| 14 |
Should I Drive in Shanghai? Welcome to drive to shenzhen. I was visiting the other day, took a cab to futian district. At a major intersection, there was an accident in the middle, and only one cop present. As the cab driver pressed on, traffice began to slow. We saw that ppl stopped obeying the traffic lights, then the lines and lanes. Within a minute we were at the outer side of the intersection stuck, and cus every car had been fighting to go foward, the entire intersection was totally jammed, filled with cars in every direction with the crashed car and the helpless traffic cop as an island in the middle. Because no one would take turns, we were in a situation where traffic stopped dead for 20 minutes before someone managed to untangle from the side (driving on the pedestrain sidewalk), and the mess of cars in the intersection slowly started to unravel. By the time we made it to the other side of the intersection, we could see a long long long line of cars had formed on the other side, waiting to cross. |
| 12 |
Where are the Train Tickets? My personal bet is that sometime in the near future, someone up top is going to do some posturing, and make concern for the masses an issue ~ concentrating the the injustices of the railway system. There'll be a crackdown, your yellow cows will get rounded up along with some insiders, the railway bureau gets a tight squeeze, reorganization, some officials fall, others suddenly disappearing to Canada, US, Australia with their families, and millions of taxpayers money seeking political refuge, and there'll be a CCTV media blitz about all of this for a month, before things slowly slide back to the way they were. |
| 11 |
Where are the Train Tickets? Better to contact Pheonix tv i say. I've been a viewer since before its first broadcast (priorly just Star China), and they've done much good for the Country as the sole breath of fresh air in Chinese media amongst the CCTVs. The prob with trains is that the tickets get devided between station management, conductors, drivers, officers before reaching the ticket office. What's taken is filtered as 'currency' down everyone's 'guanxi' network, probably not to make money, just to maintain good relationships. So, in your case with the yellow cows, that's actually a 'good' thing. At least its available to the public for a price, and someone is making a buck. The horrible waste and inequality are in cases where a station conductor might have 500 personal tickets, and he doesn't even have enough relations to use all of them, so the tickets just totally go to waste. |
| 10 |
Where are the Train Tickets? "Team work will make a difference. Another thing you guys can do is to broadcast this kind complaints in international media forums such as the ones in CNN.com, Yahoo.com. Chinese govenment sure doesn't like this kind of negative publicity." I don't think so. Chinese care very much about face, and something like this reflects their government as well as their country, in other words, its better to sit tight, wait for change, work locally, than to publicize internationally and give more reason for Americans to sit in their couches and say " see, China sucks big time, Billy finish your mash and thank the Lord you are not Chinese". |
| 9 |
Friend's Dog Killed This sounds like another over the top, excessive, blungeont way the government is responding to a social problem, one in which they will find to be ultimately ineffective after the culling and may infact worsen the situation. My question is; no one here seems to have written what the situation is, that the government is responding to? Has there been growing dog attacks? Rabbies? Hygene issues? Excessive dog population increases? I remember when i was growing up, a local doberman attacked a little girl, and ripped off her face. The gov responded through a panel that deemed dobermans to be too violent and dangerous to be kept as pets and passed a law that forbid the sales of dobermans, and the killing of all existing ones. The results? Owners began releasing their dogs to the wild, so they wouldn't have to face charges or have their dogs killed, thus bring a potential of packs of wild dobermans... Seems that may apply to this case you describe here too. Though I don't think your comment that the chinese government supports theft, sales and consumption of pet dogs is true. Its motives should still probably be something socially reasonable, and supporting health risks of eating meat from illegal and unknow sources is not likely one of them. They may be stupid, arrogant and violent at times, but they aren't purposefully evil. |
| 8 |
Hukou System in China For any one who may still stumble onto this site after discussions ended a year ago: The HuKou system isn't unique to China only. Very similar systems are found in South Korea and Japan as a social management method, of course in a less restricting forms. You will find that that while it no longer infringes on certain rights of individuals there, moving, education, healthcare and getting married means much much more bureaucracy associated with your Hukou, or change of Hukou. |
| 7 |
Slight Changes in "China" " - Talking about culture, you should not forget Taiwan and Hongkong, they are much closer to China mainland than Thailand. and you have to admit that Red Packet are not popular in Hongkong, and becoming less popular in Taiwan either. -" Regarding Taiwan, becoming less still means a lot. Just look at the first family. And in terms of Hong Kong; the ICAC is some thing to be very proud of for Hong Kong ppl. But remember it'd been a colony for 100 years under the british. Even then when they set up the ICAC to deal with the rampant corruption in HK society by the early 70's, all hell broke loose when the HK POLICE went on strike and riots against it! And don't forget this was accomplished with a dictatorial foreign government, who did not concern itself with chinese 'culture'. |
| 6 |
I am not a Big Fan of Hate... "In fact, there are sources suggesting that they intentionally allow the Japanese to have their way with the Nationalist army and did not stop the atrocities at Nanking when they had the chance." ... there are also sources that say there were no atrocities in Nanking... please have some real factual support when you make a statement like that. You do bring up the truth though that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the Japanese invasion was benificial to the Communists in the civil war against the KMD afterwards. So, If everyone wants to play the blame game, the Chinese people, the Tibetans, the vietnamese, should still blame the Imperial Japanese army for greatly helping to put a Communist government in China thats been able to rule for the past 50 years. From this point of view, imperial Japan had inadvertantly chosen this present government instead of the Japan loving Taiwan government to rule its huge neighbor. |
| 5 |
Shanghai Looks Similar to US, But... Poster who takes after the poet Jean de La Fontaine, "Wolf and The Dog A prowling wolf, whose shaggy skin (So strict the watch of dogs had been) Hid little but his bones, Once met a mastiff dog astray. A prouder, fatter, sleeker Tray, No human mortal owns. ... " I very much enjoy this poem personally. But I'm questioning your intent for posting it on this thread. If perhaps it is meant to ensinuate that many here are like the dog, that accepts the leash in return for food, then I must express my dismay at the half truth of it. My interpretation though, is that the leash has only extended recently from your lands and culture and marks a bright yellow double arch that obsenely lights up my residential neighborhood. If you do seek a land free of dog leashes, perhaps you should look into Cuba; or maybe they just have leashes from a different master. |
| 4 |
The Scar in People's Heart "but I have to say "A country has to face her own history, otherwise the country can not make any progress (maybe economically but not humanistically)" My grandfather, as a university professor was ridiculed, shaved, stripped, paraded, beaten to near death countless times during the cultural revolution, most fiercely by his closest students. By the end, these red guards had been spread all across China, some in the least inhabitable of places as pioneering young intellectuals. Their ex-professor had survived, and in a position to bring them home. My mom remembered a time when one of the nastiest of the lot, had come to face her father, kneeling, crying, apologising and asking for help. So my grandfather forgave this man who'd broken his jaw and made an habit of urinating on him. He then started finding and transfering these students back from villages in the middle of nowhere, helping them enroll in school again or find work. A country is an embodiment of her people. Perhaps a government has not made peace, but the people who've lived and made history have certainly faced their past, be it good or ill. And if her people are able to forgive their enemies, their country for past trangressions and find love for them both, what is more humane than this? So in the name of 'progress' do they not deserve our imitation more than our pity, critisizm, or self flagellation? |
| 3 |
The Scar in People's Heart "We need to know better about the history of what Japanese did in China in 1930 to 1940s, and it is equally important or even more important to learn the history after that." I don't think we really have to worry about that. If you grew up abroad, then its quite easy to find a history book critical of China in those years - and these years. So knowing is purely based on your interest. If you lived in China, well there's no need telling ppl what they have themselves personally experienced, its in their bones. No need to make a course, when everyone has family with grueling storys like the ones you tell. |
| 2 |
The Scar in People's Heart Jiao Shuo, I think perhaps your description of the Zai Huang years as the direct result of the Great Leap forward is oversimplifying the issue, especially your stress on the importance of loss of private property and communal kitchens as a reason. Confiscating iron or eating together in halls was a phenomon of the time as much as the starvation was; not the cause of it. The Great Leap forward attributed to the starvation in 2 major ways, 1) Bad planning. The major problem lie in that ppl in charge had no exp in agricultural manufacturing planning. It wouldn't have mattered if farmers had their own land and their own pans; when all that they grew were regulated - and done so in a very bad way. Your inference that ppl were not allowed to work on fields, is perhaps missleading. People worked very hard those years on the fields; but they were planting acres of potatos on land that won't grow potatos, or cabbages on land that is only suitable for potatos - because the party had planned so. 2) Ambitions and Miss reporting. Why was there suddenly countrywide shortage of food? You'd think the government would see it coming, if it was just bad planning. The central government had set up production goals for local admin to meet, and ppl were very eager at the beginning. Over reporting of yields, either out of personal ambition, fear or pride, from down in the village level caused an very inflated view of production once it got up to Central planners - who raised new goals even higher based on yields that didn't exist. There was such a detachment from reality that the central gov did not realize that ppl were starving until it became a nationwide issue. This said, ppl who say there was no nature disaster is plain wrong; and say so just to support their own views of the Chinese government. There are nature disasters almost every year in China, and in those years it was unfortunately worth. No enough to kill tens of millions of ppl, it was an inability to respond them that caused that, but it was a major factor attributing to the famine. In terms of the worst hit; it wasn't the village folks or the city folks. Villages were close enough to nature to barely live off wild things - roots and tree bark, and the gov. made sure that its major cities got its supplies, no matter how much it had to squeeze elsewhere. It was the towns, and small size cities that faired the worst. |
| 1 |
Public Holidays in China akt, I had the exact same problem. Thought was totally ridiculous, though everyone else at work just took it as it is, and didn't think too much into it... At least swapping weekends should make sense... which I can't see any for this case |