chevroned with maple, spruce, or bamboo forests cut by the talus of old landslides. Boardwalks circuit the little lakes and reedy creeks, and the buses stop to let parties of trippers stroll at their own pace".

"The geology in this part of the Tibetan Plateau is not granite, like the Sierras, but seabed, like our Rockies, so its limestones, dissolving, color the waters emerald or turquoise in a certain light or enhance the mirroring of an azure sky. Avalanches, in blocking the creeks, sculpted the lakes, but by legend, sky goddesses dropped their cosmetics into several, and mermaids swam in others. Calcium carbonate deposits on the bottom sometimes assumed fanciful shapes—sleeping dragons or whatnot".

"Along the bus route there's a Golden Bell Lake, Grass Lake, a Pearl Shoals Falls, Arrow Bamboo Falls, a Five Flower Lake and Five Colored Pond, a Sparkling Lake, Tiger Lake, Bonsai Lake, Swan Lake, Rhinoceros Lake, Double Dragon Lake, Reed Lake, Panda Lake, and Mirror Lake, which reflects, as the others do, the menagerie of the clouds, the birches, willows, and pines, the tinctures and hues of sunrise and sunset on rock faces and cliffs. Five shades of green, three of scree. Although the names sound promotional, Buddhist mysticism, and certainly the Bon religion that predated it and underlies it for many Tibetans, animated these lakes and rivers with spirits that the mineralized waters might fortuitously personify, whether mermaid or monster".

The 'hyper-real' order of the Chinese Panda

"The black-masked eyes of the pandas ubiquitously displayed on placards around the region look more tear-stained than cuddly like a nursery toy. A million of these must have been manufactured by now for every specimen that remains, uncute, in the wild"

"The intensely lovely little Jiuzhaigou complex of chromatic lakes in glacially awled mini-­valleys is already nearly bereft of the tubby black-and-white pandas that once thrived here—an animal now trumpeted by the government as "our national treasure" but displaced wholesale by heedless logging and a die-off of bamboo during the last decades of the past century; more than one Tibetan described the decimation to me. Masticating bamboo shoots in a semireclining position, like a sea otter munching mollusks while lounging on its back, the panda has become an endearing emblem for conservationists worldwide and carries a heavy load in this supercharged robber-baron economy. Conservation would be a novel concept to anyone unacquainted with what is supposed to be preserved, such as wildness, wildlife, natural beauty. I noticed at the Beijing Zoo that the visitors seemed to have no feeling one way or another for the apparent thirst of the bears in their waterless pit or the metronomic jackals and wolves ticktocking in the heat. In the greenery of Chengdu's parks, the din of birdsong was so frenetic and dense as to imply an extreme scarcity of nesting spaces elsewhere. Only recently did the People's Republic bar the serving of delicacies like bears' paws at official government banquets, about the same time the Dalai Lama, in his Indian exile, urged his followers to end the wearing of tigers' or leopards' skins"

Transforming the spectacle of nature?

"Solitude is almost a vestigial pleasure, now that electronic entertainment can accompany us anywhere. Yet, if not from God, aren't we borrowing our planet from our children, as the saying goes, and if so, shouldn't we deliver it to them in habitable shape? Neither Marxism nor Buddhism would dispute that contention, except for the changing concept of what to think of as habitable. If we consider ourselves not just preeminent among but preemptive of any other form of life­—if people simply do not care, apart from culinary calculations, when few unfarmed fish are left, or roadless ridgelines without windmills pinwheeling on them, or snowfields or meadowlarks—then the few who do care and who wish to relax from the pell-mell continuum may have to obtain surround-sound film clips of Ansel Adams–type wilderness imagery for their wall-scale computer screens. Video virtualizations corresponding to white noise may outsell these because, in fact, we're getting to prefer virtualizing so fast. But queues of citizens will still be trundled in, as at Jiuzhaigou, to tread the boardwalks and purchase tchotchkes from costumed hawkers at the end of the bus route. The harlequin pattern of crib and playroom pandas, like tiger camouflage, is with us to stay. Jungle-striped but captive-bred, the cats remain as de rigueur for zoos as pandas are going to be after the trees are gone, much like the replicated Tibetan monasteries with correct facades and paint schemes but no monks living inside." 
Full article at: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/jiuzhaigou/hoagland-text/1

Perhaps paradise is not what it seems.....? Decide for yourself.

Here are some of my own photos from Jiu Zhai Gou, taken in July 2007
.

GuangdongHua - Where?

Bin Do - Where?
Gaw Do - There
Nei Do - Here

tsi saw hai bin do a? - Where is the toilet?

The Line has moved because the People have pushed it.~~~

There has been a huge increase in the number of bloggers and blogs in China in recent years, which many have argued will pave the way for a 'Free' China in years to come. Many have attached great hope and expectations to the Internet's ability to promote the principles of democracy in countries such as China, where it has been previously suppressed. It is true that the rise of the Internet, and all the it comes with, that we as a global community have grown closer and become more connected, however it may seem to be a fairly simplistic assumption that this alone will achieve democracy in places where democratic freedom is not allowed.

We are so often told that freedom of speech is violently suppressed in China and that the media is operated under the watchful eye of the state, where mentions of Tibet, 1989, Falun Gong and Taiwan are among some of the politically sensitive topics that are off-limits to journalists. China, under the leadership of Hu Jintao, places great emphasis on maintaining a 'harmonious society' and that social instability and dissidence are among the greatest threats to the nation. This is a country of over 1 billion people, so its understandable that the government want to maintain social stability, an uprising of any great relevance could have disastrous implications for China - especially undesirable given their current status as the emerging global power. The Party goes to great lengths to ensure that this kind of dissidence does not get out of hand; employing the most advanced and sophisticated filtering capabilities in the world (The Golden Shield Project). In addition to this, in exchange for entering the Chinese Internet market, companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have developed software which filters certain information, usually through blocking searches for a key-word, and prevents those in China accessing the same information as those outside. To combat this censorship, the American government as well as several NGO's (Freedom House, CPJ, etc.) have invested in promoting so called 'free-speech' in China through the use of circumvention software, such as Ultra-Reach.

China is estimated to have 47 million bloggers with 72 million blogs, a number which is rising daily. Blogs generally cover a number of topics, personal life, commentary, specialist topics, hobbies, food, travel, news, current affairs and politics. Some bloggers have caused unrest and controversy in China (Hu Jia, Xu Lai, etc.) because of their writings, but generally blogs serve as an outlet for citizens to vent frustrations, comments, and opinions on aspects of their everyday life.

I personally don't like the imperialist and elitist attitude taken by the western press over China; there is censorship and filtering in our countries as well, and considering our companies developed the software for China, were not in any position to start lecturing others on democracy and free speech. The way I see it, is that the mainstream media is generally in decline, what I see in our media on a daily basis is fairly uninspiring, and the prospect that ordinary citizens can now create their own news medium, a platform for debate, discourse and opinion can only be a good thing in a global media environment that has been totally saturated by advertising and manipulated by PR. This is as good a thing for the people of China as it is for everyone else in the world.

Laura Ling has an interesting film on the rise of blogging in China.

http://current.com/items/85283491/great_firewall_of_china.htm

For more on the Golden Shield Project and the 'Great Firewall' see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Shield_Proje