Chinese Tests Black Eagle
This Tuesday the People’s Liberation Army successfully tested a new stealth fighter, the J-20 “Black Eagle.”
For more information on the plane, read this Wikipedia article. The only reason I’m posting this is because of the great comments the online community members (netizens) have made in response. (All translations have been done by ChinaSmack.)
Here are some of my favorites:
Sigh, hope it wasn’t just pieced together! [is real, not just a fake/ruse] — 腾讯合肥市网友
Does the country/government’s strength and power have anything to do with us? — 红玛瑙
The more advanced the PLA’s weapons are, just means the more people that can be suppressed on Changan Avenue. — 織田信長
No wonder everyone says it is easy to be a [government] leader. I’d rather see the price of cabbage fall 5 mao. — 红玛瑙
Is the poster speaking for the Party, or for the people? — 朱雀
[If the country has] become more powerful, does it have anything to do with me? I only know that our wages are N times lower than abroad, and prices are so much higher than abroad that they are unrecognizable. I won’t even talk about housing prices. This thing you’ve created, what does it have to do with the lowly common people? — 租车超人
Slaves cheering the slave-master for researching and developing an even more powerful killing machine? What kind of reasoning is this? — 正宗张江男
If there is hope, it lies in the netizens?
Chinese Teacher Repeatedly Hits 2-Year-Old Little Girl
ChinaSmack recently reposted a video that has been showing up on Chinese netizen blogs the last few days, and I figured I would rerepost it here.
The video shows a Chinese kindergarten teacher repeatedly pushing, pulling, and hitting a little girl. The girl’s mother got the recording from the school and posted it online.
The story, according to ChinaSmack’s translation of the mother’s post, is this:
I am already almost at my wit’s end, but I just want to get some justice for my child!!
My daughter is only two and a half years old, and attends Xuzhou City children’s art school [nursery/kindergarten]. On the morning of September 1st, she had a quarrel with another child in her class over a small stool. Allegedly, my daughter scratched that child’s hand. That child’s mother just so happens to be a teacher at the nursery, and when she heard what happened, she rushed over to vent anger for her daughter. That child’s mother, Teacher Chen, then not only shoved but also hit my daughter for 10 minutes, and throughout all of this, all of the other teachers uniformly stood by and did nothing, not a single person going forth to intervene.
After my daughter was hit, the kindergarten teacher even called me and said that my daughter hit bit the other child, and wanted me to take the child that was bitten to go get a rabies vaccination!
After rushing to the school, I had a quarrel with that child’s mother, and only after I had requested during the quarrel to watch the video footage did I learn how my daughter was hit. I no longer want to remember that heartbreaking scene, but I forcefully copied the video recording from the kindergarten, am posting it here, hoping to ask everyone to help me, using legal channels to safeguard our personal rights!
I know this is something nobody wants to see, but here is the video:
It’s obviously vile and terrible. And it’s shocking to actually see it being done.
But I have to point out that although this is a worse-than-normal case, it is by no means uncommon. This type of treatment is very common. It’s usually not this intense, but it can be at times. I’ve witnessed it. And so have many other foreign teachers.
And as for the exposure this video is getting, I doubt much will come of it. Maybe, maybe the teacher will be fired. Besides that, this will just be ignored.
There are probably government officials who are just happy this wasn’t another kindergarten stabbing.
CP5: Usher and Ethan
The fifth Chinarchy audio post. This episode I talk about going to an Usher concert, my awesome dancing skills, how my class environment has changed, dealing with a hitting problem, and the authoritarian vs. permissive parenting false dichotomy.
iTunes
RSS
Note: It’s forty-eight minutes long. Forty-eight minutes of baller. Don’t hate.
“Injustice has a cause, debt has an owner, out the door and to the left is the government building.”
In the past few weeks there have been multiple stabbings in Chinese kindergartens.
Last Thursday, a man in Taixing city injured at least 28 four-year-olds when he entered the kindergarten and started attacking people with a knife. Two other attacks had happened before that and schools are terrified of more attacks. McCoy’s school, and many others around Beijing, have had guards posted in the mornings and are under lock-down during the day. No visitors are allowed to come or go.
There have been a lot of articles speculating why this keeps happening and why people are targeting schools. I’ve seen a bunch of different explanations ranging from “romantic issues” to “mental illness” to “frustration over the increasing economic disparity.” But I want to focus on one article by a Chinese blogger Han Han.
Han Han is a novelist and one of China’s most famous bloggers. He’s also a racecar driver. (Before you say something like “that doesn’t make sense,” I’m going to have to remind you that this is China.)
Anyway, his article is full of criticism for how the Chinese government has been handling the attacks. You can read the full thing here. And below are some highlights:
Aside from Yang Jia, nearly all killers choose to begin by killing the weak. If they feel there’s no way out in society, then killing those even weaker than themselves becomes their only way out. I recommend that all the police guarding the doors of local officials nationwide be transferred to guard kindergartens. A government that can’t even protect children doesn’t need so many people protecting it.
…
After the Taizhou kindergarten murder incident, the media was controlled. These children were born at the wrong time [i.e., unlucky] and they died at an even worse time. In this jubilant atmosphere [of the opening of the Shanghai Expo], this incident is just noise to the relevant government departments. All we know is that according to the government, 32 people were injured and no one died, but on the streets there are rumors that many children were killed. So who should I believe? If the government is telling the truth, then why are they not letting parents see their children? They’ve also blocked off the hospital and shut off the news, and there are no photographs or video of children. Moreover, a murderer chops up thirty two people with a knife and no one dies? Was he really committing murder or performing surgery?
…
I was very astonished. The Taizhou government has successfully sealed information, closed the hospital, controlled the media, forbidden visitors, and diverted public attention, but now they have successfully taken the people’s anger at the killer and directed it at themselves, and for what?
…
It’s their usual process: eat, drink and be merry all night until something happens, then hide, isolate, remove the media, make prohibitions, send press releases, make compensations, cremate the bodies — then go back to eating and drinking. Their way of dealing with things isn’t much more noble than a murderer’s. No wonder I saw online a kindergarten hanging a banner: “Injustice has a cause, debt has an owner, out the door and to the left is the government building.”
…
I don’t want to delve into the social reasons for the killing, I just want to tell everyone here that a man rushing into a kindergarten and stabbing children can’t even make the news.
Ready for his powerful final paragraph? If you don’t love Han Han already, you will after this:
Perhaps in the eyes of those old men, you children are just spoiling their fun.
Wretched children, it is you who are poisoned by milk powder, harmed by vaccines, crushed by earthquakes, and burnt in fires. Even if there’s a problem with rules in the adult world, you are the ones adults stab in retaliation. I truly hope it is as the Taizhou government says, and you’re all just injured and no one has died. We elders have failed in our duties. I hope that when you grow up, you will not only protect your own children but build a society that protects everyone’s children.
Google, No Flowers For You
On Monday Google announced that they were no longer going to censor results for their Chinese search engine. There was minimal response from the Chinese, and today I found out why.
The China Digital Times picked up a set of media rules issued by the Central Propaganda Department of the Communist Party. It went out on Tuesday and was leaked onto Chinese social media sites. (By the way, Central Propaganda Department is the actual name. I wasn’t making that up. Their nickname, of course, is the Ministry of Truth.)
Here are the “guidelines” that the state handed down to media outlets:
All chief editors and managers:
Google has officially announced its withdrawal from the China market. This is a high-impact incident. It has triggered netizens’ discussions which are not limited to a commercial level. Therefore please pay strict attention to the following content requirements during this period:
A. News Section
1. Only use Central Government main media (website) content; do not use content from other sources
2. Reposting must not change title
3. News recommendations should refer to Central government main media websites
4. Do not produce relevant topic pages; do not set discussion sessions; do not conduct related investigative reporting;
5. Online programs with experts and scholars on this matter must apply for permission ahead of time. This type of self-initiated program production is strictly forbidden.
6. Carefully manage the commentary posts under news items.B. Forums, blogs and other interactive media sections:
1. It is not permitted to hold discussions or investigations on the Google topic
2. Interactive sections do not recommend this topic, do not place this topic and related comments at the top
3. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which attack the Party, State, government agencies, Internet policies with the excuse of this event.
4. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which support Google, dedicate flowers to Google, ask Google to stay, cheer for Google and others have a different tune from government policy
5. On topics related to Google, carefully manage the information in exchanges, comments and other interactive sessions
6. Chief managers in different regions please assign specific manpower to monitor Google-related information; if there is information about mass incidents, please report it in a timely manner.We ask the Monitoring and Control Group to immediately follow up monitoring and control actions along the above directions; once any problems are discovered, please communicate with respected sessions in a timely manner.
Addition guidelines:
- Do not participate in and report Google’s information/press releases
- Do not report about Google exerting pressure on our country via people or events
- Related reports need to put [our story/perspective/information] in the center, do not provide materials for Google to attack relavent policies of our country
- Use talking points about Google withdrawing from China published by relevant departments
There are some real gems in there, but I think my favorite is rule B-4, which I highlighted for its awesomeness.
*Editor hands out guidelines to reporters* “Here you go guys, the standard stuff, no supporting Google, no going against the official party line. Just make sure you follow these rules and you’ll be fine. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Oh, and one more thing, NO FUCKING FLOWERS FOR GOOGLE. DO YOU HEAR ME?! IF I HEAR ABOUT ANYONE GIVING GOOGLE A FLOWER I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL SEND ALL OF YOU ‘JOURNALISTS’ STRAIGHT TO AMERICA. You want that? You wanna go work in American media? You want to be the temp that lubes up Glenn Beck’s tear ducts every night? How about MSNBC? You can go be Keith Olbermann’s assistant, getting his pants dry cleaned every time he creams himself after an Obama speech. I swear on the ghost of Mao if I hear one story about Google getting flowers you will all be on Olberman jizz duty.”
*Reporters shudder* “No please, chief, anything but that. Send us to the work camps instead.”
Anyway, what was I saying?
Update: One way or another Google always gets their flowers.
