I came across some nice shots of the panda reserve in Sichuan, with 16 panda cubs newly introduced at the facilities there.

Pretty cute stuff!

I’ve recently finished writing the complete text of my first draft of the Suzhou travel guide I’ve been engaged to write.  It took me a while to get into a groove with it, but once I did, I spent long hours at a time thinking of nothing but Suzhou and how best to present it to first-time visitors to that wonderful ancient city.  Somewhere around the 25,000th word or so that I wrote, I began to wonder when Suzhou-overload would set in.  In the midst of editing and rewriting now, I think I have an answer — it won’t.  There is just so much to this city.  It is so layered, with so many facets to it, that it’s easy to sort of switch gears and start thinking about something else, and yet something still Suzhou-related.  It makes for a very fun writing experience.

This is the first full-length travel guide I’ve written.  I’m pretty happy with the information there so far, though the writing is a little weak in some parts at the moment (it’ll be fine before too much longer, though, I think).  Overall, I have to say that writing travel guides is really a lot of fun, if this experience is any indication.

Now wish me luck — I’d sure like to get a few more gigs like this!

The recent issue of PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies (Vol 6, No 2) focuses on China.  The issue, guest edited by Yi Zheng and Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, is full of fantastic insight into contemporary life in China.  It is scholarly and insightful, and I am really glad to have read it.

With the recent discussion here and elsewhere about the China-Google relationship, I’ve been thinking a lot about the boycotts of Carrefour by Chinese consumers a few years ago.  I enjoyed reading Pál Nyíri’s article about boycotts by Chinese consumers in this issue.

Stop in and have a look.  I am sure you will find a lot of things to keep you occupied once you pop in.

The Forbidden Kingdom is a fun, light-hearted film for people interested in Chinese culture and its representation in popular culture in the West.  The movie features big names in Chinese cinema, including Jacky Chan and Jet Li, and both make the movie lots of fun.

The movie centers around a boy, Jason, who is something of a misfit because of his interest in kungfu movies and other geeky sorts of entertainments.  He gets sucked into his fantasy world via a DVD he finds in a pawn shop, the classic kungfu film The Ten Tigers of Guangdong.  It is fun to watch him try to make his way through the world of old China, as much as it is fun to see how that world looks through Western eyes.

The overall plot is a little cheesy, but that’s OK.  It’s not really about an impressive plot, but about the fun aspects of a good Jacky Chan and Jet Li movie — outstanding choreography in the action scenes, and a lot of laughs.  It is a fun movie all round.  Not a bad way to while away a couple of hours.

Besides the excellent works of prose featured in the back issue (Winter 2008) of Asia Literary Review I recently read, there are on its pages some really nice works of poetry and art. I am no expert on the visual arts (far from it), but I really enjoyed Karen CL Cheung’s photo essay covering Chen Guang Ming’s series of paintings entitled Miners. The oil on canvas pieces do a fantastic job of capturing a glimpse into the lives of a segment of China’s society that is often overlooked — living a life practically buried under the earth of that huge nation — the coal miners in the north. Cheung’s essay adds some depth to the viewer’s understanding of the subjects pictured, while the paintings offer a lot of heart. It is a very nice combination.

The Chinese poets who appear in the issue are Shen Hao Bo and Yao Feng. Shen was born from Jiangsu province, and currently lives in Beijing. Yao, having studied at Beijing Foreign Studies University, serves as assistant professor in the Portuguese department of the University of Macau. This was the first time I read the work of either poet. Both poems are translated by Luo Hui.

Shen’s “Snow by the Wall” uses the metaphor of snow near a wall alongside a city street, but quickly turns it to “the cancer of snow.” The tone is a little too prose-y for my taste, but I am not sure whether that is a problem of the original or the translation. Seeing the translation of Yao’s work, I have to think that Luo has followed the original with the rather straightforward-sounding lines of Shen’s work.

Yao’s poem sounds a little more like verse, with syntax that sometimes disrupts rather than closely following typical speech patterns. The thought of the poem, however, is presented in a rather straightforward manner, seeming to leave little space for the reader. This is, though, perhaps a little deceptive. Upon multiple readings of the poem, I’ve found more there than I first thought — that the poem says more than it seems to on its surface. The opening line reads, “A friend visited me in the ancient city.” I am not sure what ancient city Yao imagined for his poem, but Suzhou immediately came to mind, since I’ve been working overtime this week on the Suzhou travel guide I’ve been engaged to write. Images of “the view in the distance” one would expect to see from Suzhou popped into my head, and added something to my reading of the poem. While the verse doesn’t seem to turn much — or at least, not very subtly — there is something in the way the poem ends that does actually open up space for the reader’s contemplation on the image drawn by the piece.

Overall, I actually enjoyed the prose and paintings by Chinese writers/artists more than I did the poetry in this particular issue of Asia Literary Review. But one way or another, there’s plenty of fine writing in the journal, by writers from China and other parts of Asia. I’ve got a few other back issues I’m eager to get to, having finished this one.

I’ve recently been reading a back issue of Asia Literary Review that I picked up at a second hand book store. It is the Winter 2008 issue. I thought it might be fun to have a look at what some of the Chinese authors featured on the pages had to say. I’ll start with a piece, though, that is not by a Chinese author, but is rather about life in China during the Japanese occupation.

Caroline Petit’s short story “Flight” opens the issue. It is a fun story of two foreigners in China during the Japanese occupation who meet on a train. Both are trying to escape from China. One will have no problem, with his Australian passport, but the other, a Russian lady, isn’t going to have it so easy. The story seems that it is moving along rather predictably, though it comes with a bit of a twist before all is said and done.

Petit’s writing is strong, and for anyone who’s very familiar with China and its history, I think the representations of the expats moving around during that time in China’s history will probably feel pretty familiar. There’s certainly at least a little bit of stereotyping going on (by race, nationality, occupation, etc.), but that is part of the fun. The tension that filled China during the occupation by Japan is captured pretty nicely, and serves as a perfect backdrop for the story to operate. Overall, I enjoyed Petit’s fiction.

The two works of prose in the Winter 2008 Asia Literary Review that were by Chinese writers were both memoirs. Both were well-written, but Chiu Kin Fung’s “Children of the Walled City” was probably my favorite of the two pieces (and maybe my favorite piece in the whole journal).

Chiu uses a pretty clever technique in getting his memoir underway, making reference in the third paragraph to Robert Ludlum’s representation of the Walled City in his novel The Bourne Supremacy. I remember reading the novel when it was fairly new, perhaps in 1989 or 1990, three or four years after its publication. The depictions of the Walled City in that story are vivid, and stuck with me for a long time after having read it. Chiu gives kudos to Ludlum for “how well he captures time and place” (p. 161). Then he goes on to tell us what the Walled City was like for those who were raised there, including Chiu himself.

Chiu’s telling of life in the Walled City doesn’t carry a real aroma of the seedy, dangerous lifestyle that most depictions of the place have. He looks nostalgically back on his childhood as a time of liberty and loyalty. He knew who his friends were, and he knew what it meant to trust them. It seems that this is what is most significant in Chiu’s memories of that time and place. And I think it is fair to say he mourns its passing.

The other memoir in the Winter 2008 issue of the journal , Z. Z.’s “China High,” addresses lawlessness within China’s borders today, rather than looking back to that ill-reputed time in Hong Kong’s history that Chiu has captured. Today, China is not generally thought of as being a place that would be described as seedy or lawless, but that is the picture that we get from Z. Z.’s essay. (Z. Z. is a US-trained lawyer. Make of that what you will.)

Z. Z.’s world reminds me a lot of that presented in the novels of Wang Shuo, though the two write about completely different times. Still, the sense that one can get away with whatever he wants as long as nobody’s looking (and nobody’s ever looking) pervades. Drugs and partying play prominent roles, and in Z. Z.’s essay, fast living is best done perched atop an illegally-obtained, fast-driving motorcycle.

I feel pretty certain that the world Z. Z. presents exists. I’ve seen hints of it here and there, though it is not exactly an accurate representation of the circles I mostly move in while living in China. It is, where it is available at all, decidedly a countercultural lifestyle — one that Z. Z. happens to write about very well.

I’ve recently begun offering a new coaching service for writers and poets.

You can have a look at my website to see how it works and what services are offered.  I hope to add a series of online courses in the next few weeks as well.

And now I’ll let this particular blog go back to its normal work of discussing China and all things Chinese….

“Mourners” leaving offerings at Google’s HQ in China.

This looks very like the offerings for the dead seen in Chinese culture. One of the voices of the “mourners” says, “We ought to burn some incense.”

I’m not entirely surprised that Google feels a need to at least threaten to pull out of China.  With the ideals that they say they espouse, and yet compromised on in order to enter China, things would certainly have to come to a point where the two entities would find that they are in conflict.  I have said before that I don’t like Google’s approach to its relationship with China, and so the position it finds itself in now of needing to posture and threaten, and maybe eventually act, doesn’t come as a surprise.  And I can’t imagine why anyone would be surprised at the news that China is censoring this news within its borders.  After all, Google has agreed all along that it would censor the news inside the Middle Kingdom — it is a well-established fact that the Chinese government and bodies (both political and commercial) in the West hold a very different view of the level of access that is owed to the subjects of a given nation.  The disagreement is one of fundamental principles — who has the right to determine what information people receive, and is the access to endless information even a “right” at all?  The two entities, Google and China, have a very different answer to this question, and that difference is coming to the surface now.

I am not one to defend censorship.  I would love to see free access to information offered to everyone in the world.  But, having said that, I have to say that I don’t think the Chinese government is necessarily guiltier than anyone else in the practice of censorship, particularly in connection with information regarding the image projected of the nation.  We all like to control the information offered about ourselves, and in this sense, China is a bit like a vain media hound who wants to appear in a prominent position in the media, but to only be photographed from the most advantageous angles.  In this case, the vanity is matched by the power to control the presentation of that self-image, at least as it is presented to those living within her borders.  And that can be a dangerous combination, as we’ve seen time and time again.

As far as Google’s stand, and that of the US government, I can’t help but shake my head a little.  I think both of those two entities are displaying a level of naivety in their response.  There are a couple of issues that I think reflect this.

First of all, the idea that China is the only government on the planet that is poking into the email accounts of its political enemies is something I just don’t believe.  We should not, just because we happen to align ourselves with the political enemies (human rights activists) rather than the legitimate government (China) in this case, fail to recognize that many — maybe even all — governments are doing the same thing.  Or maybe I am mistaken?  Maybe no one’s “right to privacy” has ever been violated in the name of homeland security?

Is this practice right?  Do governments have the authority to poke into the private communications of citizens (or even non-citizens communicating within its borders) for the sake of the nation’s security?  And do we on the outside of a nation’s politics have the right to determine which people can be subject to such scrutiny by the government and which cannot?  Point in fact:  if political bodies in, say, Afghanistan or Iraq — or the US — were snooping around in the gmail accounts of Al Qaeda operatives, would Google respond in the same way that it is to China’s alleged meddling with the accounts of human rights activists in its territories?  I believe that most people involved in this case (at Google and within the US government) would take a different line if they believed, like the Chinese government does, that the targets of these “attacks” presented a danger to the public security and stability.

The second point that I think demonstrates a naive approach to the situation in China is that Google, it seems to me, really believed it was going to change the landscape of China’s “human rights” situation.  Even in the present situation, it looks like Google and the US government believe (or at least hope) that the possibility of losing Google’s service within the Middle Kingdom is enough to make the Chinese government come, trembling in fear, to a place that is more in line with the values of the West — or at least in line with the spoken (as opposed to the lived) ideologies of the West.

It’s not going to happen.

China is growing by leaps and bounds, and it believes (with good reason) that the catalyst for its growth has come from its internal resources.  The help it has had from the outside certainly injected an amount of energy, accelerating the growth exponentially.  But the fact is, the groundwork had been laid, though sometimes through extremely unpleasant means, by the internal reforms made by the Chinese themselves.  Having Google around is certainly a nice way to continue the progress made, but I doubt that China sees it as a vitally essential ingredient in the ultimate success of the nation.

It seems to me that, in making the compromises it has made in order to operate in China, Google just might have set itself up to suffer a huge loss for itself when/if it pulls out of the country.  Surely it’s no secret that Google was attracted more by the huge market available in China than it was by some altruistic motive to somehow “free the minds” of the Chinese people.  I may be jaded, but I have never believed that the primary aims of Google in its interaction with China was for the good of the Chinese people.  Google aimed to do what was good for Google, as do all companies in a capitalist system.  If it was all about doing something good for the people of China, then Google could have operated as a nonprofit organization.  And, last I heard, it does not.  The bottom line is still, for Google, business.  (And a more open market in China is good for business, isn’t it?)

China might lose out to some degree, but it won’t be the big loser here.  Google agreed going into this deal to play by China’s rules, and I believe that, in doing so, the company entered a game it could not win.  Google.cn might soon be no more, but it will be replaced more easily than the information provider thinks it will.  Who knows?  As soon as the pullout is decided and announced, there might just be a knock-off version of the search engine available before you can blink an eye.  What do you think — shall we call it Giggle.cn or Gaggle.cn?

Because you see, that’s just how things operate in China.  There are rules.  Learn them.  Then find your own way around them.  But don’t expect to come imposing the rules on the owners of the house — especially not a set of rules brought in from the outside.  Might Google’s compromise have worked in the long run?  Yes, I think it could have… but not with a company so deeply embedded in a culture of rule-keeping and moralizing.  And more importantly, it could succeed only if the  company remembered its place in this relationship — not only is Google a guest on Chinese soil, but it is also an entity without the long, rich history that is so valued by the Chinese mind.  For a young pup like that to come into the house and think it can start to run things…. well, it’s not surprising if it finds itself sleeping outside.

One night I went with some friends to the Xinjiang restaurant near my place.  We didn’t know that dinner came with a show that night, but it was kind of fun.