The World of Chinese 2015 Issue 3 by The World of Chinese Magazine

3/2015 Superpower Startups, Career Cleaners, Wasteful Weddings, and Pop Pioneers

ntrepreneurship is not something that springs to mind when people think of China. Just a few decades ago being an entrepreneur or small business owner was practically a criminal offense in some areas of the country. But, somehow, over the past few years, China has grown into a startup superpower. “Startup Kingdom” (see page 28) looks at how the Middle Kingdom came to be one of the most exciting startup markets in the world and some of the very specific problems inherent in this burgeoning field in China. Whether it’s an app funded by China’s ballooning shadow banking addiction or adventurous venture capitalists getting their electronics off the ground, startups could be shaping the future of China’s economy. From there, we go to the other end of society: domestic service workers. They’re known by many names, perhaps most colloquially as ayi, or aunt, and they play an important role in our modern, metamorphosing society. Once upon a time, as in just a decade ago, China’s large families looked after the children, the elderly, and did the housework, but contemporary households have different needs. To fill this gap are the ayi, playing nanny, nurse, and cleaner all at once for very little pay, less thanks, and almost no protection. Moving these domestic service workers from the country to the city presents a whole host of other problems, but technology and some helpful NGOs are hoping to change, at least in part, the lot. Learn more in “The Ayi Industry” (see page 48). And, as we enter spring, we are all inundated with the “red bombs” of wedding invitations that seem to be piteously strafing our letter boxes. The wedding industry itself seems to have been born out of China’s newfound luxury, but how much is too much? The news abounds with the strange and wonderful weddings of the nation’s super wealthy, and young couples strive to have the biggest, most lavish wedding possible—even if it is all for the hongbao. “Money and Matrimony” (see page 36) takes a look at how marriage has changed over the past few decades, and how a few youngsters are throwing off tradition for the sake of love and fiscal sense. Taking a break from the domestic, we also look at how China’s reality show scene is changing the face of pop music. Terrence Hsieh studies how one popular singing competition, I Am a Singer, is a microcosm for a China’s pop music legacy in “Rock the Pop” (see page 42). It sometimes seems that the Middle Kingdom’s television screens are inundated with an unending supply of reality singing competitions, but for the artist, the network, and the viewer, there is more than meets the eye. If your tastes are more artistic, you might want to head on over to our Gallery section (see page 56) to check out some of the finest bronze and copper art in the world from Zhu Bingren, and if you’re still not sated, hit up our Dragon’s Digest section (see page 12) for some original fiction from Ma Er. For your language fix, check out On the Character (see page 92) to learn about pain and creativity, or learn to speak like a Dongbei native in Social Chinese (see page 72). And, as always, we include a creative mix of trivia, reviews, culture, photography, travel, and history for your education and enjoyment. Summer is finally here, so from all of us here at TWOC, use sunscreen and enjoy the weather while it lasts. Managing Editor Tyler Roney Issue 3 /2015

Co-producer: Beijing Center for the Promotion of Chinese Overseas

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协办：北京汉语国际推广中心

WHERE TO BUY

3/2015

CHINA BEIJING

• Major 7-Eleven stores • Page One Bookshop • Bookworm • Beijing Language and Culture University (Library Bookstore) • BELENCRE (Solana) • BELENCRE (Kerry Center) • Kubrick (Moma) • April Gourmet • Cozy Bo2k • Foreign Language Bookstore in Wangfujing • Hanfenlou Bookstore

SHANGHAI • Boocup • Cityshop

CHENGDU

• Bookworm Chengdu • 7-Eleven stores • Wowo stores • Winshare • Family Mart • Page One Bookshop

AYI INDUSTRY 48 THE “阿姨”的大时代 Taking care of the kids, the elderly, and the housework used to be the responsibility of the family, but smaller families, contemporary lifestyles, and an abundant workforce from the countryside has made the domestic service sector an important and complex part of modern living

SHENZHEN

42 ROCK THE

POP

唱响真人秀 They might often be looked upon with scorn, but reality television singing competitions are providing a lightning rod for the Middle Kingdom’s pop music industry—using mass audience appeal and network cohesion for both sales and soft power

• Old Heaven

TIANJIN

MONEY AND MATRIMONY

• Tonglou Bookstore

SUZHOU

结个婚到底要花多少钱？

• Bookworm Suzhou

News of extravagant weddings around the nation appear almost daily: luxury cars, days of partying, and red envelopes full of cash. But, things were not always so. This piece looks at how weddings have changed over the years for the bride and groom, parents, and revelers.

HANGZHOU

• Page One Bookshop • Kubrick Bookstore

CHONGQING

• Kubrik Bookstore

GERMANY BERLIN

• Berliner Presse Vertrieb

MUNICH

• K Presse+Buch

HAMBURG

COVER STORY

28 STARTUP KINGDOM 创业之国 Entrepreneurship is the vanguard of China’s new and improved economy, and despite a lack of official support structures and growing investment hurdles, startups, online and offline, are changing the face of China’s fiscal future

• Pressevertrieb Nord KG

SUBSCRIBE AT THEWORLDOFCHINESE.COM Email: mail@theworldofchinese.com Issue 3 /2015

1 EDITOR’S LETTER 卷首语

GALLERY

6 MISHMASH 多棱镜

8 WEIBO WHACK 微亦足道

11 STREET TALK 街头俚语

24 MADE IN CHINA

中国制造

54 SAVING CHINA

CARVING COLORS

美丽中国

雕琢色彩

66 GROUP THINK

Cheng Yu uses his palette knife to shape faceless, colorful characters into life. His surreal representations seem otherworldly, and he paints with the grace and speed of a man possessed.

群观

80 CHI LE MA

《鹤》 This original short story from Ma Er puts readers into a dreamlike puzzle of transformation and curiosity as a man rides in a house on the back of a crane through the emptiness of a lonely sky

BOOKMARK LAO SHE’S LONDON

SPARKS IN THE SKY 电力工人之夏

Take a visual journey with some of the hardest working people in China: high-altitude-operation technicians and their support staff. Their grueling, dangerous, thankless job keeps the lights on across the nation.

TIME MACHINE THEA SINESIS

on wires)

CRANE

(men

DRAGON’S DIGEST

by meng qingchun

Photographs

, Cfp (temple)

吃了吗

60 ON THE ROAD

BRICK BY BRICK 跟梁思成看正定

Following in the footsteps of one of China’s greatest architectural minds, we look at the forgotten city of Zhengding from China’s past, its trials, preservation, and the lessons it can teach us today about protecting the relics we have left

来整点儿东北话 CCTV在说什么？

See London like you’ve never seen it before, through the eyes of Lao She; his work has echoed through the ages in everything from sci-fi to the theater. In Mr Ma and Son, he tells the tale of the Chinese Diaspora of the 1920s in London.

Espionage, the East India Company, and the secrets of tea in the shadow of the Opium Wars—follow botanist Robert Fortune on his journey to steal tea from the Middle Kingdom in the 19th century

Get can to grips with the You be funny, charming, folksy, pandering propaganda of common and aggressive in the most the China state-media newstongueaccent of North China. This program guide that never seems in-cheek will help you hone to end your Dongbei-fu in ways you never

90 PIONEER 对话先锋

92 ON THE CHARACTER 魅力汉字

94 AGONY AYI 96 COMICS

SOCIAL CHINESE DONGBEI SURVIVAL GUIDE CCTV NEWSPEAK

盗茶者

宅资讯

麻烦阿姨

老舍的伦敦

88 NERD NEWS

ZOETROPE DRAGON BLADE 《天将雄师》 Terence Hsieh critiques Jackie Chan’s recent undertaking, a melodramatic, action-heavy flick from Hong Kong director Daniel Lee—a battle for the Silk Road between Rome and the Middle Kingdom

thought possible.

Issue 3 /2015

酷漫 WANT MORE LIKE THIS? You can find more written, visual, and audio content on our website, theworldofchinese.com, which is updated daily with recipes, travel tales, language lessons, and more! 5

MISHMASH

WAY TO A WOMAN’S HEART It sounds like a dull tale—a full-time housewife in Meizhou, Guangdong Province sued her husband for domestic abuse and applied for a divorce. However, before you lump her in with the millions of domestic abuse victims around the country, it should be noted that the abuse was of a culinary nature. The “domestic abuse” referred to the husband’s terrible cooking skills. It has been claimed that the husband, since 2003, has been in charge of all the housework, including duties in the kitchen. Despite calling herself a housewife, by all accounts one of the most thankless jobs you can have, the wife enjoyed her husband’s services without contributing, and the husband, for whatever reason, suffered under his wife’s yoke of domestic servitude. But, it turns out that his cooking was just too bad for their domestic bliss to continue. She claims that

her husband has not made any progress in his culinary skills in the past 12 years and that he may have even been doing it on purpose. The judge, unsurprisingly, remained unconvinced of her logic and refused her petition for divorce. But, one has to wonder why on earth the husband would object to a divorce in the first place. - SUN JIAHUI (孙佳慧)

CASANOVA CON ARTIST There is a Chinese saying: “stepping on two boats at the same time (脚踏两只船)”, describing a person in two relationships at the same time. But, when it comes to a conman surnamed Yuan in Changsha, Hunan Province, the old saying needs quite a few more vessels, one might even say a fleet. After getting into a car accident, Yuan was hospitalized in Changsha, but over the course of the next few days, 17 women between the ages of 20 to 40, showed up to visit him, each claiming to be his girlfriend. After meeting each other and talking about their various relationships with their mutual lover, these women were understandably angry and reported him to the police on fraud charges. The police were

then stunned to learn that there was more to this cheating playboy than met the eye. Yuan, holding just a middle school diploma, had fabricated an education background as a university graduate majoring in civil engineering in Central South University, a top university in China, and worked for a large company. In the field of romance, Yuan had an even more shocking surprise: he divorced his ex-wife after cheating her out of 250,000 RMB, and it was discovered that he had swindled the 17 girlfriends out of thousands of RMB, some of whom had been with him for more than ten years. A closer look at his WeChat account revealed another 200 female targets he had in his crosshairs. If we are to take that Chinese saying literally, he is less of a man “stepping on two boats” and more a “centipede with a navy”. - S.J.

crosswalk. The panda’s entire ordeal strictly followed the code of the road, and when staff from the scenic panda area reviewed the footage, they informed the local government immediately, as well as the Wolong National Natural Reserve, China’s largest and best-known panda reserve. Five experts and many policemen and residents then began to search for this Chinese national treasure, but no avail. According to the experts, this panda was approximately two years old, meaning it was in adolescence. Judging by its age, this cutie might have been trying

DON'T WALK

PANDA PEDESTRIAN Chinese pedestrians, let’s face it, have a pretty reprehensible reputation when it comes to crossing the street (and Chinese drivers don’t behave that well either). But, in an elephantine morality tale for all Chinese pedestrians, a young panda, a symbol of the nation, set a good example for all. In Yingxiu, Sichuan Province, a panda was caught on CCTV footage in the wee hours of the morning in March, wandering along the sidewalk next to the gate of a scenic area, stepping back after failing to open the door. Then, performing a trick that most seem incapable of, the panda crossed a T-junction, properly using the

Issue 3 /2015

to carve out its own territory. No one is quite sure where this hero of the zebra crossing has gone, but he’s a good example for pedestrians everywhere. - S.J.

But the post crushed the hopes of the swooning masses when it was reported that, sadly, this handsome cop is happily married.

THE HOT COP

ORANGE BROTHERS FOR LIFE

A traffic cop surnamed Long was supposed to maintain order at the Chongqing Marathon this spring, but he ended up causing quite a bit of traffic trouble. Long’s supervisor might have never sent him to the event had he known that the sheer force of his handsomeness would incur traffic jams, with people running after him hoping to get a photo. It has been said that Long’s face is similar to that of star Wallace Chung (钟汉良), whose TV romance My Sunshine (《何以笙箫默》) had become a recent hit. When Long showed up that day, an uproar burst from the crowd. Many female “fans” approached him asking to take pictures with him. Long, ever kind to his public, was too nice to refuse such requests; that’s when things got out of control. People swarmed to the unknown lookalike and the normal flow of traffic was entirely marred. With the damage done, Long had to be escorted from the scene by colleagues. His picture went viral online and some have said that, if they see Long on the street, they’d happily break the traffic laws just to be given a ticket by him. Even the Chongqing Morning Post got in on the action, introducing him on their Weibo.

- S.J.

There are many ways to make friends. Some bond with classmates or colleagues, others forge a link over shared interests. Then there are the people who lose their phone and find a new friend halfway around the world via their photo stream. When American Matt Stopera in early 2015 started seeing pictures of a Chinese man and an orange tree on his iPhone photo stream, he treated it as a joke. Apparently, his phone had been stolen a year earlier and sold via intermediaries to a man in Meizhou, Guangdong Province, who would forever become known as “Orange Brother” (橘子哥). The Buzzfeed employee posted an article about it, but then was startled to discover it trending on Weibo. Chinese netizens hunted down Orange Brother and the two were put in touch. A celebrity whirlwind tour of China later and the popularity of the unlikely duo continued to skyrocket, reaching millions. Stopera’s follow-up articles were punctuated by constant expressions of amazement and disbelief in the bizarre nature of this tale. Now, a documentary is in the works, and Orange Brother is already making the day-time talk show rounds in the US. - DAVID DAWSON

CHOOSE WISELY A man surnamed Wu in Sichuan Province was understandably torn when he encountered a classic dilemma—having to choose between his ex or current girlfriend. Reportedly, Wu’s ex-girlfriend kept harassing him after their break up. Evidently, her entreaties failed, because he sought out a new girl. Tired of being nagged by the both sides, Wu chose a rather confrontational form of resolution and decided to meet both women by the side of a river to talk out their relationship issues. However, things took an ugly turn when the ex-girlfriend jumped into the river. Then, the current girlfriend, testing her lover’s mettle, jumped in as well, hoping to discern his true feelings. Having to decide between these two obvious drama queens, he quickly jumped into the water to save his current girlfriend, leaving his ex in the water. The ex-girlfriend was later saved from the river by firefighters. Unsurprisingly, the boyfriend is being both praised and condemned by the fickle voices of the internet. - SUN JIAHUI (孙佳慧)

DAMA DRUG FIENDS Aside from their well publicized penchant for gold and square dancing, some Chinese dama (a colloquial term for middle-aged Chinese women) have found another way of killing time—taking horse tranquilizers. Sixteen women were caught using ketamine while enjoying the hapless noise of KTV in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, three of whom were later sentenced to jail terms. Most of these dama are full-time housewives, claiming they take drugs mainly to stave off the loneliness and to escape their mundane daily lives. It has been reported that they had a WeChat group called “awesome high” and used “hold a sports meeting” as a secret signal for their gatherings. - S.J.

伊邪那美Yyh_：钱太多了打钱到我的支付宝，这样不就不会坐牢了，你们好傻啊。 If you had too much money, you could have transferred some to my Alipay account, then you wouldn’t have to go to jail! How silly you have been!

Maydai138：很能理解五十多岁大妈吸毒背后的原因，缺少关爱，有钱岁数大没工作，孤寂没有精神寄托，人可以什么都没有，但不能缺精神寄托，空洞的心是最可怕的。 I understand why dama in their 50s are doing drugs; they are deprived of love and care; they have money, but are getting old and have no job to do; they are lonely, spiritually impoverished, and alienated. People cannot live without a spiritual attachment; a hollow heart is a dreadful thing.

正义网：大妈吸毒足够发人深省。连大妈都这么疯狂，我们的社会有多空虚？虽然我们的物质财富在不断积累，但人们的精神与道德却在不断滑坡。

It really is a cautionary tale. If the dama are that crazy, how spiritually empty is our society? Though our material wealth is continually accumulating, people’s spirit and morals slide downhill.

一米130319：男人心够狠的，不再爱她了，即使是陌生人也不能见死不救啊！可以走的时候给她报个警吧! 这种男人要不得！现任女友如果成为下一个前任，他得是怎么个狠心法呀？ This man is so cruel! Even if you are not in love with her anymore, you can’t leave her to sink. You can’t do that even to a stranger. You could have at least called the police for her before you left! Girls should keep an eye on such guys! What will he do when the current girlfriend becomes an ex?

院长放下你的针：等到救援人员来都没被江水冲走肯定是有原因的，还是相信她前男友没那么见死不救，只是适当的“狠心”让她清醒……要第一时间就救上来，估计还有得扯的。

There must be some reason why the ex-girlfriend survived until help arrived. I still believe that the man didn’t just leave her. He might have been acting heartless just to wake her up… If he saved her at once, she would still be hung up on him.

邓语涵：去年一条新闻，开头一样。但是男生救了前女友，没来得及救现女友，导致现女友死了，结果被骂得狗血淋头。而这条新闻男生选择了现女友，结果也被骂没人性。 There was a story last year with the same plot, but in the end the man in that case saved his ex-girlfriend and failed to save the current one. That girl died and people condemned him fiercely. In this case, the man chose the current girlfriend, and people still criticize him for being cold-blooded.

ONE-DOG POLICY Following the one-child policy, the city of Zhuhai, Guangzhou Province announced a new one-dog policy for households, limiting homes to one canine each. According to the new law, which will come to effect in June, dog owners are allowed one dog per residence, meaning that tenants who share a house with their owners will still only be allowed one dog to be registered to that address. And, if you buy a second-hand home with a dog already registered to it, bad news, you can’t register your dog there. Some are saying this new rule could affect the housing market because both buyer and seller may have to make some very serious decisions. - S.J.

小狐狸的葡萄：这样挺好，对动物负责，也让那些一时兴起不理智不负责的人养宠物受到了约束，避免流浪动物的产生。这样总比无人管的动物多到伤及路人，然后以扑杀了之来得人性化。

This will be a good and responsible choice for animals. In this way, unreasonable and irresponsible owners who raise pets on a whim will be restricted, and then the number of the homeless pets will decrease. This policy is more humane than just killing strays when their population booms and they begin to hurt people.

小2快上茶：万一母狗怀孕了咋办！还要逼着堕胎不成！！！

What if a female dog gets pregnant? Force it to have an abortion?

苏晓篆：监管是对的，但不要每次都搞成限X或收费这些方式。真正爱狗有素质的人，养很多狗也不会扰民。没责任心的人，养一只也会对狗狗、身边的人和这个环境带来伤害。

It is right to adopt some regulatory policies. But, please don’t use methods of “limitation” or “fines” every time. Courteous dog lovers won’t bother others no matter how many dogs are raised. But, irresponsible owners raising only one can still harm the dog, neighbors, and their surroundings.

Issue 3 /2015

STREET TALK

BLING,BLING,RENXING

“I

just lick the lid of the container but throw away the rest when having yogurt. Don’t ask me why, I am rich and willful (我喝酸奶只舔盖儿，别问我为什么，有钱就是任性！W6 h8 su`nn2i zh@ ti2n g3ir, bi9 w-n w6 w-i sh9nme, y6uqi1n ji&sh# r-nx#ng!)” For those paying attention, such eccentric declarations seem to have exploded on social media. At first glance, it seems a bit daft, but chances are the attention-hungry poster is just making fun of the buzzwords, “有钱，任性” (y6uqi1n, r-nx#ng). It’s somewhat similar to saying, “I am rich, so I can do as I please.”Renxing conjures up a strong-willed, unrestrained, do-as-I-please attitude, perhaps bordering on capriciousness; neither had much to do with the other until a strange event in 2014 when a man surnamed Liu spent 1,760 RMB on a health supplement. Later, a stranger called to persuade him to buy more and Liu agreed. Over the next four months, Liu was swindled out of 540,000 RMB by a gang of unscrupulous conmen, always recommending more useless (but somehow vital) products. The police eventually caught the culprits, but Liu claimed that he knew he was being swindled at the 70,000 RMB mark: “I just wanted to see how much they could take from me!” The online world thus proclaimed, “Rich people can always follow their own way (有钱就是任性 y6uqi1n ji&sh# r-nx#ng).” The phrase has since fallen into self satire and, as is the internet’s wont, it evolved at a startling speed. Of course, wealth is not the only source of such privilege; a pretty face can open just as many doors, giving rise to Issue 3 /2015

the phrase, “Good-looking people are self-willed (长得好看就是任性 Zh2ng de h2ok3n ji&sh# r-nx#ng).” Education is also a pretty good leg up, with top-performing graduates garnering a wealth of options, hence the sour statement from the struggling masses: “Top students are so willful (学霸就是任性 xu9b3 ji&sh# r-nx#ng).” But, when it comes to true willfulness, nothing guarantees it like power, and there’s no better place to find its reins than in politics. When asked about the anti-corruption movement during this year’s CPPCC meeting, to show determination, spokesperson Lü Xinhua replied: “The Party, the government, and the people have the same attitude toward the corruption problem, to use a popular online slang term, we are all very willful (大家都很任性 d3ji` d4u h0n r-nx#ng).” Bear in mind that it is the same spokesperson who brought us the wonderful phrase “你懂的 (n@ d6ngde)”, or “I think you understand what I mean,” when answering questions about the possible investigation of a member of the Party’s highest decision-making authority. This time his poor interpreter paused at the word renxing to ask for more clarification. She ultimately translated it to “capricious”. The incident was discussed heatedly, and, three days later, Premier Li Keqiang emphasized in a work report that “power should not lead to capriciousness (有权不可任性 y6u qu1n b& k0 r-nx#ng)”. Though this phrase is clearly not to the government’s liking, at least as it pertains to the anti-corruption campaign, it may be time to take stock of your “capricious” inventory. Who knows, you might find something useful. - BY SUN JIAHUI (孙佳慧) 11

DRAGON'S DIGEST

CRANE

Li Xiaofa

一只奇异的鹤载着一栋有好风景的房子和一个寂寞的男人，他们会飞向何方？

e let his head hang. That way he could better consider certain things. He could see the skin below his chest and a large section of shining white floor. The brightness did all it could not to draw any attention, but it still stirred an anxiety within him. He noticed his skin had formed excessive slack, as if in that instant he had aged ten years—a direct reaction to the bright rays. He entered the inner room, abandoning the brightness behind him. He knew that, with each step he took, the glow would fade by a degree, until all that remained was darkness. Far in the interior of the room, heavy flannel curtains blocked out all the rays. Clouds of dust floated down and gathered in the corners. This further obstructed the refraction of rays, which would find themselves immobilized, as if bound with rope. Naturally, the darkest place was inaccessible. The crane standing in the corner of the room held its head high. Its black eyes were profound and serene and following them deeper led to the

Illustration

A jo ur n e y through the sk y an d the m i n d

darkness’s last dwelling. For the moment, he could only stand at the exterior of that lodging, peering inside with curiosity and a little greed. The crane flapped its wings. Why it did so was not apparent, but it looked irritated. It had stood there a long time and usually had the patience to adjust to his presence. But, slowly, it flapped its wings and began to fly around the room. He stood below, somewhat terrified. The crane expanded. It grew so large that the room could no longer tolerate it. The crane’s two wings and head extended out of the walls so that now it was transporting the room on its body as it flew. He recalled that fantastic event, and thought that perhaps what was happening was that event. In truth, he could not see what was happening outside. The crane’s body barricaded the view. He could only imagine the crane carrying the room on its body as it flew. The crane now engulfed the room. He was buried in dense feathers. Its hot flesh was right above his head. It was, admittedly, an unbearable taste and feeling. He only hoped the crane would land quickly or would swell until the room burst. That way he could fall to the ground amidst a dazzling new field of view. Thinking of his room, he was reluctant to let it go. It was a pretty room. Its appeal was not only the beauty of its decor and design, but the outdoors, a splendid piece of scenery. Nowadays, there were few of these stand-alone houses with beautiful views available. In truth, he could not even remember where else he had seen a house exactly like this one: a stand-alone structure facing an open plain with a cluster of mountains in the distance. He could also not remember how he had acquired it—had he bought it? Had he rented it? No recollection surfaced from the ocean of his thoughts. He just knew that every day, from daybreak to nightfall, he had leaned out of that window to gaze at the scenery with nobody coming to bother him. It was as if the surrounding population didn’t exist. He had also never experienced such anxiety—to him, as long as the house and the scenery remained, all would be fine. People were not important. Now he fretted about where the crane would fly. He knew it had to land someplace. He didn’t know where it would land, or how long it would stay there. He also didn’t know if it would bring the house along when it left again. He concluded his anxiety stemmed from the fear of a new place. He didn’t know what kind of place it would take him to. If he didn’t like the place then it was probable his whole life was lost. The crane finally let some space into the room. He could put his head out the window to look around. Most of the time he only saw white clouds whooshing Issue 3 /2015

MA ER 马耳 Ma Er lives in Guiling, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, founder and editor of online literary magazine Shikongliu (《时空流》, Streams of Time and Space). Ma mixes ancient myth with modern imagery and writes with clarity and sophistication. His simple but accurate use of words constructs a world of fable, fantasy, and reality. “Streams of time and space” is also a literary theory proposed originally by Ma—that by studying the past, projecting the future, and ultimately focusing on the present, a writer breaks the rigid boundaries of time and space to achieve a more fluid understanding of the unique characteristics of the era.

by. Sometimes he saw a bird or two brushing passed his window. The crane appeared to have a disdainful disregard for these birds, whose frames and appearance were awkward by comparison. In any case, he didn’t see any signs of agitation. The crane just flapped its wings, silently casting its shadow over the other birds. In an instant, it had flown past them and was rushing into the next layer of clouds. The crane’s flight patterns were as follows: In the morning and evening it would fly low, as though it was tired or testing the limits of its laziness. Only at noon, when the weather was at its clearest, would it fly to the maximum altitudes. Up high, temperatures were frigid and the air was restless. He mostly huddled up in a corner of the room and shuddered as he looked out the window at the clouds sweeping past. But up high, clouds were actually rather scarce. He mostly had to rely on his instincts to guess what was happening outside—there was an oil lamp on the table, and even though it was securely mounted, the flickering of the flame explained to him the crane’s turbulent path. He mostly watched the prancing flame and 13

imagined the flying crane, its body sloping upward as it climbed and its wings not beating as it glided on a rising current. It only needed to follow the ascending flow; that was all. But still, its body couldn’t avoid making violent tremors and so the wings were required to act as a stabilizing mechanism. They looked like two kites doing their best to maintain relative stability as the crane rocked to the left and to the right, allowing it to sail, ever soaring through the air. This beautiful flight looked just like a dance, but one that involved tremendous risk. He understood that flying at this height was necessary—the crane was approaching a blockade constructed of many mountains. Only by catching the rising air currents could it make it over the rows of summits. But by instinct he preferred flying at low altitudes. That was when he could free himself from the fetters of angst and lean out of the window into the screaming winds to scan the distance. He could see plains, rivers, ponds, and low hills and never grew tired of looking at these things. Once in a while there were people on the hills, standing there like statues—always a lone figure. That moved him and reminded him of him. So he stretched out of the window as far as he could to get a closer look, but he never saw more than a fuzzy silhouette. He couldn’t tell if that person could see him—this spectacle of a huge bird carrying a house. It was likely that nobody could miss it. But that was not certain. Even as the crane flew lower it was still far from the ground and the people on the hills still only looked like little black and white spots. They would not be able to tell what kind of bird this was; much less perceive the house it carried. There were moments when he felt strange. He could not understand what he had become—a cartoon character, or some pitiful creature living in a real dream world. He might not be any better than a parasitic lice lodged in bird feathers; even though his senses were cognizant of far more than those of a louse. The crane’s occasional landings were bland. Most of the time it landed in barren swamplands. Sometimes he didn’t even dare leave the house. He was afraid that the ants crawling out of the swamps would bite him to death. Some of the better landings, on waterfronts, were nonetheless lifeless scenes. The shores and water were strewn with the white bones of animal carcasses. The landing he remembered best was on the edge of a clear stream. He caught a shiny, silver fish in his hands and played with it. The crane walked over, stretched out its neck and pecked the fish out of his palms. It put the fish on the ground and pecked it a few more times. It kept 14

pecking it until it was bloody and raw, but didn’t even eat it. When they took flight, he stayed in the window to watch the fish. It had long died, but it appeared to him to have transformed into another kind of animal—a kind of nameless, immortal life form. What he saw transpire was evidence of this: When the crane had just taken off, he saw it was a bloody fish with its tangled entrails showing. As the crane climbed, the scene gradually changed. A new form emerged from within the dead fish. It was no longer a repulsive red and black carcass. It appeared as an abstract black and red shape. The crane created a new kind of life. His anger toward the bird quickly dissipated. At night, in the dark, he would often wonder: had he become the crane’s prisoner? The slave image lingered in his thoughts, causing his sleep to become restless. The crane never opened its mouth or said a word, but from its black, opaque eyes he could discern that it was thinking. What it thought—he couldn’t know. One evening, they landed in a patch of weeds. Deep in the night, he heard the crane crying in pain. He woke to it rocking violently and in the confusion he leapt out of the window. Just then, the commotion stopped. He saw the crane trembling and slanted to the ground with a mangled lump of bloody flesh at its rear end. At daybreak, he saw that it was a bird with a build similar to that of the crane. But its body was much smaller and it did not appear to be the product of birth, as it did not have the form of a newly hatched chick, even though there was blood spattered all over the crane’s backside. This time they rested for a few days. The crane needed time to regain its strength. It was the longest he had spent on land since they had first taken flight and he was thrilled. He scoured a nearby piece of land and climbed every hill he could reach. He discovered a maze of narrow trails that crisscrossed through the hills and wilderness but

THEIR JOURNEY CONTINUED, BUT NOW COVERED IN A SHADOW OF UNCERTAINTY. HE NEEDED TO THINK HARD ABOUT THIS.

never found out where they led. Every time he followed a trail for a certain distance, a powerful force would grip him and urge him to go back from where he came. Perhaps he was afraid to leave any signs of the crane too far behind. When the crane finally flew again, he noticed that the small trails formed the huge image of a bird. They were actually one trail, with no beginning or end that meandered through the hills and wilderness, continually crossing and parting as if it was some kind of disorganized game. So, all that searching had been in vain. He had to be pleased that he hadn’t explored the trails any further, even if he felt a faint regret. He wondered if perhaps things on the ground were a different rendition. During this flight, the crane changed. It shrunk a little. This opened up even more room in his house and obviously that was a good thing, but he began to question it. Their journey continued, but now covered in a shadow of uncertainty. He needed to think hard about this. He truly desired to know where the crane was flying, but of the things he could learn, that was the least likely. Of all his options, the best choice was to lean out of the window and watch the crane for long periods of time. The crane rarely lowered its head to look at him and he did his best not to alarm it. But he would study its every movement with more care: every flap of its wings and the gentle turning of its long neck. It was getting smaller and smaller now. After a month it was only two thirds of its previous size. That slowed its speed and tamed its movements. He sat in the room and could feel his chest swelling. It felt like there was something that was going to burst from inside him. One day, as his chest ballooned, tremors shook the house. He ran to the window and looked outside anxiously. The room was approaching the ground. The crane was preparing to land. It was only noon. The crane had never landed at this time of day before. Outside, uneven shadows swayed over his window. A few days earlier, he had experienced a vague premonition and covered his window with a piece of translucent bamboo paper in order to keep out any outside rays or scenery. After another violent tremor, the house landed on the ground. The shadows outside grew more distinct. A few of them gathered on the glass, effusing a red-white hue. Familiar sounds and voices entered the room. Even if he had long forgotten them, the last thing he wanted to hear at that moment was those sounds and voices. Still, they crept in through every crack in the house. Issue 3 /2015

He could almost see their faces: small, tapered faces with sparse white beards on the edges. When a wind blew they floated around his room, floating into every corner. He sulked in his room for the rest of the day. In the evening, the sounds and voices drifted away and everything fell silent. He slowly opened the window and saw an avenue of cold light that was wide and as straight as a pen. It had a mirror—like surface made of glossy stone tiles that stretched into the distance. On either side there were countless low houses in a build similar to his. They all had their lights out, only allowing clean moon rays to sprinkle the edges of their roofs. He jumped from the window as softly as he could and climbed up the crane’s belly, slowly making his way onto its back. He then followed its curved neck all the way to its long, sharp beak. The crane opened its eyes. From atop the beak, he looked into them and saw a plain stretching infinitely. The crane stood up. Towering above the road and houses, it began to gently beat its wings. He saw two dried leaves starting to whirl around its body. They were huge, solid, and looked as though if they were to strike him it would be fatal. He gripped the crane’s beak firmly. The crane slowly rose. A whirlwind pounded against him and shattered the two dry leaves. He could see the shinning road start to narrow. The outlines of a city appeared underneath him, and then gradually dissolved from his sight. On this flight, he was deathly cold and saw high mountains up close for the first time. As they passed over them, the crane tilted its wings and looked like an arrow flying at an upward angle shooting past the jagged peaks. Terrified and thrilled he crawled onto the crane’s back and lowered himself into its feathers for warmth. He heard loud blasts ringing around his ears, as if there was a giant foot kicking him over and over. Eventually he slid down the crane’s feathers like a drop of water and returned into the house. After that, the crane continued shrinking. Its flying became increasingly unsteady. Every so often it would drop vertically from the air and land in a bustling neighborhood or at the mouth of a tall chimney. He also endured the shadows endlessly returning to sway on his window, the blaring city sounds and frightening gloom. The farther ahead they flew, the denser the city became. It was also getting larger. He felt as though he had reached the end of a road. The boundary was the closed window that would either open to a straight passageway or a deep chasm. Actually, the passage and the chasm were the same. The passage 15

was a level trap, the chasm a vertical road. There was a problem. He couldn’t open the window. As long as the shadows remained he was like a mouse backed into the corner of the room who could only slip out late in the night. The city blocks they landed in were always filled with a maze of roads running in all directions and chasms surrounded the chimney mouths. The strange thing was that no matter where they were, daytime was constantly filled with shadows. It was as though they existed in every corner the sunlight reached. It was only by flying into the sky that their presence could be escaped. The torment lingered, and the crane continued shrinking. Eventually, one day he discovered it had returned to its original size. It could only fly around in the room. Having lost the crane’s support, the house dropped and shaved the dense crowns of a few trees before it made a smooth landing. At first, everything was a quiet and that brought him some relief. But soon he started to see the many long and short shadows on his window. Their familiar sounds and voices seeped into the room, attacking him from all directions. Feeling wretched, he was determined not to leave the room. Even at nightfall he wouldn’t open the window. He imagined it would be a grisly, hellish world. All he hoped was for the crane to return to its giant form and rise off with the room once more. But the crane had resumed its old habits. It fluttered around the room, showing no trace of its transformation. So, they were each other’s prisoner. The crane could not take him flying and he could not let it fly away. He sat dumbstruck on his bed, gaping at the wall, when the crane leapt up beside him. Now it was the crane that made the effort to observe him. It tilted its head, locking one glossy black eye with his. It suffused a small cold light that filled his field of vision and then transformed into a glittering gem. He could now only see the layer of gleam on the eye’s surface and was no longer able to look into it. The two were left to face one another in silence. He closed his eyes and everything went black. He opened them and his big eyes met with its little eye. Occasionally, the crane would take off mischievously, causing the house to jump off the ground and send him a jolt of surprise. Once the excitement passed, the days felt longer and even more miserable. Seeing the crane standing at the head of his bed entranced in stillness, he was able to relax and return to his own thoughts. He watched the shadows outside his window slanting and getting longer by the day. He knew that some unavoidable changes had taken place. The shifting outside and stagnation inside piled together, 16

deepening his anxiety. He worried that in the days ahead that critical point would be reached and he would be forced to open the window. He sat in distress, with much time passing until his thoughts had hardened. He noticed a long, hard beak sticking out beneath his eyes. He barely sensed it. The change felt natural. It was not until his neck and body had grown thick plumage that he was startled. But by then the process was irreversible. He stood in front of the dressing mirror day after day, watching the transformation in hysteria, stretching his unfledged wings into the room and flapping them. At the other end, the crane stood at the head of the bed watching him with its glossy black eyes. It had a pure yet arrogant air as it observed this person who resembled it more by the day. In the end, he transformed into a crane. And one day he used his inflated body to take the house flying. The first time he went up he had climbed high, for he rushed to pass every cloud he saw. Some time later, he was picked up by a rising air current and soared even higher. He saw a mountain towering before him. The current rushed him along. High ground flew towards him. Only now did he perceive the danger. But it was too late. The current thrust him at the wall of the mountain. The house shattered. He saw a swarm of debris and furniture plunging to the ground behind him. Within the mass he saw the large dressing mirror and his reflection diving to the ground behind him. Inside the reflection he saw the large dressing mirror and his reflection inside it—one distraught, tumbling man. As he fell, he was thinking: What happened to that crane? – TRANSLATED BY NICHOLAS RICHARDS (芮尼克)

Author’s Note: I loved flying as a kid and have read many stories about it. The Greek myth of Icarus flying through the sky on the wax wings of Daedalus was the one that impressed me the most, which is probably the inspiration for this story. The crane is also my favorite bird, an ethereal creature—apathetic and mysterious. The man in the story is a modern figure trying to hold on to an ancient myth. He is hesitant and weak but never loses hope completely; instead, he continues to try new possibilities. In the end, the house is broken and the man falls to ground, rendering him a modern man again—a pitiful but inevitable end.

Issue 3 /2015

SPARKKY S IN THE S

KALEIDOSCOPE

QINGCHUN (孟庆春) PHOTOGRAPHS BY MENG 佳慧) TEXT BY SUN JIAHUI (孙

e workers who A look at the brav keep your lights on 的夏日高空行走炙热与目眩！电力工人

oday, we often look at electrical workers as laborers, specialists, perhaps people with dangerous jobs. But, when we were young, they cut an altogether more powerful figure, perhaps something close to superheroes. In Foshan (佛山), Guangdong Province, an electrical construction team has been working on a months-long project to extend transmission lines in the city. Old pylons needed to be replaced by new ones both for safety and efficiency, and the work itself takes place at a height of more than 40 meters. The team responsible for this type of undertaking isn’t just on the high wire with the high-altitude-operation technicians; crews of over 30 people work together in tandem, including ground crew support staff. Provisional members are added as needed and, although these particular team members are all from Hubei Province, their work takes them around the country. These laborers sometimes work under extremely difficult circumstances, not the least of which is the heat, which can rise to over 35 degrees Celsius in Foshan’s summer. To make matters worse, workers must wear standard-issue insulation uniforms for safety, leading to things like heat stroke and dehydration, which, even on the ground, are dangerous hazards. They begin work early in the morning, rest at midday to avoid the

worst of the sun, and then work late into the evening. Occasionally, they need to act as an emergency response team; day or night, they may be ordered to rush to the scene of a problem. They work public holidays, including Spring Festival, and while the rest of the country sits down with their family for a meal, these workers climb the on the high wires to keep the country’s grid together. However, despite the harsh weather conditions, long and irregular work hours, and danger, these workers have, in the past, come under public criticism for their relatively high salaries. Many don’t think that they deserve such a compensation for what amounts to a manual laborer’s position. In actuality, many of these workers hold a bachelor’s degree and sometimes even a master’s, and the high-altitude-operation technicians need to obtain certain qualification certificates in addition to their education. Not everyone has the opportunity to witness the hardships these workers endure. You might not be able to see their achievements in fat bank accounts or fancy cars, but when you see the blaze of lights at night in both rural and urban areas, it’s not difficult to imagine their silhouettes on those sky-high power lines, perhaps once again amounting to that superhero image we once had of them as children.

Issue 3 /2015

GROUND CREW PREPARE THE CONSTRUCTION OF A MACHINE THAT WILL HELP THEM TO DRAW IN THE WIRE

A HEAVY ROLL OF WIRE IS MOVED TO THE SITE FOR THE WORKERS TO USE IN THEIR REPAIRS

SPECIALIZED HIGH-ALTITUDE-OPERATION TECHNICIANS DRAW WIRES TO THE PYLONS

Issue 3 /2015

THIS PARTICULAR PROJECT TAKES PLACE AT A HEIGHT OF MORE THAN 40 METERS

AS THEY DEAL WITH DANGEROUS, CRUCIAL WORK, THE TECHNICIANS ON THE HIGH-WIRE ALL NEED TO BE WELL TRAINED AND EDUCATED TEMPERATURES IN THIS PART OF THE WORLD REACH 30 DEGREES CELCIUS, AND IT'S WORSE INSIDE THE SAFETY SUITS

GROUND CREW LOOK AFTER THEIR COWORKERS AS THEY BRAVE THE HEIGHTS, THE HEAT, AND THE DANGEROUS NATURE OF THE JOB 22

Issue 3 /2015

LIGHTS OUT! RADIO EXERCISE!

MADE IN CHINA

H o w a G e r m an t radi t i o n f ro m 1 8 0 3 af fe c t s t he m assa g e parl o rs o f C hi n a t o day 为什么我家楼下的发廊员工要跟着洗脑歌跳舞？

hether you find them amusing, annoying or confusing, “broadcast exercises” (广播体操), or radio exercises, are ubiquitous throughout China, and, surprisingly, they are now more prevalent than ever. If you walk past a hair salon, a massage parlor, or a hotel at 9:30 in the morning you can see staff members outside the entrance on the sidewalk, dancing to the music of “My Little Apple” or some other hideous pop song, following a lead dancer

Manchukuo. However, broadcast exercises, with their ingrained value of collectivism, were not welcomed with open arms after their short-lived peak. While in the US it fell to more individualized sports like baseball, the concept was also confronted in China after the New Culture Movement (新文化运动) in 1919 during the Republic of China period. Hu Shi (胡适), an influential scholar and educator, campaigned for “naturalist education” and boycotted the cultivation of loyalty to the Kuomingtang Party in schools. Radio exercises were the opposite of what Hu and his academic colleagues wanted to uphold: it was directed, controlled, and could easily be coupled with political sloganeering and propaganda. In Hu Shi’s words, an ideal young person should, “be free of heart and independent of mind”. As a result of the liberal tendencies and reformed education ideas, in 1919, the China Education Association released a new regulation that suggested “the soldiers’ exercise” should be replaced with a variety of sports. In 1922, the Chinese government issued another paper that aborted radio exercises in schools altogether. Toward the end of Republic of China, as far as physical education was concerned, mass broadcast exercises were already on the brink of extinction, while traditional martial arts and the more competitive Western sports were on the rise. In Japan they met with a more sudden death; after Japan’s defeat in 1945, the victorious countries banned the exercise because it was too militaristic in nature. The practice, however, found a new home in the USSR; predictably, in the hard times, the practice found a haven in the Soviet collection with such strength that it soon grew to a scale that rivaled that of Japan before the end of WWII. This, in turn, affected China. Two years after the foundation of the PRC, in 1951, China looked to the Soviet Union, the revered and infallible “Old Big Brother”, in every aspect of social and political life. That, of course, meant the broadcast exercises despised by the intellectuals of the Republic of China were brought back in full swing. In fact, aside from the idea that these exercises could be easily linked with political propaganda, they were cheap, convenient, and did not require any equipment—perfect for the then impoverished China. That move officially started a tradition that is still annoying

Peng Yue

ASIDE FROM THE IDEA THAT THESE EXERCISES COULD BE EASILY LINKED WITH POLITICAL PROPAGANDA, THEY WERE CHEAP, CONVENIENT, AND DID NOT REQUIRE ANY EQUIPMENT

Illustration

of course. After the dance, they finish up by yelling slogans at the top of their lungs, startling passersby, and, according to some news reports, attracting flying objects from residential buildings overhead. To the uninitiated, it can seem either innocently charming or terrifyingly totalitarian. However, this odd show of worker solidarity dates back at least 100 years. Such exercises are usually done for the singular purpose of boosting staff morale, enthusiasm, and solidarity. For those who make a habit of visiting such establishments, the overall experience would seem to suggest that this menagerie of dancing and camaraderie may be in vain; however, the core value of this behavior, rather than taking joy in one’s work, would appear to be a sense of collectivism, loyalty, and, in some people’s opinions, “brainwashing”. And although places like Japan are still famous for this sort of worker exercise, its roots can be found in Germany. This exercise experienced its primitive beginnings in 1803 via Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, the “Father of Gymnastics”, who associated patriotism and unity with his popular workout, well before the invention of the radio. His methods were widely applied to armies and factories for much the same purpose they are used today in China. It wasn’t until the 1880s when, bitterly humiliated by the Opium Wars, China’s intellectuals and educators were looking to Western solutions to reform, strengthen, and heal the country. Their answer came in the form of gymnastics at private schools to boost the young citizens’ spirits and keep them in good health. As it was a variation of the German military calisthenics, it was called “soldiers’ exercise” (兵操), and was done very much in the military style. In 1925, this practice truly became a “broadcast exercise” when the United States married the concept with radio broadcasts for the first time. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company sponsored a well-received radio exercise program that was practiced by millions. Then, the Japanese government, enthralled by the massive scale of the exercise in the US, embraced it. The Japanese armies spread it wherever they went and took it to regions they occupied during World War II, including Taiwan and Northeastern China under the Manchurian puppet state of Issue 3 /2015

Students practice their broadcast exercises in the 1970s in Jiangsu Province

Chinese school kids to this day. In 1951, the China National Sports Association and the Central Broadcast Bureau jointly released the “First Broadcast Exercise” (第一套广播体操). It was such an event that the People’s Daily published several editorials on the subject, calling for mass enthusiasm and participation. Numerous “Radio Exercise Popularization Committees” were set up all over the country, and a series of 40 stamps were released in 1952 to illustrate the exercises. The workout was carried out for the benefit of “productivity and national defense”, as Zhu De (朱德), the then vice president, put it. The most well-known slogan from that time was, “Everyone should work out, and every day we should go out to the exercise ground. Stay healthy so that we can go on working for our motherland for 50 years!” It was mandatory for the staff of all schools, governmental sectors, and factories go out to an open ground punctually at the sound of the radio music to practice for ten minutes twice a day. The beginning of the exercise usually featured a quote by a “big brother” or a slogan; during the Cultural Revolution, the prelude was “Chairman Mao the Great Leader taught us: popularize physical exercise, strengthen the people’s health, stay alert for enemies, and defend our country!” Even the eye exercises—a minor derivation particularly designed to protect students’ sight in 1963— started with, “Protect our sight for the revolution! Now begins the eye exercise.” These halcyon days of broadcast exercises have come and 26

gone, relegated to history, but the practice is still going on today—albeit with much improved methodology. Today, Chinese middle school students wouldn’t find the radio exercise posters of the 1950s funny because they are still living it; despite changes in China’s political climate, radio exercises have remained in schools, indelibly linked to the curriculum. Much like its heyday 60 years ago, the students need to do it twice every school day—once at the beginning of the day and once around ten in the morning. Much has changed, even the radios have disappeared, evolving into speakers, iPods, and the like. The political preludes are gone, morphing into something vaguely related to exercise, such as “the sailing of hope” or “let your dreams fly”. It’s hard to tell whether the exercise is making the students more spirited, healthy, or united; every school, of course, features youngsters hanging their heads and shoulders, bored and tired, skillfully minimizing their movements to the right degree so that they can both save energy and not be picked on by the headmasters sternly overseeing their workout. From Germany prior to the Napoleonic Wars to the intellectuals of the Republic of China, right on through to the Cultural Revolution, broadcast exercises have certainly been part of history, and who better to keep this glorious tradition alive than the blank faces of staff members outside a hair salon near you. – GINGER HUANG (黄原竟) Issue 3 /2015

hittled down from around 30 over the course of a weekend at Microsoft’s China R&D offices in Beijing’s bustling tech district Zhongguancun (中关村), six hopeful Chinese tech startups remained in the running. Would the victor be the minds behind a personalized fitness app or those who developed a platform for private equity transactions? Perhaps the creators of a journey planner complete with suggestions based on users’ hobbies? They were competing for a guaranteed 50,000 RMB in seed money, but perhaps more tantalizing were the potential contacts that could be forged with representatives of the venture capital groups scrutinizing them. In the end, the March 2015 event concluded when a novelty check was handed to the creators of an app that hopes to replace employee workshops with an app that trains staff in operating procedures and measures milestones. The scene was one that would have been alien to the Chinese mainland of a few decades ago, when the idea of Chinese venture capital funds on the prowl was just as outlandish a concept as the yet-to-be-invented smartphone. But times have certainly changed. In 2015, of all the global technology companies worldwide with a market value of over a billion, the 50 top performers all came from China, Bloomberg reported in April. The pace and scale of this change in the Middle Kingdom is nowhere more apparent than Zhongguancun, the first successful creation from the Ministry of Science and Technology’s “Torch” program (火炬计划) in 1988. While in many ways it still resembles the electronics markets of the 80s, jostling with patrons out to buy bargain-basement laptops, Zhongguancun today is in many ways the brainchild of Chen Chunxian (陈春先), a Sichuan physicist, who in the 1970s led a team of scientists to create China’s first tokamak reactor—a device first devised by Russian scientists in the 1950s to create and contain thermonuclear fusion power. But it was Chen’s trip to Silicon Valley in the early 1980s that would lay the seeds for Zhongguancun. He returned with ideas regarding areas with a concentration of talent and technology, which would form the basis for the first and most successful of China’s innovation clusters.

C O V ER S T ORY

BY DAVID DAWSON

How Communist China became a cradle for innovative startups and the plucky tech entrepreneurs that call it home 在电子科技的带领下，一场创业风暴正在席卷中国 28

Issue 3 /2015

As with the tokamak reactor, Chen both copied and innovated to create something that would work for China. Crucially for startups, these clusters had incubators for tech businesses, which offered free rent and connections with universities and government departments. A startup that was part of the Torch program also, crucially, had the green light from banks to receive loans. Thus, somewhat ironically, startups—arguably the most cutting edge form of capitalism–in China arose from centrally-planned industry zones, an idea that sits quite comfortably with communism. Since then, China has developed something of an addiction to industry zones, creating tens of thousands of them throughout the country. While at first this may seem entirely at odds with the entrepreneurial spirit of Silicon Valley, in reality the difference isn’t quite so pronounced. Andy Mok, the organizer of the Beijing Tech Hive and a partner at Songyuan Capital—the venture capital group that fronted the 50,000 RMB—points out that although China is often in the headlines for supporting tech businesses, Silicon Valley did not emerge from a vacuum. Although many of the plucky, fiercely independent entrepreneurs who lead US startups today tend to play down the impact of government investment, in its early days, government funding in the form of defense spending poured into Silicon Valley, with the first government contract being awarded to Stanford researchers led by Frederick Terman in 1946. If Chen is responsible for Zhongguancun, then Terman, along with William Shockley, who helped create and commercialize the transistor, are responsible for Silicon Valley. Terman encouraged his students to set up firms in the area, including the founders of Hewlett Packard. Later Stanford

ONE WOULD THINK THAT WITH ITS PROXIMITY TO CHINA’S BEST UNIVERSITIES, STARTUPS RESIDING IN ZHONGGUANCUN AND GREATER BEIJING WOULD HAVE NO PROBLEM FINDING TALENT 29

RED TAPE

would lease areas to startup firms which included Lockheed Martin, today a beneficiary of extensive government largesse and one of the largest employers in Silicon Valley, in a pattern somewhat similar to that which characterizes Zhongguancun today. One would think that with its proximity to China’s best universities, startups residing in Zhongguancun and greater Beijing would have no problem finding talent, but for Mok—also a former Rand corporation researcher who analyzed Chinese tech—it is perhaps the most significant challenge. “Silicon Valley is a magnet for people with the right expertise,” Mok points out. “Beijing has Tsinghua, Beida, and Beihang [universities]. The quality of education is not as high, but this is changing.” Mok also recruits talent for placement in Chinese startups, and says he sees immense potential for their growth in the future. He points to the massive growth in smartphones and tech consumers in locations like Southeast Asia and India and says, “Chinese companies are better situated to take advantage of these markets.” “I think as a developing country, China understands these markets more,” he says, drawing parallels between the experiences of consumers in both. Mok says as a rule of thumb (stressing that it’s a very loose rule of thumb) that it takes around five million USD in capital to launch a startup in the US, whereas it is around 500,000 USD in China. They also require a culture where participants are able to make mistakes and learn from them, something which in the past was difficult in China’s risk-averse corporate environment. “A successful startup really is about making mistakes, learning and adapting,” Mok points out, saying that the best ones “make their mistakes quickly”. He adds that even in cases where it appears from the outside that a startup

has been an immediate success, there are usually more subtle forms of failure that shaped the experiences of the founders. But as with all industries, the Chinese tech sector has both its bulls and its bears. The bears point toward the massive growth in the Chinese tech sector, and draw parallels with the dot-com bubble. With the industry at the forefront of China’s stock market, and valuations now at an average of 220 times reported profits, the discrepancy is far above the earnings versus price ratio of 1:156 that characterized the US dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and 2000. A number of experts are warning of a Chinese bubble that would be more abrupt, albeit have less fallout than the US bubble due to the more limited role tech stocks play in the Chinese equity market. But in the meantime, scrappy startups continue to emerge, hoping to make a place among China’s tech billionaires.

FINDING A NICHE

Whether it’s China’s Google-equivalent Baidu, bargain smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi, or online payment system Alipay, China has no shortage of tech giants of its own, though one thread they all share is that they used the unique circumstances of the Chinese market to carve out their niche. This allowed them to prosper in China’s very different market but has posed challenges when large companies seek to spread their wings on the global stage. Nevertheless, for startups it is that unique Chinese niche that defines whether they will fail or succeed. Take Tuanche for example. Going from around a dozen employees in 2009 to over 700 now, Tuanche is among the leaders in its niche. The website offers advice on buying cars and

ous plified in recent years. One anonym the process has become vastly sim but , easy isn’t ness ple busi a sim a — ting es Star est kinds of business ess behind starting one of the easi web entrepreneur revealed the proc e. This requires an application with nam a d First up, the business will nee ce. advi ping shop ring offe site web n of Tax. Both departments will ce as well as the State Administratio mer Com and stry , Indu of eau Bur the at some point. If the name is free be shuttled from one to the other will you but ion, licat od app peri one k the wee use l. There is also a twoorking-day waiting list for approva y congratulations, you’re on the 20-w tion with the other process. In man unc conj , though this can happen in rded reco g bein e is thes site dle web han the to n whe possibly connections, agencies, with more experience and ask rs neu epre entr ring aspi s, case

makes arrangements with car dealers to sell in bulk to large groups of customers, thus obtaining lower prices for clients. The sheer size of the Chinese market—combined with the relative ignorance of many consumers when it comes to purchasing cars, due in no small part to first-time buyers in a rapidly growing marketplace—created this niche for the “group buying” of cars. CEO Wen Wei says that success wasn’t easy. Echoing Mok’s comments about the importance of failure, Wen said he previously operated several startups and learned from his mistakes. The most crucial lesson was having the right people on board at the beginning. “We started out as a group of salespeople. But over time we had to bring in developers.” “Many Chinese buyers are not well-educated when it comes to buying cars. We were able to forge links with car dealers, and by buying in bulk, we were able to leverage better deals for our customers,” Wen says. As has been the case with most successful startups in China, copycats seeking to make a fast buck immediately swarmed, and to stay ahead of the pack, Wen says that the company has had to ensure it stays focused on its customers and keep long term goals in mind rather than jumping at immediate opportunities. Other startups find industry-specific problems and seek to remedy them. Previous tech-hive winner Apricot Forest targeted the medical industry, in which underpaid doctors find themselves under extreme pressure from both hospitals and angry patients. A survey by the China Hospital Association found an average of 27 assaults on doctors per hospital each year. Long waiting times and overloaded doctors combined with a culture of bribery and poor wages created a situation in which any tool that saves time is of immense use.

This was where Apricot Forest entered the equation, providing a collection of services via an app. The app allows doctors to record all patient records and can facilitate communication with patients via China’s immensely popular WeChat messaging platform. It also allows the doctors to liaise with peers on diagnoses and check the latest medical journals. Adaptation is another key component. Wei Rongjie, one of the founders of fledgling company Caputer Labs, initially began working on lenses to magnify smartphone screens to make the experience of watching movies on them more pleasant. Many young Chinese rely on smartphones for multimedia viewing, as many may not have easy access to other equipment to watch movies. With inspiration coming from the success of the Oculus Rift headset, the idea evolved, eventually becoming the Seer headset, an open-source Augmented Reality developer kit. The Caputer Labs team recently exceeded a Kickstarter goal of 100,000 USD, bringing in over 160,000 USD. Business lead Baicheng Hou said that because augmented reality is a new field, the time-window for development is quite limited. “We have had to speed

OF COURSE, ONCE ENOUGH MONEY BECOMES INVOLVED, SURVIVAL BECOMES NOT JUST ABOUT BUSINESS NOUS BUT POLITICS AS WELL

Beijing, and around 1,000 will cost around 2,000 RMB for a business in matters on their behalf. In total, the process offers shopping advice, that ite ess license. For registering a webs RMB in Shanghai. Then you need an actual busin tising. So best case adver or n e businesses, such as website desig it’s relatively easy. Same goes for certain onlin banking, insurance like thing a month. But if you want to go into some scenario, you are up and running after about are notoriously esses busin these as the requirements for establishing or medicine, be prepared for a grueling wait, hly financial mont ng, runni and t departments. Once the business is up bureaucratic and involve multiple governmen tape. red as the business grows, so too does the reports must be filed with the tax bureau. But

Issue 3 /2015

1978 – 1985

1980 - The first special economic zones created

1984 - Key state laboratories established - First patent law enacted

THE EXPERIMENTATION PHASE Deng Xiaoping’s open door policy is enacted, and China begins to move away from the Soviet model of S&T development. Links are built between industry and science.

1985 – Crucial university reforms enacted

1986 – National Natural Science Foundation of China founded; over 10 billion yuan set aside for scientific research in the "863 High-Tech program"

STRUCTURAL REFORM OF SCIENCE AND TECH Multiple programs, policies, and foundations are established to push for science and technology.

65%

19 MILLION

OF CHINESE PEOPLE BELIEVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS A GOOD CAREER CHOICE

ENTREPRENEURIAL BUSINESSES IN CHINA IN 2014

BY NUMBERS

TOP 5

CHINESE STARTUPS

THE

XIAOMI 10 BILLION DIDI DACHE 3.5 BILLION MEITUAN 3 BILLION MOMO 3 BILLION

ONE TRILLION

DIANPING 2 BILLION

RMB BY 2019

Source: TechinAsia,“Beyond a Billion”, October 22, 2014

CHINA HAS A NEW BUSINESS OWNERSHIP RATE OF OVER

10%

(JAPAN 1.26% AND US 4.25%)

57%

CHINA’S MOBILE INTERNET MARKET IS EXPECTED TO TOP

ONLY OF CHINESE EARLY-STAGE ENTREPRENEURS EMPLOY MORE THAN 20 PEOPLE

OF CHINESE EARLY-STAGE ENTREPRENEURS EMPLOY 0 – 5 PEOPLE Source: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2014 Global Report

A HANDFUL OF STARTUPS TO WATCH IN 2015 • • • •

Microloans for college kids who need an iPhone by Aixuedai (爱学贷) Universal power adapters by Kankun Technology (坎坤科技) An app called Hao Chushi (好厨师) lets you hire a chef for the night Milk Nanny, a milk powder mixer birthed on Kickstarter

1988 – Torch program begins

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1993 – First company law goes into effat

1995 – "Revitalizing the Nation through Science and Education Technology" strategy adopted

• • •

AutoBot (车车智能) app lets you track your car’s analytics Tingchebao (停车宝) parking app that finds you a spot Virtual-reality-equipped drone from ElecFreaks

REFORMS DEEPENED

The truism is as valid in China as in the West: startups can’t survive without capital. But capital in China is subject to an entirely different set of rules, which change year to year. Although the strict barriers to obtaining

PURSUIT OF PROFIT

1996 – 2005

FINANCIAL FRONTIERS

loans from China’s banking behemoths (four of the world’s ten biggest banks are Chinese) are being worn away, it remains almost impossible for plucky startups to obtain a bank loan. High requirements for deposits and curbs aimed at controlling the often turbulent property market make it difficult for smaller players to access any kind of loan, whether for a startup or simply to buy property. With banks out of the picture, connections to government funding can help, with it often coming through universities, incubators, innovation funds, or R&D think tanks. On the private side of the equation, a wide array of financial options—often entirely above board, but occasionally very shady—have emerged as alternatives for those seeking to profit from the country’s booming economy. Collectively they are referred to as shadow banking. As was the case in ancient China, the most common way of obtaining money for an investment is to tap friend and family networks. In these cases, someone buying an apartment or launching a business first turns to family, then friends, then connections. Most of the time, they are unremarkable, particularly when the loan pays off—which is generally a safe bet when property is involved, given the consistently increasing land prices. But there are darker tales as well. At the village level, these networks of connections have been known to coalesce into lending empires, which then metastasize into entire counties becoming financial hubs. As the interest rates soar and businesses collapse, these lending sprees occasionally implode with catastrophically violent results. In one of the most high profile cases, in April of 2012, The Jinan Times reported on a hit and run car

1986 – 1995

up our research and development. It is crucial for us to plan and improve our product so it can survive in the market.” Of course, once enough money becomes involved, survival becomes not just about business nous but politics as well. Take for example the case of Li Jingwei—in 1984 he took over soft drink maker Jianlibao, a state-owned company under the Sanshui government in Guangdong Province. In the 90s the company hit its peak, with five billion RMB in annual revenue, and the Jianlibao soft drink had become an iconic brand for many young Chinese. But this then raised the question—to what extent could Li try to exert ownership? Things came to a head when Li offered a 450 million RMB buyout of the company and attempted to move it out of the province. Instead the government hurriedly sold the company to another state-owned company, and Li was notified just a few days before the signing ceremony, according a report in Forbes, which said that he was in tears. Within days he suffered a brain hemorrhage. He was charged with embezzlement of public funds in 2002, and died in 2013. The company had been through a tumultuous period, with high debt and accusations of mismanagement.

1997 – Deng Nan, daughter of Deng Xiaoping and Vice Minister of State Science and Technology Commission, appointed to oversee government VC research – China’s first VC firm, founded in the mid 80s, goes bankrupt

1999 – Private ownership recognized – Innovation fund for small technology enterprises made available

1998 – Chinese Academy of Sciences Knowledge Innovation program begins – NPC conference allows corporate-backed VC firms, formally sanctioning private tech investment. Waves of new VC firms follow.

2001 – China joins WTO

2000 – Tech giant Baidu founded

2002 – China Venture Capital Association founded

2006 – National Science and Technology Conference adopts long term science and technology plan

In 2015, P2P industry information provider wangdaizhijia.com said that China had 1,575 P2P lenders at the close of 2014, with the total transaction value in 2014 amounting to around 252 billion RMB. That same year, 275 P2P lenders defaulted. The bigger survivors say that one of their biggest overheads is hiring all the staff required to properly scrutinize lenders. Greater regulation is expected to arrive in 2015 along with slowing growth in the economy—a sure recipe for more defaults, but hopefully a more stable environment. So for startups, venture capital is often the favored bet. Just several years ago aspiring companies had to struggle to find any potential venture capital investors, but today they are proliferating. The website of the largest industry group, the China Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, boasts that the organization has over 100 member firms, controlling 500 billion USD in assets—the vast majority of members being big players with at least 100 million USD in assets, with just over half of them being private equity funds and a third consisting of venture capital. Though it is worth bearing in mind that many may be based in Hong Kong, which is subject to entirely different rules than the mainland. Citing research by Zero21PO Capital, a private equity group, Reuters reported that in the first half of 2014, fresh capital available for investment had surged by 157 percent to around 6.76 billion USD—just shy of 42 billion RMB. In that period 83 venture capital funds were set up. The Chinese government is now a direct player with its own startup fund, complete with resources set to

2010 – Market analyst company Muddy Waters prompts Sino-US spat as savage short-selling calls cause Chinese stocks in on US markets to tumble by $7 billion

CHINESE COMPANIES GO GLOBAL

accident which claimed the life of two men. One of them, Zhu Bao, called his family at midnight asking for help, as he and his cousin were being pursued by three cars carrying a dozen people. Their car crashed into a truck and both men died at the scene. The pair had reportedly been targeted by loan sharks after a four million RMB deal went bad. The media followed the trail to the textile hub of Zouping County in the middle of Shandong Province. In this area of 13 towns and hundreds of villages which houses roughly 950,000 people, reporters discovered that thousands of ordinary citizens had rushed to become lenders, but residents told the Jinan Times many had been killed over debts. Loans had been given out with rates far higher than those demanded by banks, which then became loans to others at even higher rates. Attracted by the scent of profit, lenders from China’s entrepreneurial hub of Wenzhou came to get in on the action and the operation ballooned in size. The loans became almost impossible to pay off.

2006 – PRESENT

ATTRACTED BY THE SCENT OF PROFIT, LENDERS FROM CHINA’S ENTREPRENEURIAL HUB OF WENZHOU CAME TO GET IN ON THE ACTION AND THE OPERATION BALLOONED IN SIZE

The Southern Weekly reported on the case of Liu Dapeng, who had borrowed four million RMB in 2011 because he wanted to invest in a fish pond, duck farm, and air-conditioning factory. Unsurprisingly, he was unable to make the payments, which amounted to 12 percent of the loan, every month. He fled but was later reportedly captured and tortured to death. The Jinan Times cited estimates that said billions of RMB may have churned through Zouping County’s lending schemes over the years. Despite the scheme, the area’s growth grew through the entire period. Official estimates put the county’s total GDP at 53.8 billion RMB in 2010. By 2014, it had grown to 76.9 billion. In Sunzhen Township, locals said that at the height of the lending craze luxury cars clogged the streets. Later villagers would speak of communities left impoverished. But outside of the villages lies a vibrant private lending industry which in recent years has gone online. Gone are the local connections or family lenders, replaced by the impersonal ties offered by the internet. Dubbed P2P lending, the process involves third parties who match lenders to those seeking loans. The process was on display in January of 2015, at the Internet Financial Summit in Beijing. There, Zheng Chunxiang, chief risk officer at Subangloan. com, told the audience that since its founding in 2012, lending transactions had reached 1.06 billion yuan. And Subangloan is hardly the biggest player in the industry. Other competitors have amassed larger amounts of money, though it is rough going in a business which is expanding rapidly but also faces high rates of attrition. The risk of defaults is high, and some proprietors simply flee, taking the money with them.

2012 – US securities commission (SEC) goes head-to-head with China’s State Secrets law, after charging Chinese arms of the world’s top five accounting firms with refusing to hand over accounting information. The SEC also raises concern over the safety of VIEs, a popular startup structure with foreign investors in China.

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rival the entire amount of fresh private capital put on the market in that same half-year period. In January of 2015 the authorities announced the establishment of a 40 billion RMB venture capital fund. The announcement of the fund, which will support areas such as technology and green energy, came shortly after the authorities tweaked the rules to allow insurance companies to also get in on the action— they are now permitted to take cash from their massive insurance premium funds and put it into venture capital—the twin announcements further blurring the line between private and government ownership. Foreign ownership is another very grey area. One lawyer intimately familiar with foreign investments in China revealed that while it was common for large multinationals to successfully conduct business in China, it was very common for those seeking to invest in startup companies to find themselves on the losing end of disputes due to weak legal protections for minority investors, necessary due to strict requirements for startups to be helmed by Chinese citizens. Foreign investors tend to come into Chinese mainland via investment vehicles registered in Hong Kong or Taiwan, or in some cases Chinese spouses, but the lawyer said that in decades of doing business in China, he had yet to see these foreign investors in mainland startups successfully “take-out” and get any large amounts of money back past outflow restrictions and into foreign accounts. Nevertheless, the money continues to flow in, and with Chinese enterprises continuing to boom, few are looking to move their money elsewhere, at least not yet. And as other emerging markets continue to grow, the frontiers for Chinese startups will continue to expand.

2014 – Chinese firm Alibaba has world’s biggest IPO

2015 – Chinese authorities set up 40 billion yuan venture capital fund – ‘Wifi Master Key’ startup hands Tesla Model S electric roadsters to all employees there longer than four months, giving out dozens as year-end bonuses – SEC crisis quietly resolved as exceptions made for Chinese companies due to State Secrets law

ONEY AND MATRIMONY BY SUN JIAHUI (孙佳慧)

A look at the sk yrock e tin g cos ts an d pro f i t s o f t y i n g t he k n o t

nightmare at that. According to Time-Weekly, Shanghai ranked first on the wedding spending list, with the average cost reaching 230,000 RMB. And other first-tier cities like Beijing and Shenzhen didn’t fall far behind. Take Beijing as an example, catering for a 35-table banquet will run at about 120,000 RMB, and once you add in the wedding dress, the car, and all the various trimmings of your modern, urban wedding in China, it averages out to around 200,000 RMB. According to the China Wedding Industry Development Report, an average of 12,000 USD is spent on each wedding nationwide. For a young couple starting out, this is a horrific expense. “We never expected an expensive wedding, but everywhere wanted money, you don’t even know

Illustration

t’s supposed to be a cause for celebration—a wonderful expression of eternal love cemented in traditions and customs, symbolically linking one human being to another. The ritual of marriage in China echoes through the ages, so, the question is, how has it turned into a money pit? Today, weddings can cost millions of RMB, and expectations for that glamorous day are rising not falling—much to the chagrin of the lucky two and the revelers. It is said that girls plan their weddings from childhood, putting pillowcases on their heads to act as veils. Little do they know that every step along their fairytale—the clothes, flowers, wedding car, the colorful stage, the cake, the champagne— is a wallet-shredding nightmare, and a fairly recent

Li Xiaofa

在中国, 结婚为什么这么贵?

where the money goes. In the end, the only thing left was my wedding dress, everything else was gone,” says Wang Ying, recently married in October of last year. “We were over budget on everything. Even the bridal bouquet cost hundreds.” This isn’t to say that there aren’t still cheap, traditional weddings throughout the country, but China’s rise over the past few decades has turned the wedding business into a full-blown industry. In the vanguard are the tuhao, China’s famous tacky rich. In Fujian Province, it’s not all that rare to see a bride adorned with more than five kilograms of gold, a custom but also the tuhao team colors—dozens of bracelets, rings, and jewelry of all kinds. The marriage of a ceramic magnate in Jinjiang involved an Issue 3 /2015

eight-day extravaganza, with a dowry valued at more than 100 million RMB. Other weddings seem to exist for the purpose of impressing the revelers; in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, 81 iPhone 5s were sent as gifts to guests at a wedding. A recent wedding in Wuhan featured a Maserati, an Audi, and a bright-pink Ferrari, all accompanied by models and choreographed dancers. While everyone seems to have a good time, it’s important to take a break and realize that things weren’t always like this. In the 1960s, the must-have items for a wedding were called the “36 legs” (三十六条腿), meaning that newlyweds should prepare wood furniture before a wedding—beds, tables, chairs, wardrobes—all this with the expectation that the total number of furniture legs would add up to a predetermined lucky number. And that

was largely it, even dinner with close friends and family was optional in the halcyon days of 1960s China. As with everything in China, things changed after the Reform and Opening Up, and the wedding industry began to take hold. This began with the “Three Big Items” (三大件) essential for a wedding—a watch, a sewing machine, and a bicycle. Later, a radio was added and it was collectively called “Three Revolve, One Sound” (三转一响). The estimated cost for this, together with the “36 legs”, would be about 420 RMB. By the 1980s, the “Three Big Items” ballooned again: a refrigerator, a color television, and a washing machine, adding up to about 3,000 RMB. Wedding dinners began to become a normal occurrence, but certainly not extravagant ones. And, ten or 20 RMB in a red envelope was a generous 37

THE DISCOVERY OF DARK MATTER WOULD CHANGE THE STANDARD MODEL OF PHYSICS AS WE KNOW IT

A one-hundred-table banquet hall used primarily for weddings in Yunnan Province

enough gift. It may not sound like much, but, considering income levels at the time, those must-haves were not as cheap as they sound. As the economy developed, expectations for weddings skyrocketed. Those “Three Big Items” have been relegated to history, giving rise to the weddings we know today— Western-style wedding gowns, luxury cars, exquisite bridal make-up, and wedding photos all took hold—and the wedding industry with all of its facets and niches took hold with it. These niches evolved into specialized sectors: master of ceremony services, venue decoration, photography, tailoring, hairdressing, and many more. 38

However, today, the trend is for a one-stop-shop (albeit an expensive one) for all your wedding needs. “We cooperate with hotels, wedding dress shops, and even other wedding planning companies. So, a planning company doesn’t need too many staff members. Usually two planners can handle a wedding. It is a kind of resource sharing,” says Ms. Gao, who works with a top wedding planning company. This holistic approach is what makes the wedding planning industry so profitable, producing and selling ideas. In China, themes can mainly be divided into three categories: Chinese-style, Western-style, and a

“YOU CAN’T JUST THINK ABOUT THE PRICE; THE POINT IS THE PERFORMANCEPRICE RATIO”

mix between Chinese and Western. A common Chinese-style theme wedding with red bridal dresses and traditional rituals may cost about 20,000 RMB, covering the MC, make-up, video recording, photography, and the venue layout—along with a tailored theme like “Double Happiness” (双喜). Gao claims that there is a 50 percent profit margin in most weddings for wedding planners, adding that she doesn’t think it’s particularly extravagant even though she herself assisted in a Shanxi Province wedding with budget of over ten million RMB. “You can’t just think about the price; the point is the performance-price ratio. Sometimes I understand customers’ need for perfectionism.” Part of the reason for the high margins is that most themes are recyclable. Around half of all the Western-style motifs are centered around themes like “Summer Fragment” or “Love in Bloom”, both of which use similar, recyclable items. Also, lucky couples celebrating in the Chinese style shouldn’t be surprised if their wedding planner comes up with a theme around “Happiness” or “Red”. If you’re not a fan of either of these, it’s going to cost you. There is, however, an upside to all the preparation, the boring atmosphere, perfunctory congratulations, and piles of leftovers: the economy. According to the Wedding Services Market Research Report from IBIS World published in January, 2015, revenues from the wedding services industry in China reached 22 billion USD in 2014—roughly the nominal GDP of Cyprus. For the past five years, annual growth has been around 5.1 percent, and over half of all couples use these types of services when they get married. With China’s large population and high marriage rate, the market potential for this revenue stream is virtually limitless. There is, perhaps, no better place to witness China’s wedding extravagance Issue 3 /2015

than a wedding expo, a tradition that began as recently as 2005. Held every year in different places around the country, it features the full range of wedding products and services available, including photography studios, wedding planners, bridal gown designers, rental services, hotel agents, and restaurant banquet hall representatives. It’s a platform to promote their brands and for buyers to collect information. Wherever held, it attracts hundreds of thousands visitors. But, the question remains as to why China was so fast, after all the austerity of the recent past, to build an industry out of weddings. The answer is what you would expect—traditional beliefs surrounding marriage in China indicate that marriage is one of the most important events in life. Throughout history, a grand wedding was essential for justifying a marriage, and if the wedding was too simple or crude, the two families might be breaking the rules of etiquette and decency, making weddings a serious status symbol. In this sense, the extravagance of weddings in general moves only one way: up. Culturally, and this is for many cultures around the world, the wedding centers on the bride, seen as something the prospective groom gives the bride. This expectation is also a factor in the ballooning costs of weddings. “You are taking a wife who will accompany you for the rest of your life, money spent on a wedding is just a trifle compared with that. I think this is evidence of my love,” says hopeful groom Li Liang, who is getting married this year, hoping to blow the roof off for his betrothed. Parents are another cause of wedding extravagance. It is often said that parents spend half of the money, invite more than half the guests, and do more than half of the preparation work. Sometimes the newlyweds don’t even know the guests in their own wedding, and the guests just express their good

wishes to the parents. In many ways, a wedding is no longer the most important event in life for the young couples, rather for their parents. “We didn’t want a luxurious wedding that badly, but our parents insisted. They would have felt humiliated if our wedding wasn’t good enough,” Wang Ying says. In this, little has changed since the days of yore. Marriages were often dominated by parents who arranged the partners to begin with. Filially, children followed their parents’ orders to get married without even meeting their future husband or wife. Forgetting for a moment the incredible prices and pressure on the newlyweds and family, a few words must be said of the guests. Even though the parents often monopolize the guest list, an omitted invitation can end a friendship, and considering the all-encompassing power of the hongbao, if someone actually wants to come to your wedding, you’d better give them an invitation. It’s not just the happy couple who break the bank for their weddings;

A promotional deal from a jewelry company displaying a bride wearing 3.5 kilograms of gold in Fuzhou, Fujian Province

This wedding in Harbin features sports cars, vintage cars, two Hummer limos, 12 Lincoln limos, and a fleet of 20 Benz vehicles in their massive procession

A whopping 99,999 roses were used at this wedding in Chongqing, along with 30 wedding cars

a great deal of pressure is put on the guests to cough up cash. In China, the conventional gift for a wedding is unimaginative—cash in a red envelope, or hongbao. The general rule is, the closer you are to the couple, the more money you need to fork out, and this can put tremendous strain on the revelers. The lovingly crafted wedding invitations are often called “red bombs”. The hongbao are reason enough to have a wedding; a larger wedding means more hongbao.

This Wenzhou wedding features four Ferraris, four Lamborghinis, eight RollsRoyces, and ten Bentleys

“I UNDERSTAND THIS PATTERN, AND I ALSO HOPE TO TAKE BACK MY MONEY WHEN I GET MARRIED” Issue 3 /2015

It’s important to remember that the happy couple burning money on their wedding have themselves been through the hongbao gauntlet many times before. “It’s just like a kind of unscheduled deposit. You give money many times, and when you get married, you get to withdraw it just once. I understand this pattern, and I also hope to take back my money when I get married,” says Hu Qipeng who is currently suffering under the strains of four wedding invitations. “If three friends get married in a same month, my salary runs dry.” Alas, even the inflow of red envelopes often does not cover the cost of weddings. In many cases, weddings are tools to flaunt wealth, bringing us full circle back to the tuhao. You don’t have to look far for weddings that are simply beyond the pale. Stories of extravagance—a coal boss from Shanxi who spent 70 million on a wedding complete with three rented airplanes,

a Party official who was sacked for spending 1.6 million RMB on his son’s wedding, a fleet of 30 Rolls Royce Phantoms in Hebei Province—show little sign of slowing down. But, not everyone is following this trend. Many young people born in the 1980s and 1990s are trying to pull marriage back to an acceptable extreme. In 2008, the term “naked marriage” (裸婚) emerged, referring to marriages without a new house, car, or grand wedding. Some say the naked marriage has been made inevitable by the increased housing prices in recent years on top of the cost of a wedding. But, those doing it see it as a challenge to the established order. For these lucky few, the “less is more” concept is a deeply-held conviction, making a simple wedding something of which to be proud. In 2012, Liu Bing, a student in Nanjing University married classmate Yan Jizhang. The bride was picked up from her dorm, the banquet was held in the campus park, and the bridesmaid and the best man were the roommates. Everything was simple, even the wine was poured into disposable paper cups. A similar wedding at Southwest University in 2013 cost a total of 400 RMB, with the campus golf carts serving as the wedding cars and 22 bicycles making up the team of escorts. The wedding went viral online, with many expressing quite a great deal of envy at the simplicity and low cost. Even though statistics point to a snowballing wedding industry, the new generation seems keen to throw off both the cost of lavishness and the burden of tradition. But, for now, the wedding industry stands strong and ready to profit off the couple’s special day to the tune of billions of RMB. So, how much does it cost to get married in China? The pedantic answer is a nine RMB certificate fee paid to the Bureau of Civil Affairs; the rest is up to the special couple. 41

ROCK THE POP

How reality TV is changing the Chinese music industry 真人秀电视节目是如何改变中国流行音乐产业的？

BY TERENCE HSIEH (谢燕辉)

elcome to the Hunan Satellite Television station, located in the Xingsha District of Changsha, Hunan Province. It’s filming day. The giant doors of the 1,300-square-meter studio open in the dark, cavernous room, featuring a stage lit up by hundreds of stage lights of varying colors. In the back of the room, 500 audience members, sitting in rows organized by age, await with hushed breath for the next act to begin. The blaring lights dim and then flash, enhanced by the smoke machine in the back. A woman’s silhouette walks

out, her face darkened by the spotlight trained on her from behind. People gasp as they strain to see beyond her darkened frame, backlit by the overhead lights. Amidst all this chaos, Kubert Leung takes his seat at his mobile workstation, a desk piled high with computers, mixers, equipment, and microphones situated stage left of the embedded glowing circle on the shiny black stage that surrounds each singer like a glowing halo. As the music director for Hunan Satellite Television’s hit pop music reality show I Am a Singer (《我是歌手》), Leung is in charge of a 50-something team of musicians and must be able to make instant adjustments according to the needs of the singers. At this particular moment, Taiwanese pop-star Huang Liling, known otherwise by her stage name as A-Lin, is about to begin her tune. The lights bring her face into view; the crowd roars in approval. Leung’s band is formed from a surprisingly small but notable collection of musicians who make up the backbone of the pop industry in China. Leung, a Hong Kong native, is both a songwriter, producer, and performer who has produced and written for the likes of Faye Wong and many others in the Canto and Mandopop industry. Among the various band members, with names like Eason Chan, Jay Chow, Candy Lo, and Cui Jian, regularly come up in conversation as old friends and familiar faces. A-Lin turns to send Leung a short nod—she’s ready to go. Kubert’s thumb hits the spacebar of the Macbook that serves as the central nervous system of this band, initiating the click track that keeps everyone together; beside him, pony-tailed concert master Jin Haiyin raises his bow in anticipation as the first notes of piano introduction from keyboardist Liu Zhuo’s electric rig soar through everyone’s in-ear monitors. The band strikes, the room reverberates with the power of drummer Hao Jilun’s amplified kick, and guitarist Tommy Chan’s angry open-A power chord. A-Lin raises the microphone to her lips. It’s on. As an industry once considered stagnant, rife with plagiarism and piracy, China’s music reality television programming is breathing new life into pop music, creating an image that is both fresh and marketable. The idea behind I Am a Singer is remarkably simple: pit former has-beens against each other to see who can stay afloat while allowing the audience to vote for their top favorites, forcing each singer to put out their best every week. The current season features Chinese musicians from many different nationalities, including Singapore and Malaysia. While seven initial contestants

Issue 3 /2015

begin in episode one, others take their place as they are eliminated. Season three initially featured an ethnically diverse crew of seven singers, including Tibetan singer Han Hong, Sun Nan, Hong Kong crooner Leo Ku, Singaporean national treasure Kit Chan, Huang Liling from Taiwan, R&B artist Tiger Anson Hu, and pop idol Jane Zhang. I Am a Singer is just one of a breed of shows that are revitalizing China’s music industry, and international soft power game. CCTV-3’s Sing My Song (《中国好歌曲》) consists of three phases: an audition phase, a battle phase, and a final production phase, where producers and songwriters are teamed up to create original music. Producers choose contestant songwriters through a blind audition process, where the producer must make an instant decision to pass on or take a song. If two or more producers choose the same song, the singersongwriter has the final choice of producer. Zhejiang Satellite Television’s The Voice of China (《中国好声音》) features judges who pick teams of contestants who face off against each other through performances and have featured such high profile judges as Wang Feng, A-Mei, Andy Lao and Yang Kun. It has been reported that the latest season will also feature Jay Chou. The unprecedented growth of Chinese pop culture has roots in other Asian nations, crisscrossing the Asian peninsula; while many pop music shows in China derive from Korea and Japan, the roots of “C-Pop” began in 1930’s Shanghai as a collaboration between American Jazz trumpeter Buck Clayton and later-excoriated playwright and composer Li Jinhui (黎锦晖). Clayton and his band the Harlem Gentlemen were featured at the

THE UNPRECEDENTED GROWTH OF CHINESE POP CULTURE HAS ROOTS IN OTHER ASIAN NATIONS, CRISSCROSSING THE ASIAN PENINSULA

Finalists perform in the final round of I Am a Singer by Hunan Satellite Television

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Phonographic Industry (IFPI) to represent international record labels Universal, Warner Brothers, and Sony BMG in a domestic lawsuit against internet search engines Baidu and Sogou for providing free hyperlinks to MP3 files for users in China to the tune of nine and 7.5 million USD respectively. While the IFPI lost the initial lawsuit, Chinese courts have heard over 300 cases since then, of which the IFPI has won 90 percent. Because of their episodic nature and the way they are delivered through digitally-streamed online portals, Chinese pop music television has the power to change the way music is produced and sold in China. Not only do they generate massive advertisement revenue for their sponsors and host TV stations, they spawn subcategories of shows that continue to generate revenue simply from name-brand recognition. For example, agents for each vocalist on I Am a Singer take part in a separate competition that derives from the main arc in a show called I Am a Manager. While viewers tune in to shows, audio content is freely streamed from search

Kubert Leung is a songwriter, producer, and musician. Leung came to prominence in 1984 with the band Life Exhibition, and is considered one of the pioneers of the Cantopop ballad. Leung graduated from New York University with a degree in film scoring in 1997, and has won several awards for his music on and off film, including a nomination for his song “Blood Brothers” at the 2011 Hong Kong Film Awards. Leung currently serves as the music director for the TV shows I Am a Singer, Rising Star (《中国正在听》), and as a producer and director for former I Am a Singer contestant and vocalist Zhou Bichang.

THE INTERNET HAS LONG BEEN LAMENTED AS A HAVEN FOR DIGITAL PIRACY, AND CHINA’S SEARCH ENGINES HAVE BEEN NO EXCEPTION TO THE RULE

Photographs

KUBERT LEUNG (梁翘柏)

Shanghai Canidrome Ballroom along the French Concession and regularly socialized with the likes of Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Soong Mei Ling. After reputedly being fired from the Canidrome for a bar fight with someone whom he described as a racist American marine, Clayton and his band found another opportunity to perform at a club more suited toward the growing middle class petit bourgeoisie of Shanghai that was less interested in American jazz. Working closely with Li, Clayton began to take Chinese folk melodies and perform them as jazz arrangements. While Clayton left just before the Sino-Japanese War began full-scale in 1937, Li would continue to write music for young Chinese starlets, sending them to the top of the charts until the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Li would become a casualty of the Cultural Revolution and his music banned in China for being soft and pornographic but his legacy would live on through the Chinese Diaspora in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where his style, known as shidaiqu (时代曲, era music) formed the aesthetic backbone of what we know today as Chinese pop. While Hong Kong and Taiwan were able to commoditize their music industries after 1949, the Chinese mainland found itself in a much more sticky predicament after the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976; intellectual property law often conflicted with the rampant economic development in the era of economic reform and beyond, and in the digital age this trend has largely continued. The internet has long been lamented as a haven for digital piracy, and China’s search engines have been no exception to the rule. The total recorded music legally purchased by Chinese users in 2011 was outspent by that of Thailand, another country high in digital piracy but with a significantly smaller population. In April 2007, a Chinese court allowed the International Federation of the

engines for users to listen after the broadcast. Now finished with its third season, I Am a Singer commands the lion’s share of views on both Hunan Satellite TV network and nationally. While the show has its roots in Korea, where it first came to popularity, it’s quickly grown into the Chinese mainstream as staple. According to CSM, China’s state media monitor, over 30 percent of all television viewers in China were tuned in to the season finale. This massive influx of viewers has given Hunan Satellite TV the chance to turn on the revenue flow, partnering with QQ , Xiami, LeTV, and several other large digital giants to deliver content and advertising to viewers. I Am a Singer was sponsored by LIBY, the Guangzhou-based detergent monolith to the tune of 235 million RMB per season. LIBY’s massive bill wasn’t spent in vain: sales of detergent surged 66 percent in the first half of 2013, according Nielsen’s China

Issue 3 /2015

branch. The explosion of pop music television hasn’t been without problems, though—Super Girls (《超级女声》), one of the first shows in China to gain a large mainstream following, was cancelled in 2011 due to, among various other reasons, the unofficial opinion that the text-to-vote system was politically problematic. As such, TV shows with voting are currently limited to the jurisdiction of the audience present in the studio for that particular episode. How to create marketable and commoditized content for contestants after appearing on a show like I Am a Singer still remains an issue, and somewhat ironically, certain shows have even been sued by competitors for infringement of aesthetic or intellectual property rights. Of course, there’s always more than meets the eye, especially when it comes to exporting culture. The growth in popularity of Chinese pop television overseas has given

HAN HONG BROUGHT MONGOLIAN, TIBETAN, AND UYGHUR MUSICIANS TO THE STAGE OVER THE COURSE OF THE SEASON HUANG LILING (黄丽玲) Huang Liling, known by her stage name A-Lin, is a vocalist from Taiwan of Amis decent. She has eight recorded albums to date and stars on the latest season of I Am a Singer, China’s hit TV show. Huang has won several notable awards, including a Golden Melody Award for Best Female Singer.

WHILE THE POSITIVE PORTRAYAL BEHIND MUSIC TELEVISION IS LESS POLITICAL, IT IS JUST ONE THREAD WITHIN A WIDE-SPANNING NARRATIVE 46

Hong Kong singer Leo Ku in the third season of I Am a Singer

Finalists of The Voice of China perform a gig in the Taipei Arena

the Chinese state a defining way to develop diplomatic soft power in its dealings with the international community. Television has long been considered a tool for diplomacy by the Chinese government; CCTV, the state-run media bureau, now has programming running in the Middle East, Africa, and America, while the state information bureau recently co-hosted a three-part show with the Discovery Channel on filming from inside the “hidden” China. While the positive portrayal behind music television is less political, it is just one thread

within a wide-spanning narrative to redefine Chinese culture within the context of the modern, global consumer market. In other words, China aims towards the status of a cultural cornucopia by putting its best foot forward. I Am a Singer featured The One, the victor of Korea’s second season, as well as artists from Singapore. The messages are always overwhelmingly positive—musicians coming together from across the world take part in a friendly but competitive atmosphere to bring out the best in Chinese pop culture. Singers often choose to sing songs that are familiar to Chinese Issue 3 /2015

audiences, and as such, pay homage to China’s modern age of music. In I Am a Singer’s third season, competitors Tan Weiwei, Sunnan, Han Hong, A-Lin, and Li Jian all chose music that featured minority and folk musicians, instruments, melodies, and costumes as frequently as the sappy pop ballads of yesteryear. Aiming to bring awareness to the beauty of the music of her three favorite non-Han cultures, winner and contestant Han Hong brought Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uyghur musicians to the stage over the course of the season. Through this tribute to 20th century Chinese society, and to select parts of its traditional history, I Am a Singer is, in a sense, the best of China’s musical culture, translating into a unique and valuable export that’s not only valued in currency but in influence. As the last notes of her heart-throbbing aria leave her lips, A-Lin lowers the microphone. There’s a long pause as people, dazed and confused, come out of the hypnosis that she’s cast on the audience. The crowd rises to their feet, the applause thunderous and the cheers undying. Grown men are bawling; someone hiccups uncontrollably in the nosebleeds. As if momentarily dazed by the strength of her own voice, she comes back to earth, down from the metaphorical high of her last notes and turns to Leung, hand to her heart in a curt but reverent bow that shares her gratitude for such a euphoric performance and walks off the stage, a smile on her face. She’s nailed it. Leung smiles back. For a moment, he seems to be thinking about the emotional and metaphysical place her music came from. All of a sudden the blaring lights dim and then flash again, signaling another round. Jolted from his pleasant dream, Leung reaches for the keyboard as the next contestant walks out onto the spotlight. One, two, three... 47

AYI INDUSTRY THE

BY LIU JUE (刘珏)

4848

leaving his family and his job as a coal miner. Lu Ayi had to persuade the coal mine to hire her as a replacement just to earn a living. Today, she is part of a burgeoning but sometimes dangerous industry, that of the domestic service worker. There are over 22 million women like Lu Ayi across the country working in the domestic service industry (家政服务). Primarily women from rural areas, they are called baomu (保姆, nanny), zhongdiangong (钟点工, hourly worker), or the more affable ayi, (阿姨) which means “aunt”. However, in this case, these “aunts” are a part of the family in the sense that they do the cleaning, cooking, babysitting, nursing of children and the elderly—whatever chores busy, modern Chinese families have no time for, or simply can’t do. Back in the 1990s—before the age of booming factories, restaurants, salons, and stores—a profession in the domestic services was one of the few options open to rural

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tuffing her black backpack with cleaning materials, 45-year-old Lu Ayi leaves her bungalow outside the Sixth Ring Road in the east of Beijing, heading to her first appointment of the day at eight in the morning. It takes at least two hours and a bus transfer to get to her client’s home near Chaoyang Park inside the Fourth Ring Road, but she’s not too worried. Her company offers six RMB in compensation for trips like this, and she can save four. Wiping, scrubbing, and washing meticulously, all at the rate of 25 RMB per hour, until the two-bedroom apartment is spotless, she then rushes to do the same on the other side of the city—just another day. Lu Ayi’s face is tanned and there are wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, but her bright eyes reveal a cheerful nature. Many in Lu Ayi’s position come from difficult circumstances; her misfortunes began with a gambling husband. Skipping out on his debts, he disappeared,

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T he m o d e r n pro bl e m s o f an d m ark e t so l u t i o n s fo r C hi n a’s ar my of domestic ser vice workers 需求急剧膨胀，职业化还远未跟上，“阿姨”的大时代到了！

women when they migrated to the city. There were limited channels for them to find such jobs, and their distant urban relatives were their only hope for work. Earning merely a few hundred RMB a month, they still took it as a good deal, as their food and accommodation would be covered. Also, the kinship inherent in the position meant that employers were willing to put trust in their nannies who were, after all, family. This model is virtually extinct today. An unprecedented number of working opportunities have opened up to rural workers, and a domestic service industry formed and grew along with the rising demand. Finding an ayi has never been easier, what with all the agencies and, most recently, electronic platforms helping to match an ayi with a family, but at the same time, there is a serious lack of industry standards. Stuck in the middle are these rural women, and while they may have better prospects than their predecessors, they are still fighting to find their place in the modern metropolises around the country. Currently, the demand for domestic service workers is at an all time high. People’s Daily estimates that of the 190

Issue 3 /2015

million urban families in China, 15 percent require domestic service in order to function, and Beijing alone needs more than 1.5 million such workers. This is largely due to the drastic change in the Chinese family structure over the past few decades. Before the 1950s, a Chinese family consisted of 5.3 members on average, whereas a Chinese Family Development Report released by National Health and Family Planning Commission of the PRC in 2014 indicates that the number has shrunk to a mere 3.02. With the one-child policy, urban migration, and lifestyle changes, the extended multi-generation family is already becoming resigned to history. This means less help within the family, especially when it comes to caring for the young and old. And with both spouses working full time and a new emphasis on quality of life, a typical urban family requires a lot of help at home. Though the demand is urgent, according to many clients, finding the right ayi is almost impossible. The urban-rural lifestyle differences are palpable. “Here, we call hiring an ayi, qing (invite), because it’s so hard 49

Dozens of women from the countryside in Sichuan Province take part in a ten-day training course to start their domestic service career

to meet a good one. Once you find her, you want to treat her like a god,” says Hangzhou resident Hu Yang, sharing her experience on the quest to find the one true ayi. To Ms. Hu, the statement is not a joke; she went through 13 different ayi prospects in three years. “The first ayi bailed on me after only a month despite our previous agreement; another ayi broke our 3,000 RMB stereo while cleaning the living room and left a week later because she found out that she was pregnant. From then on we were afraid to hire anyone under 50.” Hu also stated that there were problems with, shall we say, work ethic: “She would drink the leftover milk directly from the baby bottle and feed my baby food that she chewed in her mouth. I told her it was unhygienic, but she insisted that it was how babies were raised in her hometown.” “We finally gave up and just wanted an ayi to help with the cleaning, but this time, the ayi we hired threw everything into the washing machine at the same time, 50

The hands of an ayi, a woman who has worked in the domestic service industry for 16 years

including baby clothes, adult clothes, and dirty cleaning towels,” Hu states. “It drove me insane the first time it happened, but she just refused to change her ways.” Many are also unimpressed by the quality of the work, like Rui, a Beijing resident who regularly uses an ayi’s cleaning services. “When the ayi leaves, I have to clean after her for a week,” Rui says. “She wipes the TV using a wet towel when it’s still on, and it leaves a white, fluffy mess everywhere she touches it...I know it may sound like a first-world problem to them, but I am a paying customer who deserves decent service.” The lack of professionalism is rampant in the domestic service industry, as many agencies through which these ayi are hired do not provide professional training and only work on commission. For something as easy as housework and chores, far too many ayi also do not see the need to receive training. And, when there’s virtually no certificate required to apply for the job, few would bother to learn anything new. Another problem in the industry is a lack of security for both parties. Earlier this year, a Ms. Li in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province hired an ayi who fell and broke her right hand on the fifth day of work. Ms. Li covered the ayi’s medical bills, but the ayi claims she lost her ability to work because of the injury and sued for more compensation. After almost four months in court, the ayi got 29,900 RMB including the medical bills, constituting only 30 percent of her projected losses, and from the employer’s perspective, hiring an ayi for less than five days cost a colossal amount of money and caused no end of frustrations. Such cases are prevalent in the industry because neither party is accustomed to the idea of a contract or insurance. Faced with seemingly endless market potential and a problematic industry, many are striving to find a solution, a model that helps rural women find decent jobs with a sense of security and clients to get the service they need. Beijing Fuping Domestic Service Center is a pioneer in this area. Fuping (富平) means “to bring wealth to the common people”. Founded by economist Mao Yushi (茅于轼) and Tang Min (汤敏), a former chief economist for the Resident Mission of the Asian Development Bank, the NGO works with local governments of the mid-west in provinces such as Gansu, to train rural women aged 16 to 50 to be professional domestic service workers and help them to find jobs in Beijing. In the Tongzhou District of Beijing, over 40 kilometers away from the city center, is the Fuping training school. Simple and crude in appearance, the school offers two to three weeks of occupational training Issue 3 /2015

IT IS IN THE SCHOOL’S CLASSROOMS—MADE TO RESEMBLE A KITCHEN OR A BEDROOM—THAT MANY TRAINEES EXPERIENCE AN URBAN FAMILY LIVING SPACE FOR THE FIRST TIME along with food and accommodation without any cost on the trainees’ part. It is in the school’s classrooms— made to resemble a kitchen or a bedroom—that many trainees experience an urban family living space for the first time. Besides housekeeping skills, the school also teaches basic nutrition, safety, medical and legal knowledge, communication skills, and environmental protection awareness. Once the training is finished, Fuping’s six offices in central Beijing help these women find employers and provide counseling and home visits to make sure the workers and clients are happy with the arrangements. Though Fuping is largely successful and respected in the industry today, it, too, had its deficiencies. Back in 2006, an ayi surnamed Li was hired to look after a two-year-old girl. Li left her on the sofa to pick up the laundry in another room, and the little girl fell to the floor, hit her head, and died. The family was devastated and sued Fuping to the tune of almost 500,000 RMB. As a small and struggling NGO at the time, Fuping’s registered capital was only 30,000 RMB. Founder Mao Yushi posted his response to the incident on his Weibo: “A project aiming to benefit society in various aspects has yielded such a result; it was definitely beyond our imagination!” The compensation suit almost bankrupted Fuping. Ultimately, the controversy led to the birth of the standard industry liability insurance, co-created by the Beijing Homemaking Service Association and the Agricultural Bank Insurance Company, designed to cover third-party mortality and morbidity claims as well as property damage. As of June 2014, Fuping has trained and helped 27,000 domestic service workers to get jobs, 90 percent of whom come from rural areas, to serve more than 13,000 families in Beijing. Many of these women thrived in the domestic service industry and went on to pursue other careers in the city. Chen Junxia is one of the rural women who has benefited from Fuping’s efforts. Now in her ninth 51

FUPING IS ONE OF FEW SUCH ORGANIZATIONS THAT PROVIDE ROUNDED SUPPORT FOR RURAL WOMEN TO WORK AND LIVE IN THE CITY. AND FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDUSTRY AS A WHOLE, THE EFFORTS OF A FEW NGOS ARE NOT ENOUGH. year in Beijing, she recently opened a yoga studio; the 28-year-old Chen, from Tianshui County of Gansu Province, dropped out of school when her family was too poor to support her. “I shed many tears and had to work in the fields to help my parents,” Chen recalls. Later, she heard from the Women’s Federation of the county about Fuping’s program and decided to join. “I’d never seen the outside world and was very anxious the whole trip,” Chen says. “But the teachers from Fuping were there at the train station to pick us up; all of a sudden, I felt much better.” After Chen finished her training, she got her first job as an ayi and earned a monthly salary of 800 RMB. In the years to come, living in a ten-square-meter apartment, Chen would get married, become pregnant, and quit her job. When her baby was ten months old, she sent him back to her hometown and returned to work. Fuping helped her to find another job, and from there Chen worked her way up and decided to start her own business. “Though I am not an ayi anymore, I still attend Fuping’s various activities on the weekends, and it will always be my home.” As to the future, Chen plans to get her son back to Beijing now that she can afford it. Fuping is one of few such organizations that provide rounded support for rural women to work and live in the city. And for the development of the industry as a whole, the efforts of a few NGOs are not enough. In the end, the healthy development of the industry is the real solution to the problem. In recent years, domestic service has combined with e-commerce to show new potential, more precisely, the online to offline (O2O) business model. Instead of going to an agent to find an ayi, families can now turn to the internet or download various apps to browse listed domestic workers to fit their requirements. The big players in the field right now are Ejiajie (“e-house clean”), Ayibang (“ayi helps”), Ayilaile (“here comes ayi”), 52

and Yunjiazheng (“cloud domestic service”). For Ayibang, as an example, all the domestic service workers are hired by the company and paid a monthly salary with insurance, benefits, and holidays, while clients pay the company for the services of the ayi. The company also provides standard training and takes feedback from the comment section when the order is finished—or they can even call to rate customer satisfaction. This gives the profession more stability and ensures a certain level of quality control. The app also expands the market by making the domestic service workers more available and the hiring process more simple—a few clicks and the housework is taken care of. It still has a long way to go, but the O2O model has already tapped into the huge potential market of the domestic service industry. Lu Ayi, from the seemingly harrowing beginning of this story, is Lu Shuping, one of Ayibang’s recent hires. Having just come from her hometown in a village in Jincheng, Shanxi Province, she began her career as a domestic servant last July. She’s already one of the highest earning workers in the company, with a monthly salary of around 5,000 RMB. “I am very quick and thorough,” she says. “And, I ask my clients at the end of each service what else can I do for them. I am happy to work until they are satisfied, even if it’s already passed the time period booked; if they are unreasonably demanding, I will still do what they ask without an extra charge, but I will try to avoid their booking next time.” “I quite like my job now,” Lu Ayi says. “I only work eight hours a day, and sometimes when I finish early, I enjoy a walk in the park.” Besides worrying about her 21-year-old son being too shy to look for a wife and her 18-year-old daughter’s occasional stomachache, Lu Ayi is more than content about the situation. “As to the future, I don’t worry too much,” Lu Ayi says, “It can’t be worse than before.” When her husband finally came back— many would have suggested a divorce—Lu Ayi took him in because she wanted to keep the family intact. The whole family now all work in Beijing, though they live in separate locations. Last year, Lu Ayi’s husband even gave her 2,000 RMB for the Spring Festival. She’s happy with the improvement. Though Lu Ayi has benefitted greatly from the modern services and market answers to a difficult question, the lot of the domestic service worker is a tough one. It can be poorly-paid, thankless, and sometimes even dangerous. For now, there are no real solutions to the problems domestic service workers face, but slowly the market and clients are trying to get a better class of ayi by being a better class of customer, giving these essential people the respect, the money, and the safety they deserve.

CHINESE YOU NEED niche sh`ngj~

loan d3iku2n

venture capital f8ngxi2n t5uz~

Many startup companies face the threat of copycats. H0ndu4 chu3ngy- g4ngs~ d4u mi3nl!nzhe b-i “sh`nzh3i” de w8ixi2n.

商机

贷款

风险投资

很多创业公司都面临着被“山寨”的危险。

asset z~ch2n

application y#ngy7ng ch9ngx&

startup company chu3ngy- g4ngs~

Finding a niche is the key to a successful startup. Zh2od3o sh`ngj~ sh# chu3ngy- ch9ngg4ng de gu`nji3n.

资产

应用程序

创业公司

找到商机是创业成功的关键。

glamorous m!r9n de

flaunt xu3ny3o

humiliated di$ mi3nzi

Many believe a wedding should be grand, or the family will be humiliated. H0ndu4 r9n ju9de h$nl@ y3o d3 b3n, f6uz9 hu# r3ng qu1nji` di$ mi3nzi.

迷人的

炫耀

丢面子

很多人觉得婚礼要大办，否则会让全家丢面子。

dowry ji3zhuang

expect y&li3o

impress li%xi3 sh8nk- y#nxi3ng

I didn’t expect the wedding would cost me six months’ salary. W6 m9iy6u y&li3o d3o h$nl@ hu# hu`di3o b3nni1n de g4ngz~.

嫁妆

预料

留下深刻印象

我没有预料到婚礼会花掉半年的工资。

loss s^nsh~

hire g&y4ng

insurance b2oxi2n

The NGO cooperated with the government to run the poverty reduction program. G4ngy# z^zh~ y^ zh-ngf^ h9zu7 y&ny!ng f%p!n xi3ngm&.

损失

雇佣

保险

公益组织与政府合作运营扶贫项目。

care zh3oli3o

injure sh7ush`ng

poverty reduction f%p!n

The ayi was injured during work, but didn’t have insurance. y! z3i g4ngzu7 sh! sh7u le sh`ng, qu- m9iy6u b2oxi2n.

照料

受伤

扶贫

阿姨在工作时受了伤，却没有保险。

eliminate t1ot3i

sponsor z3nzh&sh`ng

revitalize h$if& sh8ngj~

Music reality shows have revitalized China’s music industry. Y~nyu- zh8nr9nxi& sh@ Zh4nggu5 y~nyu- ch2ny- h$if& sh8ngj~.

淘汰

赞助商

恢复生机

音乐真人秀使中国音乐产业恢复生机。

vote t5upi3o

contestant c`ns3izh0

reality television di3nsh# zh8nr9nxi&

The audience’s votes eliminate singers who perform poorly. Gu`nzh7ng t5upi3o t1ot3ile bi2oxi3n b&h2o de g8sh6u.

投票

参赛者

电视真人秀

观众投票淘汰了表现不好的歌手。

Issue 3 /2015

SAVING CHINA

BY DAVID DAWSON

T he ugl y side o f Chin a’s sp ra w lin g fashi o n i n du st ri e s

it’s also worth considering the fact that, in 2013, the China Association of Resource Comprehensive Utilization found that total annual production of pre and post-consumer textile waste was around 26 million tons. In Hong Kong alone the textile industry produces an estimated 270 tons of waste every day, with around 11,000 garments being discarded every hour. In a city grappling with issues relating to overcrowding and real estate prices, every piece of land counts, and vast quantities of landfill are a heavy burden. And it’s not just the discarded garments that can cause

Photograph

t’s a devastating equation: 3,625 liters of water, 3 kilograms of chemicals, 400 megajoules of energy, and 13 square meters of land—put them together and the result is a single pair of cotton jeans. For China, the world’s largest textile producer and exporter, this resource-intensive production process is having severe ramifications. In 2012 China accounted for 33 percent of global clothing exports and 38 percent when it came to textiles, according to World Trade Organization figures. While this massive industry brings in huge amounts of revenue,

Cfp

生产一条牛仔裤会污染3000多公升水和13平方米土地，而聚酯纤维永远不会降解——我们究竟要为服装和时尚付出多大的环境代价？

severe pollution problems. In 2007, The Wall Street Journal reported on a number of garment manufacturers that had caused friction with purchasers of their products, big name US retailers such as Nike and Walmart, after they were found to be dumping large quantities of dye-contaminated wastewater into rivers. The article noted that much of the low prices in international fashion chains come courtesy of cost-cutting in China, particularly in relation to environmental safeguards. The government cracked down on the factories identified, but they are just a few among many. While environmental standards are improving in China, enforcement often remains patchy at best. This can result in outrage directed toward officials; in one case in February 2013, a web user offered a 300,000 RMB reward to the local environmental bureau chief in Longnan, Zhejiang Province, if he would swim in the heavily polluted river in the town for 30 minutes. The bureau chief reportedly claimed public ire should be reserved for local residents rather than a leather factory nearby and, notably, did not swim in the heavily polluted water. Although Chinese law bans most harmful chemicals from being dumped into groundwater, a lack of oversight means it still occurs. In February of 2013, the Ministry of Environmental Protection admitted that cancer clusters do exist in rural village areas. In reference to this, a 2013 report in China’s Global Times mentioned nonylphenol, an organic compound that can interfere with people’s hormones and is banned from use in textiles in the European Union. The article said that it remains widely used in the textile industry in China, and a 2014 paper assessing its use indicated that the Middle Kingdom uses over ten percent of the world’s supply and that the compound “exists ubiquitously in coastal waters of China and it poses various risks to aquatic ecosystems in the country”. Waste and pollution are two key aspects to the issue of fashion pollution, but the problems with the fashion industry are manifold. As Dr. Christina Dean, the CEO of Hong Hong-based environmental NGO Redress, points out: “If you think about how much competition there is in multiple sectors in terms of natural resources, particularly food, if you think about feeding our growing population, the effect of the fashion industry has broader consequences across all of our lives in terms of competition for water, land, and energy.” Certain fibers, particularly polyester, can take hundreds of years to degrade, leading to significant environmental concerns. “By and large, it’s not biodegradable. When people are putting their synthetic fibers into landfill, it Issue 3 /2015

doesn’t really disappear, it takes lots of space,” Dean points out. “One of the big issues with landfill is that when you think of all these textiles and clothes, all of these resources, all of that water, all of that energy and land, [they] are effectively thrown away. Once it’s in landfill there’s no opportunity to use it. Textiles are thought to be 100 percent recyclable, so every piece of textile that is in landfill should not be there, it’s like a premature grave.” A key hurdle is that the structure of the waste recycling industry doesn’t quite match the scale of the fashion industry; while larger companies may be interested in recycling on a large scale, recycling operators tend to be on a much smaller scale. “They have to be able to buy a lot of the same fiber type, they need a larger scale and more coherent collection system,” Dean says. But it is the fact that these materials are recyclable that provides Redress with avenues through which to tackle the problem. Whilst exhorting larger companies to cut down on waste and improve recycling, on the individual level Redress also encourages designers to explore alternative approaches in terms of sourcing product material and even design. The NGO’s annual EcoChic award rewards designers who create environmentallyfriendly clothing. While China’s fashion consumption continues to soar, the production side of the equation is changing dramatically. The country’s labor costs are increasing; in 2014, 11 regions significantly increased the minimum wage by an average of 11 percent, according to a report by investment firm Dezan Shira and Associates. In the export hub of Guangdong, the minimum wage stood at anywhere between 1,808 RMB and 1,010 RMB per month, depending on the area of the province. As the China’s labor costs rise, large companies— including garment manufacturers—are looking to cheaper production hubs, particularly in Southeast Asia. However, this may not be a long term solution. In countries such as Cambodia, labor costs have rapidly increased and along with them the frequency of labor disputes and strikes—sometimes with deadly results, such as in January 2014 when soldiers fired into a crowd of striking workers, killing four. But despite the shifting economics of production in China, the only certainty is that consumers are not going to stop consuming fashion products anytime soon, with massive growth projected. The real question remains: how much destruction are clothes really worth? 55

Cheng Yu (成宇) A visionary artist, Cheng Yu uses a palette knife rather than a brush to put his ideas to canvas. The bold technique has become his signature, alongside faceless portraits in vivid colors. Born in 1976 in Liaoning Province, Cheng Yu graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Shenyang Normal University. He moved to the Beijing Artist Village in 2005.

GALLERY

In the Rain, 2014

Appreciation, 2008

CARVING COLORS The characters in your paintings do not have many facial features. Why is that? I think it gives adequate leeway; the things you don’t draw give a person more room for imagination. All of it is xieyi (写意, freehand brushwork in traditional Chinese painting). I also think that too many details affect the overall feeling. How do you prepare yourself before drawing, physically and mentally? 5656

I draw some of my paintings very casually; for some, I already have an idea in mind. For others, I do not have a concrete concept before I begin. I like it when it just comes out naturally with a burst of inspiration. Your older paintings show a distinctly darker palette: black, white, grey. Your more recent works are much brighter, largely red hues. Why is that? Actually, after watching some Peking opera, I just had this feeling, and after simplifying the canvas it simply became

red. I like to use a few special strokes to create the image. What inspired your most recent work “Opera Life”? I really like traditional Chinese culture, whether it is musical instruments or Beijing opera. This particular painting was inspired by the story of a poor girl and a rich, generous man. The rich man sometimes would give the poor opportunities to work as a babysitter or a nanny. Once, there was an especially poor girl, so he felt bad for her and gave her a precious bag; inside was some Issue 3 /2015

money as well as a few treasures. After many years, the rich man became poor, but the poor girl became rich. The now-poor man recognized the bag he once gave away, and he tells the woman that it was once his. In that moment, she knew him as the man who once saved her life. This is the story that helped me construct the character. How would you describe your paintings to a layman? I think a lot of people might not be accustomed to my work, because a

lot of people like paintings that look more like photographs, but it’s just not how I feel about my art. I want it to emerge from the abstract, using my own methods to show it. Which of your works is your favorite? I don’t think there is one. Each time I draw something, I put all my current emotions and moods into it. When I finish the painting it is a separate object already. Each person who looks at the painting already has a different impression than mine, everybody has a different idea or reaction. - NARGIZ KOSHOIBEKOVA 57

(Top Left and Right) The Rice Way, 2012 (Bottom) Banana Leaf Poetry, 2012

Beautiful Lotus, 2013

THE COPPER CRAFTSMAN

he father of modern bronze and copper art in China, Zhu Bingren (朱炳仁), is a visionary who changed “traditional” views of art in China forever. He was born in Shandong Province in 1944, and copper meant more than art for his family; it was a

livelihood. His great grandfather started a bronze and copper workshop and passed his knowledge onto his son, making Zhu a fourth generation craftsman. With his already masterful knowledge of the processes involved, he went on to study architectural design, landscaping, and

metallurgy—all to create a new form of Chinese art. He crafts his works into awe-inspiring, sophisticated sculptures, from animals to buildings and flowers. His genre defining work has not gone unnoticed; China’s premier bronze art museum in Hangzhou bears his name, the Zhu Bingren Bronze Art Museum. In Beijing’s famous 798 Art District, visitors can find an art center featuring most of his more well-known and frankly stunning works. Just passing by, you will notice a terracotta army warrior right next to a giant sculpture of horse. Normally, such pieces—given their sheer size and scale—lack grace and attention to detail, often viewed more as architectural oddities, but this could never be said of Zhu Bingren’s works. Upon closer inspection, the lines of metal dance through to shape a firm, streamlined silhouette. Each line is unique in its own way, giving the metal a spacious and spirited feel. Issue 3 /2015

Each sculpture reflects Zhu Bingren’s personal style, even if it’s not always immediately apparent. The “Rice Way”, for example, is lit in a dark studio room, emanating an emotion of power, perhaps even borderline religious, which is due in no small part to the strength and malleability of the medium; copper gives the work a strange, soft life, as if the rice is growing and flowing into surrealism. Another crowd-pleaser currently available in Beijing is his “Lotus”. In this piece, the most impressive factor is the care and craftsmanship, but there is a certain romance to the work, in which the shadows play with the piece to make it look distinctly three-dimensional. There is much to be said of Zhu’s concepts, but what truly sets him apart is style and execution. Bronze and copper sculpture boils down to talent and hard graft, and there are few in the world who have done more for this medium than Zhu Bingren. – N.K. 59

BRICK BY BRICK

Lear ning to lov e a sm all H e be i to w n t hro u g h t he e ye s o f a m aster archite ct 八十多年前，正定的古寺庙建筑群曾让建筑学家梁思成喜出望外。如今，前人足迹依稀，建筑遗珍安在？

BY LIU JUE (刘珏)

hen the “father of modern Chinese architecture” first discovered the quiet magic of Zhengding (正定), he was ecstatic. Soldiers and military officers hopped on and off his train along the way, chatting about tension and conflicts while rushing to their posts as the war against Japan loomed large. But, as soon as the then 32-year-old Liang Sicheng (梁思成) arrived in Zhengding, he was engrossed in its ancient structures, monuments hidden in an otherwise plain community. Liang would later travel to more than 2,000 counties across the nation in the tumult of war to complete the first systematic, historical account of ancient Chinese architecture. It was, however, always Zhengding to which the great man returned, time and time again. Today almost every historical site in the country is swiftly turned into a profit-generating tourist trap, but this architectural wonderland of Liang’s is often left unnoticed. Following in the curious architecture pioneer’s steps, I decided to investigate the mysterious charm of this hidden gem and to, more importantly, discover what remained.

Issue 3 /2015

Eighty-two years ago, the young Liang endured a bumpy train ride from Beijing of nearly ten hours, while today the high-speed train only takes an hour and 20 minutes to Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei, and from there another 30 minutes taxi ride to the north. On the other hand, while my journey was overshadowed by a smog-laden haze over the farms, Liang would have had the luxury of blue skies. Such is the unfortunate gamble of modernity. “The impression from my first few minutes told me that Zhengding was beyond all my expectations. But at the time I was still clueless about the many treasures hidden among the crowded houses in front of me,” Liang wrote enthusiastically about his trip in the article “A Brief Record of a Zhengding Survey” published later that year in 1933 in the Journal of the Society for the Study of Chinese Architecture. Alas, the inspirational beauty of Zhengding is perhaps not so obvious at first sight today. Like many small towns, Zhengding’s layout largely centers on its local government, which in this case is a two-storey white building deprived of any character. Along the streets, mottled short grey buildings are decorated with plastic shop signs of primarily pure red, green, or blue. Here stand stacks of wedding photo studios, baby supply stores, unadorned restaurants with plain local food, smart phone shops with the latest offers for the iPhone 6, drug stores, and a considerable number of shops selling hearing aids. Behind these street side shops

stands a residential area consisting of identical apartment buildings. Indeed, if this were a symbolic foreshadowing of what the rest of the town held, Liang’s wonderland would need to be declared dead on arrival. He wrote of the streets at the time: “On every screen wall, there’s a small shrine…oleanders or a willow tree casting scattered, cooling shadows on the wall; it’s the same for every family, as if they all live in a boundless peaceful and quiet world.” The rigors of time have since rendered this description obsolete. Locals tend to point tourists to Yanzhao South Street, claiming it leads to an area bristling with relics. A few blocks into the street one is able to easily find the local government’s answer to tourism, with a replica of a commercial street from antiquity—most of the shops closed and pedestrians almost nonexistent. “We don’t get many visitors,” one pedicab driver said. “Only lovers of old buildings know about the place and stop by sometimes, but there are only a small bunch of them.” While this appears, at first glance, to be a downside, the government’s financial failure could very well be to the credit of the centuries-old relics. One of the most popular sites in the country, the Mogao Caves in northwest China, is mobbed by an overflow of tourists and the sites there have suffered because of it.

With the main hall destroyed, the Sumeru Pagoda and the bell tower stand side by side in the courtyard of Kaiyuan Temple, a rare layout from the Tang Dynasty. This area also features a large stone carving of Bixi, a mythical creature symbolizing longevity, excavated locally.

Photographs

Fotoe

In 1938, with the Anti-Japanese War in full bloom, Liang Sicheng (second on the left), his wife Lin Huiyin (fourth on the left), and their two children moved south to Kunming, where Liang continued his studies of ancient Chinese architecture. The above image was taken during a visit to Huating Temple on Xishan Mountian in Kunming.

At almost 40 meters tall, the square brick Sumeru Pagoda (须弥塔) is the first notable location along the road. For a reasonable 15 RMB entrance fee, travelers can enter the temple’s submerged courtyard, an immediately striking sight because the temple does not follow the all-too-familiar symmetrical plan found in so many Chinese monasteries today. Instead, it follows the Tang style, with the pagoda and the bell tower standing side by side behind a main hall that once featured a Buddha statue. Liang himself was indifferent to the statue, referring to it as a tacky feature built in the recent Qing Dynasty (1616 – 1911), while the temple itself dates back to the Northern Wei Dynasty (386 – 534). Of course, to the untrained eye, the Buddha statue would probably cut a decent figure for most modern travelers, but alas it fell unceremoniously to the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Walking among the broken pillars and damaged stone

Issue 3 /2015

carvings, one has the opportunity to view the pagoda, which is luckily still intact. The late afternoon sunshine touches its crude brick surface, adding warmth to its earthy hue. Though it has undergone numerous repairs over the years, the pagoda maintains its original features and is clearly a relic from an ancient time of simplicity. Its name comes from a sacred mountain in Buddhist cosmology—the center of all universes. In the absence of motor-heavy noises from the street or scrambling tourists, the only sound is that of iron bells hanging from the roof edges tinkling in the breeze—installed to ward off birds. More famously, there is a mirror of this temple in Xi’an, the Wild Goose Pagoda, accompanied by swarms of photographing tourists, but in this obscure, quiet town, the wonderful slice of ancient Chinese architecture is a solitary, perhaps even lonely, gift. I found myself beginning to understand the charm of this place.

Liu Jue by

WITH THE REVOLUTION CAME A NATIONWIDE ZEAL TO ERADICATE THE OLD, AND LIANG TRIED TO DO WHAT HE COULD TO SAVE HIS BELOVED TOWN

Photographs

(Top) Thanks to Liang, Longxing Temple was carefully restored and repaired with all its solemnity and antiquity still intact (Bottom) Followers light candles in Linji Temple as an offering to the Buddha

Admiring the bell tower with its distinct gable and hip roof so characteristic of the Tang Dynasty, it dawned on me that not even Liang himself had the chance to enjoy such peace while relishing these relics. According to his records the temple was used as a training school for local policemen, and the much-cherished bell tower served as a dining hall for the trainees. They were volatile times and peace stood on a knife’s edge. Liang surveyed, photographed, and sketched these buildings and structures meticulously, and sadly his sketches are some of the only evidence left of their existence. Perhaps the greatest loss in Zhengding is that of Yanghe Tower (阳和楼). For more than a century, the tower stood as a local cultural symbol where the public would gather and entertain. Built over the main street to the south gate, Liang described it as: “leaving a similar impression as the Tian’anmen Tower…its grandeur excelled the Arch of Constantine in Rome.” Unfortunately, the tower was claimed in the ravages of the Civil War, and its last vestiges also fell victim to the madness of the Cultural Revolution. A small traditional opera stage named “Yanghe” is all that remains near the tower’s original location. With the revolution came a nationwide zeal to eradicate the old, and Liang tried to do what he could to save his beloved town. He called the local cultural relics protection department, asking to take down the wooden doors of the bell tower of Kaiyuan Temple (开元寺) for safekeeping. “They won’t survive if left there,” he told them. He saved them, but there was much more that he couldn’t protect. A few hundred meters south, Linji Temple (临济寺) is the next destination of note. Unlike other temples, it is a fully functioning temple with monks practicing inside. Supported by believers, the temple does not charge an entrance fee. Following the blue incense smoke floating above the pine trees, I discovered an altar at the foot of a pagoda called Lingcheng Pagoda (灵澄塔), the only surviving ancient structure in the entire temple. An old lady in bright pink piously prayed, murmuring and bowing to the tower, stopping from time to time to light another stick of incense on one of the many red candles in their lotus-shaped crystal bases. She turned to me and kindly suggested: “Go around the pagoda clockwise and you will be blessed.” She wondered why I, who she called young and beautiful, would want to take a picture of her praying, but there in that earth-toned temple, with her praying silently and carefully, it was she who looked beautiful. At that, a sound of chanting emanated from the stones of the temple, leading me to a brightly lit hall filled with monks and believers as they recited sutras. It was their evening lesson of the day. It was the first time I saw so

many people gathered together since I had arrived in town. What they were chanting was a mystery, but its steady, melodious sound calmed and comforted me. For all that was obliterated in the Civil War and carelessly destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, the boundless world of peace and quietness so sacred to Liang still existed in Zhengding after all. Liang’s surveying work was mostly done in Longxing Temple (隆兴寺) in the southeast. Called “Big Buddha Temple” (大佛寺) in the folksy parlance of the area, it was one of the Song (960 – 1279) emperor’s royal construction projects, which ranks high in terms of grandeur throughout the nation. Today’s admission runs at 30 RMB, but the fee Liang had to pay was to gain the permission of a machine gun company commander when he first visited. He recorded his amusement at the slogans on the wall of the time, such as “The Party’s authority supersedes everything else” and “Three Principles of the people”. The “Party” in this case referred to the Kuomintang. The temple’s abbot kindly accommodated Liang and showed him around. From what he saw, the temple’s glory from its old days was long gone, leaving only the major structures standing. These structures were in such a serious state of disrepair that the main hall’s roof and upper level were gone, revealing a 20-meter-tall bronze statue of the bodhisattva Guanyin, curiously missing the 42 extra arms on the back. But Liang was still ecstatic with his finds, going on to discover various delicate wooden structures with the excellent craftsmanship for which the Song Dynasty is so revered. He worried that the imminent war would take everything with it, so he worked diligently during his time here, measuring and recording everything. Liang would enjoy the sight of Longxing today, as many of the sites have been carefully restored and repaired over the years. More importantly, it has been done without destroying the sense of antiquity with modern structures, overly bright paint, or garish decorations familiar to so many other renovation projects. I, too, marveled at the grand bracket sets and beams so much a feature of ancient Chinese architectural techniques. Wandering in the temple’s 82,000-square-meter courtyard, visitors are followed by a sense of solemnity and awe. And, in many ways, this is all due to Liang’s advocacy. As a matter of fact, Liang and his wife Lin Huiyin (林徽因), who was also an architect, were responsible for the prototype of today’s “Index of National Cultural Artifacts Preservation” that put Longxing Temple and many other sites under national protection. The survey he conducted also left valuable information for their renovation. Liang’s love of the ancient was not limited by national boundaries. In the fall of 1944, when the Allies were Issue 3 /2015

closing in on Japanese soil, Liang helped to list Japanese historical relics and marked them on the map for the Allies to protect as much as they could during the bombing. Through the Chinese authorities, he advised the Allies to avoid Kyoto and Nara during the attack, two ancient Japanese cities filled with relics. In 1985, Asahi Shinbun reported the story, calling Liang “the benefactor of the ancient capitals”. His own country’s heritage, however, was not as easy to protect. Liang was able to raise attention for the protection of China’s relic sites, but this ultimately took a heavy hit when the political climate changed. In the 1950s, his plan to relocate the city center of Beijing to the west, thus leaving its relic-filled heart alone, was criticized and ignored. During a drawn out battle with local officials, Liang’s wife fell ill and died in 1955; Liang died in the Cultural Revolution 17 years later. Liang left an important legacy; his fruitful academic research, countless works, and passion for the preservation of traditional architecture carried innumerable sites around the country and the world through unimaginable chaos. And Zhengding, a town so small that it seems to have slipped through the cracks of time, maintains its gorgeous Confucius temples, Buddhist monasteries, pagodas, steles, and statues—largely down to Liang. In Tianning Temple (天宁寺), a few hundred meters west of Longxing Temple, I met three builders erecting a stele at the foot of the temple’s Lingxiao Pagoda (凌霄塔). They told me it was built in memory of nine foreigners, Catholic martyrs. The story of how they came to be honored in a Buddhist temple is a heroic and tragic one. In 1937, Vincentian Bishop Frans Schraven and eight of his companions from the Netherlands, Austria, and France offered protection to the women and children in Zhengding in the cathedral when the town was occupied by Japanese soldiers. They refused to yield and were killed and burned at the foot of Lingxiao Pagoda. “The people of Zhengding will never forget these international friends,” the man said as I watched the three of them erecting the stele, patting the ground, and wiping the last bits of dirt from the surface. So much history for such a small town. As for its lost relics, in February of this year, the Architectural Design and Research Institute of Tsinghua University was hired to restore Yanghe Tower in Zhengding. As the founder of Tsinghua’s architecture department, Liang seems to have given Zhengding one last gift. Many say a replica is pointless, but, if nothing else, looking at a lost cultural symbol, we may be reminded of the town’s suffering through war and chaos—a warning to preserve our fragile and sometimes irretrievable architectural heritage. 65

E F H T FOR SAKE O

T N E M U G AR ARIN

ATH BY K

TAI

n s i e i t e oci s tles t ng a i t a e b Deb a fac in 说， e 来 Ch g a 者 -st 爱好限 off 论语辩言的界英对于没有语并逻辑

ables and people are all crammed into a small classroom at Changsha’s University of Science and Technology. Three judges face the speaker’s desk in front of the classroom; one of them calls for silence: “The motion that stands before this house is, ‘This house would ban media from reporting on ongoing criminal trials.’” The eight students in the first two rows shuffle nervously, “Without further ado, I would like to call upon the prime minister to open the case for the government side. Hear, hear!” What ensues is a one-hour debate about the objectivity of judges in the criminal justice system, the responsibility and ethics of media, and the right of people to be informed vis-à-vis the dangers of a trial influenced by public opinion. Heavy stuff ? Maybe. And certainly not what most Chinese students would engage with during their education after just 15 minutes of preparation. The University of Science and Technology was the location of the first regional preliminary tournament for the FLTRP Cup—China’s national championship in English debating. Between mid-March and the end of April, five regional tournaments took place all over

6666

THE TALL BEIJINGER HAS BEEN DEBATING FOR ALMOST TEN YEARS, TEACHING AND JUDGING ALL OVER THE COUNTRY

China to select the teams that will compete in Beijing in late May. The participants are university students studying various majors, from engineering to English. Some of the approximately 150 students were new to the challenges of British Parliamentary (BP) debate when they arrived in Changsha, others had been preparing for more than a year and even competed in the last World Championships in Malaysia. Zheng Bo is affectionately called “Bo brother” by a lot of Chinese debaters. The tall Beijinger has been debating for almost ten years, teaching and judging all over the country. He has seen his fair share of students give up or succeed. He says that teaching debate in China isn’t always easy—years of traditional, Confucian-style teaching, where students are taught what is right or wrong, don’t really cultivate critical thinking: “The system mainly requires students to remember what their teacher says. They’ve never been trained in thinking on their own and making decisions on their own. And then they go to university and even their university is probably chosen by their parents,” Bo explains. “But, when they start debating, people find themselves in a position where they consider the pros and cons of everything, even their own decisions.” That’s what happened to Wang Xiwen, who is studying English translation in her second year at Hunan Normal University. “Most Chinese students rush to go abroad and to take tests like TOEFL, even if it’s very expensive and there are no scholarships,” she states. “But I didn’t want to waste my parents’ money and, in the end, going abroad is mainly a means to broaden my horizons. So, I decided to stay in China, read a lot, and debate to do that instead.” Both she and her partner, Xi Yuan, started debating about a year ago, mainly because of their charismatic English teacher from the United States. But they stuck with it—despite threats from the university to punish them for missing classes. “They thought we were just being lazy, but when we started to win tournaments, they changed their views quite quickly,” says Wang Xiwen, visibly amused. Public speaking is valued much higher in their university, but neither likes it—for them, it focuses too much on manner and rhetoric, not enough on content and logical analysis. “I just hate learning things by heart,” Xi Yuan says, as opposed to traditional classes and Chinese forms of debate. These two aren’t the only ones facing administrative obstacles and resistance from schools. Zheng Bo actually deems it to be the biggest hurdle to debating in China. But interestingly, the Chinese education system may not always be that bad: “In the end, it’s about assertions Issue 3 /2015

within societies and you have those everywhere. On top of that, the Chinese style of teaching can actually have some advantages; students are used to studying hard and when they apply what they know from other subjects to debate, the result is an interesting, kind of nerdy debater who reads a lot.” What cannot be turned into an advantage are the often opaque administrative systems of China’s universities. Even if a debating tournament or practice has the support of students and a few teachers, it can be called off at any time. Administrators don’t even need to give a reason. So, before debaters can start to convince judges, they often have to convince people in their own university of what they’re doing. While the difference between the demands of English debating and the rest of the Chinese education system may create obstacles, it also draws students to the activity—it’s something they cannot find anywhere else in their education system. And when it comes to convincing parents that debating is worthwhile, the skill set derived from it can be quite persuasive. Public speaking in English, persuasiveness, and communication skills not only come in handy for interviews with American graduate schools, but also on the job. “It’s kind of amazing to see how good debaters are at these things compared a lot of their peers of the same age who have just stepped out of university,” Zheng Bo muses, before recounting the story of a debater who ended up working as an HR manager in a Fortune 500 company; in just his first week, he was giving a presentation that was broadcast to all branch offices. Tony Zhou, a 21 year-old English major from Beijing’s Tsinghua University, sees all those benefits, but he also realizes that they’re not important for many Chinese students. As vice-president of Tsinghua’s English Debating Association, he estimates that nine out of ten students who apply for membership do so to improve their English skills. Top students normally don’t enter. “The harm they see in devoting themselves to such a time-consuming activity is quite tangible. They can miss class union meetings and an opportunity to show their leadership or might not be able to attend classes and then only pass with a score below 95,” he explains. He estimates that he himself spends between ten to 15 hours per week on debate, plus one day on his weekends. Personally, he doesn’t mind that his grades might not be perfect, his priorities lie elsewhere. “I guess I care a lot about how rich my life is. I simply feel like there’s a need for me to do something different from the typical English major life—I’m not saying it’s bad, 67

Traditional debates are a rare thing in China, but a whole new generation see potential in this sort of competition

but debating is completely different. It forced me to take a lot of part-time jobs, I got to travel to a lot of places for tournaments.” Tony’s been spending the last year preparing for the national championship of 2015 where he will represent Tsinghua, traveling not only to tournaments within the Chinese community, but also international ones all over Asia. Alas, he has been struggling with debate on a different front and an issue that other Chinese debaters can relate to: The topics debated in BP are often linked to its European roots, Western liberal states and the way they should behave—motions on the Islamic State are especially en vogue. Of course, tournaments in Asia tend

“THAT’S A BIG CONCEPT, BUT IN THE END, NOTHING IS INTRINSICALLY LINKED TO YOURSELF ANYWAY, YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO BUILD THOSE CONNECTIONS BY YOURSELF” 68

to set topics based on the region like the memorial of wartime heroes or Japanese economic policy, but the fundamental idea of debating in a British parliamentary context remains. “For a while, I felt a bit disconnected—debating other people’s topics, using their language.” Although part of the frustration came from anxiety about his performance in a tournament, Tony posted his thoughts on WeChat and a discussion with other debaters’ from all over China ensued, many offering insights from their own experience. “Some said things like, ‘You don’t only have to care about things relevant to China, but also things that are relevant to all of humanity,’” he recalls, “That’s a big concept, but in the end, nothing is intrinsically linked to yourself anyway, you always have to build those connections by yourself.” While Tony agrees that debating in an international context and in a foreign language can be made difficult by cultural differences, he no longer sees it as a disadvantage—on the contrary, he likes the challenge. And in the end, nobody wins a debate simply because of English skills: “You have to be good at logical thinking and need a certain amount of knowledge. Topics related to China can actually be more difficult because you first need to get rid of your own prejudices. That’s what I like about debate: You can’t take anything for granted.” That’s also why to him, debate no longer feels alien: Western thinking, Chinese thinking, the line is blurry. But logic is something that can’t be attributed to either.

Issue 3 /2015

拥有植物学家与商业间谍的双重身份，他就是把茶叶从中国偷走的人 7070

Li Xiaofa

E spi ona ge, the E a st In dia Com pan y, and the secrets o f te a in the shado w of t he Opium Wars

greater part of the black and green teas which are brought yearly from China to Europe and America are obtained from the same species.” Because of him, the taxonomy changed—from the Thea bohea and Thea viridis to something new: Thea sinensis, tea from China. The difference, it was discovered, was a minor change in the creation process, nothing more. His discovery, studies, and gunfights with pirates also yielded the important fact that Chinese teas from Guangdong Province were dyed. Europe and America at the time enjoyed what they thought was the natural color of tea in water, calling it a “beautiful bloom” of color. Fortune discovered that these effects were made with a type of paint known as Prussian blue (iron ferrocyanide) to suit the tastes of the foreign “barbarians”, essentially making green tea greener. His writings, which would soon become popular around England, seem to embody the mystical, tragic heart of the explorer. In referring to attempts to understand and explain China, he says, “We were in the position of little children who gaze with admiration and wonder at a penny peep-show in a fair or marketplace at home. We looked with magnifying eyes on everything Chinese; and fancied, for the time at least, that what we saw was certainly real. But the same children who look with wonder upon the scenes of Trafalgar and

BY TYLER RONEY

n the mid-17th century, tea found its way to the coffeehouses of London, and by the mid-18th century, the drink was so widespread that Chelsea began manufacturing imitation Chinese tea ware. The famous English “tea time” is the product of the 1830s, more specifically by Anna Russell, Duchess of Bedford. For over 200 years, the British were obsessed with tea—all without knowing how it was made or exactly what it was made from. Much like silk, the secret of tea was a closely guarded secret in the Middle Kingdom, a staple from China almost unparalleled in the history of trade. Back home in England, botanists argued vociferously over already dried breeds of tea, claiming that black tea and green tea obviously came from different plants; this was far from a scientific way of thinking as no European botanist had ever gotten their hands on living tea plants to study, much less understood the arduous process by which it was made. The argument was put to bed by Robert Fortune, who first went to China as the Royal Horticultural Society’s Collector. Rather than coming back with tales of orchids and shrubs, Fortune came back from his first trip in 1842 with tales of vicious pirates on the Yangtze River, hateful anti-foreigner mobs, and a whole slurry of other adventures that took England by storm in Three Years’ Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China. Lapsing into what today sound like baseless, racist diatribes on the character of the Chinese, he certainly had an odd love for the Middle Kingdom. He wrote, “All along the coast, at least as far as [Zhejiang], richly deserve the bad character which everyone gives them; being remarkable for their hatred to foreigners and conceited notions of their own importance...are nothing less than thieves and pirates. But the character of the Chinese as a nation must not suffer from a partial view of this kind.” He travelled through Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Fujian provinces to build his theory. The science of the time split black and green tea into two types: Thea bohea and Thea viridis respectively. However, Fortune’s studies of the “black tea” and “green tea” yielded a stunning discovery. He explained in his book, “Those who have had the best means of judging have been deceived, and that the

Illustration

TIME MACHINE

FORTUNE’S SECOND TRIP TO CHINA WOULD HAVE TRADE REPERCUSSIONS THAT WOULD LAST FOR THE NEXT CENTURY

Issue 3 /2015

Waterloo, when the curtain falls, and their penny-worth of sights has passed by, find that, instead of being amongst those striking scenes which have just passed in review before their eyes, they are only, after all, in the marketplace of their native town.” Fortune, Scottish by birth, returned to England, but history was not done with the great adventure botanist. Knowing that black tea and green tea are from the same plant was all well and good, but China still had a monopoly on the trade; what had become by far the most popular drink in the country was beyond the price-regulating abilities of powers at home. The Opium Wars were expensive, and the East India Company knew that they needed a more cost-effective method of getting tea rather than just exchanging it for opium. They needed a spy. Who better than Robert Fortune. His time in China made him the perfect agent. His next trip to the Middle Kingdom had a mission: to gather live samples of tea to be cultivated by British-controlled India, eliminating reliance on the Chinese methodology and stock. Fortune’s second trip to China would have trade repercussions that would last for the next century. His writings of this time would be collected into A Journey to the Tea Countries of China, in which there are many fantastic, exploratory gems: observations on opium smoking, advice on shaking a Chinese spy, musings on Chinese culture, and close calls with angry boatmen. Dressed in Chinese garb, he wore the persona of a wealthy merchant from a distant province looking for tea; he even had his head shaved as was the custom, commenting, “I suppose I must have been the first person upon whom he had ever operated, and I am charitable enough to wish most sincerely that I may be the last. He did not shave,

he actually scraped my poor head until the tears came running down my cheeks, and I cried out in pain.” But all of this pales in comparison to Fortune’s ultimate mission of obtaining tea plants for mass harvest. He was able to send well over 20,000 plants and seedlings to the Himalayas for cultivation by the British, and the effects were drastic. While Fortune was able to introduce over a 120 plants overall to the West, his work also turned the tea trade in the East on its ear. With the East India Company able to make its own tea, India, not China, became the most important tea producing nation in the world. This would remain in effect until the middle of the 20th century. Perhaps the most comprehensive book on the subject in English is by Sarah Rose, author of For all the Tea in China; she said in an interview with NPR, “China has pretty much never really come back from that, certainly not in the Western markets. Now that Asia has such a booming economy, the Chinese are again pretty fierce tea producers. But it took a hundred-plus years.” Fortune’s boast was that, “The Himalayan tea plantations could now boast of having a number of plants from the best tea-districts of China.” His actions would also help fuel the British Empire via the trade of tea for some time to come, described by some as the greatest and most successful act of corporate espionage in history. In truth, Robert Fortune’s career was a success, and his contributions to the world of botany are incalculable. Fortune would return to China once more and then opt for Japan; His achievements were myriad, and while he is remembered as the man who stole tea from China, it is perhaps also important to remember his deep, endearing love of China, its people, and its flora.

DONGBEI SURVIVAL GUIDE

SOCIAL CHINESE

WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME? N@ ch6u sh1?

BY GINGER HUANG (黄原竟)

你瞅啥？

WHAT’S WRONG WITH LOOKING AT YOU? Ch6u n@ z2 d#?

为了回答好“你瞅啥”，学点东北话是很有必要的！

Illustration

Yo u c a n b e f u n n y a n d e m o t i o n a l in Dongbeihua, but be careful

ongbeihua (东北话), apart from being the most common dialect in Northeastern China, is the unofficial language of Chinese comedians; for decades, comedians have ruled the stage of China’s Spring Festival Gala, and there is no more efficient way to spread a dialect than that. Dongbeihua has a unique appeal that can’t quite be found in other Chinese dialects in its ability to make mundane daily conversation instantly comical. You may find

Peng Yue

瞅你咋地？

yourself laughing just sitting on a Dongbei bus. Despite its comic effect, learning some Dongbeihua can help you in everyday life because a great many key elements of Dongbeihua have seeped into popular usage across China in the form of slang. Before we get down to specific words and phrases, the first lesson in Dongbeihua is the right attitude, even more so than getting the pronunciation right. Don’t speak delicately; anything that resembles politeness, hesitation, or gentleness will completely shatter the performance. It is for rash, warm-hearted, straightforward Dongbei common folk. Even if this doesn’t sound like you, pretend. Be loud, sudden, intrusive, impolite, and jovial. Without these qualities, your Dongbeihua just won’t sound authentic. Now, let’s start with the most basic greeting in northern China: “What’re you up to?” (你干啥去? N@ g3n sh1 q&?) The Dongbei version is “你嘎哈去？(N@ g3 h1 q&?)” Pronounce the vowels with your mouth unnecessarily wide open— more open than when speaking Mandarin—and emphasize and prolong the “h1” demandingly. To reply, simply throw the question back to the greeter: “I’m not up to anything. What’re you up to?” (我不嘎哈。你嘎哈去？W6 b% g3 h1. N@ g3 h1 q&?) Another Dongbei phrase that has earned national popularity is the exclamation, “Oh, good heavens” (哎呀妈呀), which directly translates to “ouch mother”. The standard Mandarin pronunciation is “`iya m` ya”, but in Dongbeihua the tones are similar to “1iya m1ya”. The emphasis is on the first character, “1i”. Make sure the phrase bursts forth with great force, because, ever straight-forward, Issue 3 /2015

Dongbeiren are always genuinely surprised. Use it when you feel an ordinary exclamation just won’t do. Although Dongbeihua varies a little from province to province, there are some common rules you can follow. In some cases, the consonants of “zh”, “ch” and “sh” in Mandarin are spoken as “z”, “c”, and “s”, but other places do the opposite, so keep an ear out. The consonant “r” is invariably replaced with “y”. Two examples:

THE DONGBEI PEOPLE, JUST AS THEY ARE KNOWN FOR BEING WARM-HEARTED, ARE ALSO WELL-KNOWN FOR BEING PROUD

I’m from Dongbei.

Z0nme g8n n@ ji^sh# zh0ng b& m!ngbai ne!

W6 sh# D4ngb0ir9n. (The Mandarin pronunciation) W6 s# D4ngb0iy!n.

怎么跟你就是整不明白呢！

我是东北人。

Dongbeiren seldom use an adjective without adding an adverb to intensify it. The most common adverb is “贼啦” (z9il`). “贼” literally means “stealthily smart”, but in Dongbeihua you just apply it before every suitable adjective for emphasis.

I want to eat meat. W6 y3o ch~ r7u. (The Mandarin pronunciation) W6 y3o c~ y7u.

我要吃肉。 In Dongbeihua, verbs often have a unique vividness. For example, for “stay in”, Dongbeihua uses “猫” (m`o), literally to “hide like a cat”.

This restaurant is insanely good. Zh- gu2nzi z9il` h2och~.

这馆子贼啦好吃。 I’m not going anywhere for the holiday, just staying in. F3ngji3 w6 n2r d4u b% q&, ji& m`o ji`l@.

放假我哪儿都不去，就猫家里。 The most frequently used verb in Dongbeihua is no doubt 整 (zh0ng). Its use is almost indefinable, because it can be used in place of “do”, “get”, or “make”, ballooning into an even wider range of meanings. Get me two bottles of beer. G0i w6 zh0ng li2ng p!ng p!ji^.

给我整两瓶啤酒。 The air-conditioner broke down. Now what can we do? K4ngti1o hu3i le, z2 zh0ng?

空调坏了，咋整？ You just don’t understand what I’m talking about!

The Dongbei people, just as they are known for being warm-hearted, are also well-known for being proud, short-tempered, and easily enraged. This point is best demonstrated if you type “Dongbeiren” into Baidu. The most searched items that automatically come up for “Dongbeiren are all living Lei Feng” (东北人都是活雷锋, Lei Feng referring to the mid-20th century Chinese propaganda icon) and “Dongbeiren picking fights” (东北人打架). The Dongbei personality seems to somehow perfectly embody both aspects, and it is no wonder that Dongbeihua is exceptionally rich in derogatory terms. The most used derogative is “show off ” (嘚瑟 d-se) or more precisely, to squander money. It is used to chide someone 73

for behaving vainly or irrationally, albeit only mildly and with an ironic tone. Sometimes it simply means “have a swell time” or “indulge yourself ”. You just got paid and you have already squandered it all. G`ng f` de g4ngz~, m9i li2ngti`n ji& b-i n@ d-se gu`ng le.

刚发的工资，没两天就被你嘚瑟光了。

He is just a big huyou; he never does what he promises. T` zh- r9n ji&sh# ge d3 h$you, shu4hu3 c5ngl1i d4u b% su3nsh&.

他这人就是个大忽悠，说话从来都不算数。 As for derogatory adjectives, there are a number of useful terms: to describe something shabby or ugly, use 磕碜 (k8chen); to say someone is stupid, use 彪 (bi`o) or 虎 (h^); to say something is dirty, use 埋汰 (m1itai).

You look quite good. Where have you been showing off?

Your handwriting is really ugly.

Q#s- b%cu7 a, zu#j#n sh3ng n2r d-se q& le?

N@ xi0 de z# t3i k8chen le ba.

气色不错啊，最近上哪儿嘚瑟去了？

你写的字太磕碜了吧。

To say “cheat” or “dupe”, use “忽悠” (h$you). After the Chinese comedian Zhao Benshan used it at the Spring Festival Gala, the word became so popular in China that people are now not even aware of its Dongbei roots. My grandma was duped by an insurance salesman. W6 n2inai b-i y! g- m3i b2oxi2n de h$you de tu1ntu1nzhu3n.

我奶奶被一个卖保险的忽悠得团团转。 It is also used as a noun in the word 大忽悠 (d3h$you), meaning “a person who is a big cheater”.

You forgot your ID card when taking the train? You idiot! Zu7 hu6ch8 w3ng le d3i sh8nf-nzh-ng? N@ bi`o a!

坐火车忘了带身份证？你彪啊！ This room is so dirty.

and respond naturally with, “what’s wrong with looking at you?” (瞅你咋地？Ch6u n@ z2 d#?), you might be in for some trouble. The next thing you might hear is: “Come on, buddy, let’s have a good chat.” (过来，哥们儿，咱俩唠唠。Gu7lai, g8menr, z1n li2 l3o lao.) This is an official declaration of war. Even if you err on the side of caution and say, “Bro, I ain’t looking at anything” (哥，我没瞅啥 G8, w6 m9i ch6u sh1),” things could end the same because this too sounds like an insult to the Dongbei ear. Here are a few suggestions if you want to keep yourself safe: Bro, have we met before? You look exactly like a classmate of mine from primary school. G8, z1n ji3nguo ba? N@ zh2ng de xi3ng w6 xi2oxu9 t5ngxu9.

哥，咱见过吧？你长得像我小学同学。

Zh- w$zi zh8n m1it3.

That’s an awesome golden chain you’re wearing. Where did you buy it?

这屋子真埋汰。

N@ d3i de zh- j~nli3nzi zh8n h2o, n2r m2i de?

你戴的这金链子真好，哪儿买的？ Lastly but perhaps the most importantly, if you are a first-timer to Dongbei, you have to learn how to speak properly in order to avoid getting into trouble. It is commonly said online that 60 percent of fights in Dongbei are started because someone didn’t respond properly to the bulky, tattooed, hot-blooded Dongbei man when he asked: Why are you looking at me?

Remember that Dongbeihua can be funny or scary—it’s just a way to express yourself fully and with confidence. There is a thin line between being funny and starting a fight in any language, as any class clown will tell you, but the Dongbei dialect has a lot to offer for the satirical and emotional among you, so give it a go, and remember not to stare at beefy Dongbeiren.

N@ ch6u sh1?

IF YOU ARE A FIRSTTIMER TO DONGBEI, YOU HAVE TO LEARN HOW TO SPEAK PROPERLY IN ORDER TO AVOID GETTING INTO TROUBLE 74

你瞅啥？ It is common sense that once asked this question in Dongbei, you have to be very careful with your choice of words. This means the questioner is not only annoyed by your stare, but already considers it a challenge and is squaring himself up for a fight. If you remain oblivious of this

For more articles like this, go to our language section on the website, theworldofchinese.com

Issue 3 /2015

DANIEL LEE (李仁港) Daniel Lee, born on April 27, 1960, is a Hong Kong-based film director who came to prominence in the mid-1990s, with action films such as Black Mask (《黑侠》), starring Jet Li, and Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon (《三国之见龙卸甲》), featuring Andy Lau and Sammo Hung. Lee is known for his love of comic books and graphic novels, resulting in an aesthetic that utilizes dynamic shots and actions.

ZOETROPE

W6men w0id3 de z6ngl@ng T!l`s~ xi2ng y3o t6ngy~ s~ch5u zh~ l&, q!t` s`n sh! li& g- b&lu7 y@ qu1nb& gu~sh^, 9r n@, sh# zu#h7u y! g-.

我们伟大的总领提拉斯想要统一丝绸之路，其他三十六个部落已全部归属，而你，是最后一个。 Dragon Blade, ripe with melodrama and Yuen Woo-ping-style choreography, also features an all-star cast: Jackie Chan plays Huo An, one of the film’s two main protagonists and a Hun soldier of the Protectorate of Western Regions, who befriends Lucius, a general of the Roman Empire, in order to keep the peace between the 36 nations that trade along the Silk Road. After being framed for murder, Chan is forced to partake in manual labor, rebuilding the western wall, during which he encounters the Roman army. Adrien Brody plays Tiberius, an heir to the consul of the Roman Empire, a nefarious scheming aristocrat who seeks to kill his younger brother, Publius, now found in Lucius’ care. Chasing Lucius across the desert results in an inevitable conflict between the forces of Tiberius and the newfound friends of the Roman Empire.

Dragon Blade 《天将雄师》 Ti`n Ji3ng Xi5ngsh~

Director & Writer Daniel Lee

omehow, Jackie Chan movies always stay Jackie Chan movies, no matter how old he is, or the historical setting. Whether he’s rumbling in the Bronx, or in an all-terrain vehicle chase through the arctic, Chan’s comedic, feel-good kung fu charisma has always shone through his projects. Perhaps what’s most confusing about his latest spate of movies, which seem to cater toward audiences looking for serious theater, is that the elements of comedic kung fu are still present, particularly in his latest project—a joint

East-West cooperation, directed by Daniel Lee, set along the ancient Silk Road, dubbed Dragon Blade. Opening to the box office explosion of 54 million USD, Dragon Blade is one of the strangest and highest-grossing quasihistorical modern adaptations from the Chinese film industry to date. Messenger: Our great general Tiberius has enacted a plan to unify the Silk Road. All of the 36 nations have acquiesced, and you are the last.

Publius: Mum says, however beautiful the sunset is, it will always go dark. I know my sunset will end soon. M^q~n shu4 guo, w%l&n x~y1ng du4me m0il#, z6ng hu# y6u h8i'3n l1il!n de sh!hou. W6 zh~d3o w6 de x~y1ng ji& ku3i y3o ji9sh& le.

母亲说过，无论夕阳多么美丽，总会有黑暗来临的时候。我知道我的夕阳就快要结束了。

Issue 3 /2015

Jackie Chan and John Cusack face off in a dramatic fight

One curious addition to modern Chinese historical adaptations is the use of the contemporary opening shot. Much like the opening of Tsui Hark’s reinterpretation of Taking of Tiger Mountain, Dragon Blade begins in the modern day, featuring a team of unnamed archaeologists, searching for the lost city of Regum. Upon discovering the ruins of the ancient city within a snowy mountain pass, the film immediately flashes back 2,000 years to the first clashes of the story. The bizarre contrast of satellites, high-tech laser scanners and computers is almost designed to make us question whether

Princess Leng Yue, played by Lin Peng, is a Hun aristocrat and Huo An's love interest

alongside Gong Li and Chow Yun-Fat in the 2010 period war drama Shanghai, is also not entirely a new-comer to the Chinese film scene. Bringing both actors to the front lines of Dragon Blade, then, isn’t an entirely random casting decision.

Chinese Classiication Dictionaries in 18 languages Funded by the National Publication Foundation All Media Publication

Lucius: I beg of you, spare him. He has committed no crime. W6 k0nqi% n@, f3ng le t` ba, t` m9iy6u zu#.

我恳求你，放了他吧，他没有罪。 Tiberius: Of course he has committed a crime. His crime is that he took a place in your heart that belonged to me. T` d`ngr1n y6u zu#. T` de zu# ji&sh# b@ w6 g-ng d9 n@men de x~n.

他当然有罪。他的罪就是比我更得你们的心。 Huo An and his band meet Roman officials on the Silk Road

Publius, a Roman prince, and his protector Lucius, played by John Cusack

we’re in the right movie. As Jackie Chan walks out of the desert and into focus, we at last settle into our seats and breathe a sigh of relief: we bought the right tickets. More curious is the decision to cast Adrien Brody and John Cusack, both actors who have experienced lulls in their US careers. Brody, who starred in Feng Xiaogang’s Back to 1942, has experienced something of a rebirth in China, as he has struggled to find footing in the US film market in recent years. Cusack, who starred

Chan’s movies have always delivered a comic resonance that has come to define the kung fu caricature trope: quick on his feet, slow around women, and happygo-lucky in his natural element. One issue of Dragon Blade is that such a broad historical perspective begs a much more serious and earnest look at the relationships between international empires, and in this regard Lee, in the director’s chair, is unable to focus on this international vision, instead stuck on Chan’s antics. While the film ultimately draws to an emotional Gladiator-like close, with a one-on-one fight between the evil Roman Emperor and the Chinese swordsman (complete with the same grimace-inducing dagger blow between the ribs), somehow we’re still unconvinced that this is anything but another Jackie Chan film. – TERENCE HSIEH (谢燕辉)

·Albanian

·Persia

·Croatian

·Nepali

·Tamil

·Italian

·Bulgarian

·Pilipino

·Romanian

·Sinhala

·Urdu

·Hindi

·Polish

·Hausa

·Burmese

·Thai

·Hungaria

·Indonesia

-Each dictionary includes 24,000 to 32,000 entries. -Expressions are classified into five categories: daily life, social activities, public affairs, economic affairs, and social and natural sciences. -Complete with pinyin. -Alphabetic appendix of Chinese expressions included.

Issue 3 /2015

150g

CHI LE MA

PURPLE STICKY RICE

30g

RAISINS

葡萄干

紫糯米

150g

WHITE STICKY RICE

A sweet, southern holiday tradition to sate your palate

白糯米

杏仁片

40g

– GINGER HUANG (黄原竟)

is largely appreciated for its flavor, but there have also been claims that it has medicinal qualities. There is a saying in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that, “black benefits the kidneys” (黑入肾). In the abstract, rather unscientific style of TCM, dark purple is lumped in with the color black and, therefore, food of this color—sesame, black beans, grapes, mulberries, and, of course, the purple sticky rice—is perceived as beneficial to the kidneys. The pineapple container is natural for Dai chefs; it is a long-standing tradition to use fresh plants as cooking containers. For example, they often have rice steamed in bamboo sections, and in a cooking method called baoshao (包烧, literally “wrap and roast”), the food is wrapped in a palm leaf and roasted on charcoal. Aside from being pleasing to the eye, it is important to integrate the fragrance and taste of the container or wrapper into the food itself. The same goes for pineapple rice. At first glance, it may seem that the Dai pineapple rice resembles the Thai version, but they are distinctly different. The Thai pineapple rice is salty in taste; contains a variety of ingredients like shrimp, green beans, and pepper; and the mixture is stir-fried with oil. The Dai version, on the other hand, is sour-sweet, oil-free, simply consisting of rice and pineapple, and in Yu’s words, “It tastes much fruitier.” To make the dish, it is ideal to have purple sticky rice and pineapples common to Yunnan and Southeast Asia, which in China are referred to as “the eye-less pineapple” (无眼菠萝) because they are sweeter, fleshier, and do not have holes under the skin. But the most important thing is to remember that, on a Dai table, the pineapple rice is not a staple food, just a delightful after-dinner dessert; so, be sure to make it in a festive, joyous mood, the key to all good desserts.

Cai Yi

糖

Photographs

ALMOND SLICES

SUGAR

酸甜可口的傣家菠萝饭 ne bonus of China’s vast landmass is that you can find diverse cuisines from various latitudes. If you yearn for a bite of the tropics, then you should definitely turn to the Dai cuisine (傣菜), which has its roots in the Dai autonomous prefecture of Xishuangbanna at the southern edge of Yunnan Province. Living deep among the palm trees and rainforest, the Dai ethnic group shares strong links with Thai ethnic groups in Laos and Thailand, and their cultures have a lot in common; in China they are known for their folk arts, brown-skinned beauties, and, perhaps above all else, their food, which features stunningly distinct spices and tastes. Yu Nanwen is the hostess of a restaurant in Gadong Village (嘎栋乡), located in Jinghong City, the capital of Xishuangbanna, where Dai restaurants are concentrated. Locals flock here to experience authentic Dai cuisine. But, Yu says it’s not easy to run a Dai restaurant: “Dai food is delicious but very troublesome to make. Most dishes involve many complicated steps.” Yu recommends pineapple rice as a good way to start. The dish is purple sticky rice (紫糯米) steamed in a hollowed pineapple. However, as simple as it sounds, Yu says that, in her childhood, it was always a festive treat. Even though now she makes it on a daily basis, it used to be made only during the Water-Splashing Festival (泼水节) or for special guests. This may have to do with the rareness of the purple sticky rice. For their daily staple food, the Dai ethnic people traditionally have white sticky rice instead of the purple option, because the latter is produced in limited regions in Yunnan—only Mojiang and Xishuangbanna— and is harvested only once a year. In recent years the purple sticky rice has become more well known and gradually won favor across the country. It

10g

WWW.THEHUTONG.COM Issue 3 /2015

Soak the sticky rice overnight and steam it for 30 minutes. Cool it for later use. Dissolve the sugar in about 100ml of hot water. Cut off the top of the pineapple and save it for a plate decoration later.

If your steamer pot is tall enough, hollow the pineapple by spooning out its flesh. But if you have a smaller steamer, cut the pineapple vertically into two even halves so that they can be contained.

The core of the pineapple is harder than the flesh and not good for the dish. Carve it out with a knife; you can divide it into several sections first in order to remove it with more ease. Make sure you leave a rim about 1.5cm thick and do not cut too close to the skin.

Now, spoon or cut the flesh of the pineapple, making its skin into two bowls; again, be particularly careful to keep the rim at about 1.5cm thick. Cut the flesh into small cubes of 1cm.

Blend 1/2 of the pineapple mince, sugar, raisin, almond slices, and sticky rice well.

Stuff the blend into the pineapple bowls and flatten the surface. Place the pineapple in the pot when the water starts to boil, steam for 20 minutes, and serve. 82

Issue 3 /2015

LAO SHE’S LONDON BY CARLOS OTTERY

London in the 1920s via one of China’s g reatest literar y minds 在19世纪20年代的伦敦，“跨国恋”可没那么容易，老舍笔下的马氏父子就吃尽了苦头

BOOKMARK poisoners, drug addicts, and worse. In her introduction, Lovell notes that their persecution was perhaps even greater than that of the Jews, no mean feat when considering what was to happen in Europe less than two decades later. If it wasn’t for its harmful, insidious, and all-encompassing nature, the stereotyping of the Chinese people at the time would be almost comic, as Lao She notes in the early pages of the book: “If there were no more than twenty Chinese people dwelling in Chinatown, the accounts of the sensationseekers would without fail magnify their number to five thousand. And each one of those five thousand yellow-faced demons will smoke opium, smuggle arms, commit murder—hiding the corpses under the bed— rape women—regardless of age—and commit an endless amount of crimes, all deserving, at the very least, gradual dismemberment and death by ten thousand slices of the sword.” Though in large part an examination of this sinophobia, Lao She manages to capture a tone of detached amusement, rather than shock horror, relentlessly (though playfully) jabbing at the hypocrisies of these foreigners (more specifically the English) themselves. The patronizing, superior attitude of the English to the Chinese is well caught in the character of the “Old China Hand”, Reverend Ely: “Leaving aside the fact that he spoke Chinese very poorly, he was a walking Chinese encyclopedia. And yes, he truly loved the Chinese. At midnight, if lying awake unable

uring the 20th century, many a great foreign writer wrote excellent books on the Chinese experience, from Somerset Maugham’s eccentric vignettes in On a Chinese Screen (1922) through to Paul Theroux’s oft misanthropic Riding the Iron Rooster (1988). However, few Chinese (of the greats at least) wrote about their experiences living abroad; of those that did, Lao She (老舍) is undoubtedly one of the most notable. In what may eventually give it the status it deserves, Lao She’s London novel, Mr Ma and Son (《二马》, 1929) has now been published as a Penguin Modern Classic, with an introduction by Julia Lovell and a vibrant translation by William Dolby. The novel follows the travails of Chinese immigrants Ma Wei and his father, their British landlady and her daughter, as well as the plight of Reverend Ely and his family, and it is an examination of the love and trust that grows (and fails to grow) between them—all in 1920s London. Alongside the almost love-story, the book is an examination of imperialist racism, the English and their character, and a look into the foibles of the Chinese themselves. Not long after the Opium Wars and just before the British realized their empire was about to collapse, the paranoia of the Chinese “Yellow Peril” was, perhaps, at an all-time-high during the 20s. The media and entertainment of the day widely painted “Chinamen” as layabouts, 84

ONE OF THEMES THAT PERVADES MUCH OF LAO SHE’S WORK IS THE IDEA THAT WE HAVE, WRONGLY OR RIGHTLY, A SET STATION IN LIFE FROM WHICH IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO ESCAPE Issue 3 /2015

to sleep, he would invariably pray to god to hurry up and make China a British dominion. Eyes filled with hot tears, he would point out to God that if the Chinese were not taken in hand by the British, that vast mass of yellow-faced black-haired creatures would never achieve their rightful ascent to the pearly gates.” Lao She’s five years spent living and working in London (he taught at the University of London between 1924 and 1929), and his portrait of the city very much chimes with other London novels of the time, though perhaps not as seedy as a Gerald Kersh or a Patrick Hamilton (no whorehouses or gangsters here), Lao She nevertheless nails the city, more realistically the nation, time and time again, be it the pubs, the tube, the sneering landladies, the thinly sliced cold beef, the speakers at Hyde Park Corner, the obsession with manners, or the endless cups of tea with bread and margarine. One of themes that pervades much of Lao She’s work is the idea that we have, wrongly or rightly, a set station in life from which it is very difficult to escape. His later, and most famous novel Camel Xiangzi (《骆驼祥子》), looks at this closely through the plight of a young rickshaw puller trying to better himself. If obsession with status proved to be an interest of Lao She’s, then the class-ridden London of the early 20th century was not a bad place to start. The airs and graces of the English middle classes are clear throughout the book, but what’s more interesting is Lao She’s notion that the Chinese are very similar in behavior, although it manifested in a slightly different way. On arriving in London, Mr Ma “sauntered off the train with the grand air of a Ch’ing circuit intendant alighting from his great palanquin”, which is all the more amusing when you consider Mr Ma has essentially arrived in England because he has inherited a small shop. Ma has what Lao She refers to as a “mandarin complex” (官迷), which appears to be an obsession with becoming a high-ranking government official (he is not an official at all) that it seemingly so powerful it renders him incapable of doing almost anything else. It is an affliction that many Chinese men still suffer from today, which causes its own set of problems. As Ma Wei’s best friend tells him: “If the Chinese can’t smash up its obsession with mandarin values and jobs in government, they’ll never get anywhere.” All

“IF THE CHINESE COULD KEEP BOTH ‘BEAUTY’ AND ‘CHINA’, FOREVER IN THE MIND AND ALLOW BOTH TO FULLY PROSPER, THEN CHINA MIGHT YET KNOW A GOLDEN AGE SOME DAY IN THE FUTURE” this is given an extra layer of irony with the fact that the bureaucracy that Mr Ma so opines to be a part of was unceremoniously toppled at least a decade before his arrival in England. Lao She mercilessly uses this mandarin complex to comic effect: “If he has a long way to go, Mr Ma would always take a taxi. Under no circumstances would he take a bus or a tram…When he used to catch cabs in Peking, the police would halt the pedestrians and horses to speed the car on its way. So exalted so grandly mandarin-like!” Or, from Ma again: “‘If I hadn’t come to England I might have become a government official in China by now.’...The vehemence of this thought jerked his hand so violently that he almost pulled a couple of hairs from his moustache.” Interestingly, for a relatively politicized writer, and a book published during China’s Republic period (1912 – 1949) a time of great internal strife, and hope), Lao She rarely gets into the internal debates facing his own country, instead largely focusing on the London that had, in so many ways, stolen his heart. But there are moments where you can subtly feel the back-drop of not quite knowing what is happening in China, and through Ma, Lao She hints at an opinion of what he hopes for the new China: “If the Chinese could keep both ‘beauty’ and ‘China’, forever in the mind and allow both to fully prosper, then China might yet know a golden age some day in the future. If science and beauty could be blended together, and if the loyal sentiments towards the motherland could be fostered by incorrupt and enlightened politics, things would be very hopeful for China.”

If anybody did eventually see incorrupt and enlightened politics in China, it was certainly not Lao She who is widely believed to have committed suicide in the Lake of Great Peace, Beijing, 1966, after undergoing significant persecution during China’s Cultural Revolution. But other than a few suggestive hints, Mr Ma and Son is not a particularly political book, though it looks in depth at the experience of an immigrant living in a hostile environment abroad, it’s fundamentally a look at love and the despair felt when it is not quite requited. Father and son both have a tilt at love but it is the younger that fails the most miserably. In a reversal of what happens to many a white male in China, Ma Wei falls instantly and hopelessly in love on arrival with somebody who is thoroughly unsuitable: “She was one of countless Western girls, and she just happened to be the first one that Ma Wei met. The moment he set eyes on her, with her playful manner and kittenish skipping about, his feeling sped from surprise to admiration, and from admiration to infatuation, like someone drinking wine for the first time, face flushing headily after just one cup.” The younger Ma is clearly on a hiding to nothing from the outset. The older Ma is a widow, older and wiser in the ways of women and is not fooled so easily. Yet very slowly romantic affection develops between him and his Landlady, Mrs Wedderburn. And you do find yourself gunning for Ma, who doesn’t give up despite having lots of difficulties with the fact that he, a man, will be Wedderburn’s inferior for as long as they are in England: “If you walked around with a Chinese wife, you could leave her trailing at least forty or fifty feet behind you, but now here he was, left miles behind a woman.” The very fact that Lao She even allows a relationship to develop between a Chinese man and a Western woman is outlandish for the time, but it is the fact that he does that takes his characters away from being caricatures. The fact that Mrs Wedderburn has to ask questions of her racism, and that Mr Ma, once so arrogant, is able to reconsider his social position, prevents his characters from falling into caricature. Mr Ma and Son is certainly not Lao She’s most famous book, but with its licks of love, ironic detachment, and slow yet consistent skewering of the follies of Sinophobia (and racism in general), not to mention its razor sharp, but gentle, mockery of the English lower-middle classes it deserves its place in the Chinese canon as a minor masterpiece.

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Beijing-based DGM Entertainment recently bought itself into the Valiant Comic universe, with plans of turning some of Valiant’s more popular characters into films and television. Readers might remember DGM as the company that helped make Iron Man 3, by far the worst of the Iron Man trilogy, more Chinese-friendly (i.e. heavy-handed pandering). But, DGM is a major and expanding player on the entertainment front, and Valiant is one heck of a place to start. First off, they’ve got an impressive list of graphic awesomeness to choose from: Archer & Armstrong, Bloodshot, Harbinger, Shadowman, and the very promising Ninjak—all good choices for film and television. Valiant is no Marvel or DC, indeed it’s not even close to being a Dark Horse or Image Comics, but they’ve had 25 solid years of great content, and an influx of Chinese cash for more visible mediums might be just the kick they need. With the rights to use anything in the Valiant cannon, the sky’s the limit—China could go for some Asian roots with the gritty sci-fi of Imperium or maybe try to test the boundaries of China’s burgeoning animation world with X-O Manowar. The Valiant universe has over 2,000 characters ready for the off, so it’ll be interesting to see where China’s influence via DGM Entertainment will take these characters in the near future.

SOLAR POWER PLANT IN SPACE Don’t you just hate how there isn’t a giant solar power station in space? Well, not to worry, Chinese scientists are on the case, working (or rather conceptualizing at this stage) a solar power station 36,000 kilometers above the earth’s surface, beaming the energy back to earth via microwaves or lasers. I know what you’re thinking; you’re thinking, “Isn’t this just like the Isaac Asimov short story ‘Reason’ from 1941?” Of course it is. In fact, the concept of this technology has been around for quite a while; it was taken on by one Peter Glaser, who published an article in 1968 with a viable design. At the moment, the two major Chinese think tanks on the case are the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE). Duan Baoyan of the CAE told Xinhua, “If we have space solar power technology, hopefully we could solve the energy crisis on earth.” So, that’s sorted then. The bad news, as one might imagine, is the scale of the project: a feasibly useful space solar power station would weigh about 10,000 tons. Few rockets to date have been able to carry more than 100 tons. Someone is also going to have to invent some pretty thin solar panels, thin to the tune of 200 grams per square meter. As for the most science fiction-y aspect of all this, transmitting power via microwaves is actually a very old technology and, compared to the other needs of this plan, easy; the NASA GPO Goldstone operation in 1975, transmitted 34,000 watts of power over 1.5 kilometers with efficiency of 82 percent. To be viable, the solar space station only needs to work at over 50 percent—albeit from over 36,000 kilometers. As for a timeline, a report in 2010 suggested China could begin the first steps by 2030, fully functioning by 2050. In truth, Japan is ahead on this solar power plant in space race, planning to have a fully operational, 1-gigawatt solar station in orbit by 2030.

The Chinese authorities are finally cracking down on one of the most controversial and harmful issues the nation has ever faced—no, not the pollution or even gutter oil. It’s anime. Yes, the start of April showed that Chinese authorities were no longer going to tolerate the violence and pseudo-sexual content in Japanese animation that has permeated the nation for far too long. The Ministry of Culture have decided that online streaming sites showing the likes of Blood-C, Highschool of the Dead, and Terror in Resonance, are to be punished. The Ministry of Culture, that’s the same organization that declared Battlefield 4 a threat to national security, has pointed out that these shows “glorify violence, terrorism, and criminal activity”. They also stated that they will improve the current blacklist of shows and “promise punishment”. Yes, the students surviving the zombie apocalypse in Highschool of the Dead are a danger to us all, as is the monster-killing heroine of Blood-C. And Terror in Resonance, well, okay, yes—that is actually about kids committing terrorist attacks on Tokyo. But, hey, killing Japanese people en masse is for adults wearing the uniform of the Chinese soldier on practically every third TV channel at any given moment. Them’s the rules. A whole host of new regulations came in for Chinese sites hosting foreign content on April 1st, and alas, there was no sign it was an April Fool’s joke. To make matters worse, the anime crackdown is just the tip of the iceberg. Some are worried about a full-scale ban on Japanese anime on streaming sites. But, hey, it’s not like they’re going to ban it and then just copy it in a domestic, Ministry-ofCulture-friendly format to bolster homegrown and inevitably inferior anime productions. That would be crazy.

PLAYING WITH SCI-FIRE “It is not scientific!” exclaims Qu Xiaowan, the posh young corporate executive whose biggest obsessions are Prada shoes and Balenciaga bags, as she rushes to save a night bus full of passengers from a fiery crash. With an unlikely companion, a poor backpacker girl named Liu Yue, Qu finds herself in a difficult situation: save these lives and alter history with unthinkable consequences or let them perish as fate has decreed. In the process, she discovers herself to be a zhinianshi, or a person with strong will, and in this case a person with superpowers—specifically being able to freeze time. Her friend Liu is able to hear people’s thoughts, but only when they are consuming food or drink. Thus begins China’s first sci-fi web series, Falling Sky (《执念师》). Produced by internet giant Sohu and associates, this web series was first released on Sohu Video on March 16 this year and has since gained heavy attention across the country, with more than 11 million daily views. Many say a proper sci-fi drama of China’s own has been long overdue, but producers shun the genre largely because of authorities’ discouragement of genres not based in reality and a lack of ratings confidence. However, Falling Sky proved to be a hit despite obvious influences from various international sci-fi series, such as the BBC’s Doctor Who, NBC’s Heroes (it even features a “previously on Falling Sky” segment) and the all-too-familiar Groundhog Day scenario. Though the numbers are high, the show’s target audience is a tough crowd—accustomed to well-produced international programs with complicated twists and turns in terms of plot. Many have complained about its slow pace and a lack of structure. But, as the first of its type, the series undeniably shows real potential in its appeal to China’s vast swarms of sci-fi fans. To hell with the bus full of innocents, the real story is that the future of Chinese sci-fi may depend on this show’s success.

Issue 3 /2015

PIONEER

An inter vie w with Gao Ke, founder of the Beijing Park our Community 像孩子一样自由—— 采访北京跑酷公社创始人高科 YOU ARE THE FOUNDER OF BEIJING PARKOUR COMMUNITY, BUT YOU PREFER TO REFER TO YOURSELF SIMPLY AS “A TRAINER”. WHY IS THAT?

My job is just to teach people how to train themselves, and calling myself “a trainer” makes things easy and clear. When I refer to myself as the founder of something, it creates a distance between me and others that I don’t want. CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT THE BEIJING PARKOUR COMMUNITY?

Right now, the community is semi-professional—by that I mean about half of the people in the community are professional traceurs (parkour practitioners). I never did anything to try to change the community for the better or impose any rules on our members, but in the past few years I’ve been really impressed by how it has grown and transformed on its own. Everyone on the team is maturing and bettering themselves, and everyone has taken to the community as a family. This is because, in the process of training, the members can feel a profound interaction, something we built between one another. As a result, the community started to run itself on a good system quite naturally. The community is not commercial in any way; it’s just home to people 90

who are having fun doing parkour, and we are quite independent with our own work. I’ve received a lot of commercial proposals from running this community, but I’d rather keep it as it is. We won’t go commercial unless our members find some common goals and are willing to partner up. The only thing that matters is that everyone in this community is happy. Other than that, it doesn’t need any management to guarantee its vitality and future growth. WHY DID YOU START DOING PARKOUR?

I started working out in a gym in 2001. However, gradually I discovered that the gym was not my thing. It didn’t solve my problems. My understanding of being strong is to be agile, natural, and relaxed. I got big by working out, but my body became stiff and unbalanced, and my life felt in conflict, both inside and outside. When I first saw a video of parkour, I regretted not knowing about it earlier. For me, it embodies the childlike freedom I sought after in my subconscious. WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY “CHILDLIKE”, A WORD YOU FREQUENTLY USE IN YOUR BLOGS? WHAT CHILDLIKE

QUALITIES DO YOU THINK ADULTS SHOULD LEARN?

A child does not have ideas about right or wrong, nor does a child know what should be done and what shouldn’t. A child only feels, knows, and accepts; children don’t discriminate or overly attach themselves to things. This is what I call childlike. Adults, on the other hand, suffer pain and confusion of the mind as a result of their discriminations and obsessions. I believe one’s physical movements are reflections of one’s inner world. If an adult is sensitive to their own movements and the minor things happening in one’s everyday life, one will wake and better understand the obsessions that have been causing pain to the body and mind. By becoming aware of these obsessions and learning to let them go, an adult will return to the state of a child again. If we cannot return to that state, it just means we are way too confused. IN YOUR BOOK THE CITY IS A GYM: PARKOUR AND BODYWEIGHT TRAINING (《城市就是健身房》), YOU MENTIONED THAT YOUR TRAINING METHODS CAME FROM STUDYING THE MOVEMENTS OF YOUR INFANT SON. HOW SO?

same consciousness.

from the baby’s movements. When I first started parkour training, I realized that a lot of people cannot even stand properly, and that’s because they cannot sit properly, and in the end, I found that they cannot even crawl properly. It is effective to mend their bodies’ imbalances and improve agility by teaching them how to crawl again.

WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE GOAL THAT YOU WANT TO REACH AS A TRACEUR?

To accept when something comes along my way and not attach myself to anything when it leaves. For example, if I do a good move, that’s it. Let it go.

YOU HAVE WRITTEN IN YOUR BLOG: “PARKOUR IS MY FAITH, OR TO BE MORE EXACT, I TAKE THE BUDDHIST AND TAOIST PRINCIPLES BEHIND PARKOUR AS MY FAITH.” CAN YOU EXPAND ON THAT?

WHAT KIND OF CHANGES HAVE YOU WITNESSED IN CHINESE PARKOUR CIRCLES?

Not many fundamental changes, really. It is still common for many traceurs to not have a good grasp of the meaning of parkour, much less expressing it to a general audience. I know my understanding of parkour is quite personal, and I do not intend to preach it to others. For me, parkour is just a way to improve myself, and it takes me on the path to freedom. I’m not aiming for success.

The essence of parkour is to flow like water. That is a very Taoist thing—nothing stays and everything flows. If one’s psychological world is too burdened with attachments, then one’s life will also be full of obstacles, one’s body will become imbalanced, and one’s movement would be in some way awkward. I’m stating this as a truth, not just a conclusion from my personal experience. That’s what it takes to flow in parkour—one needs to let go of one’s inner attachments first.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF PARKOUR’S FUTURE IN CHINA? WHAT ARE CHINA’S ADVANTAGES OR DISADVANTAGES IN THIS REGARD?

PARKOUR IS, AFTER ALL, AN IMPORTED SPORT. DO YOU BORROW FROM PARKOUR TRAINERS FROM FOREIGN COUNTRIES?

I don’t know how other trainers teach, and I don’t borrow the training methods of other teams or from foreign countries. I teach people how to move, and that’s it. It’s not just parkour. In fact, if you are observant enough, you will realize that parkour is not different from what we do in our everyday life—walking, sitting down, and standing up. Once you get that, you will not only know how to do parkour, but also how to live.

YOU HAVE ALSO WRITTEN THAT PARKOUR IS NO DIFFERENT FROM BABYSITTING OR ATTENDING TO HOUSEHOLD CHORES. HOW ARE THEY THE SAME?

Ha! How can I not say they are the same? Of course they are different in some way. However, if you keep yourself open, sensitive, and conscious, these things are the same. You feel everything with the

In China, many of the first traceurs are just like me—they love the sport sincerely, and they hope parkour remains simple and pure in China in the future. If my training models mature in a few years, I may put my efforts into spreading parkour on a bigger scale. Hopefully that will help its popularization in China, or help usher it into a new phase...There is nothing we can do to change the way things go. I don’t want to look back, or look forward. That just distracts me from concentrating on my feelings in the present. – GINGER HUANG (黄原竟)

Yes, in my training I borrowed a lot Issue 3 /2015

ON THE CHARACTER

BRONZE SCRIPT

创新的过程从来都不是一帆风顺, 从挫折中汲取力量才能到达全新的彼岸 92

CLERICAL SCRIPT

Liu Yi

CURSIVE SCRIPT

Delving into the annals of linguistics to find creativity in catastrophe

hether you’re a writer, an artist, an entrepreneur, or any one of the thousands of jobs in the world that require imaginative solutions, creativity, or 创造力 (chu3ngz3ol#), is what drives many of us forward. However, staying creative—in light of all the self-doubt, criticism, and hard work— is no easy task. It involves drawing the status quo into question and actively destroying preconceptions, often at great personal risk. This vantage point puts us in a better position to tackle one very special character: 创. It’s a character that means both “to start something new” and “wound or trauma”, with a slight variation in tone. With its dual meanings, the character for creation signifies the arduous journey endemic in creating something entirely new. To create, you have to suffer first. Judging by the evolution of the written form, we know that the character 创, meaning “wound”, appeared much earlier than the one for creativity. More than three millennia ago, it first appeared in the form of bronze script. Some have posited that the script’s pattern indicates a person lying on the ground with incisions on the limbs; others claim it’s actually a blade dripping with blood.

REGULAR SCRIPT

Illustration

创

SEAL SCRIPT

Issue 3 /2015

Either way, its original definition was not debatable, meaning “to cut wounds”. As the character developed, the original pattern was simplified and became a radical, and at the same time another radical, 倉 (c`ng), was added on its left to denote pronunciation. The end result is 創, the traditional form of the character 创. When it refers to “wound” as a noun, the first tone (chu`ng) is used. Many words and phrases rely on the character, and all relate to its painful origins. 创口 (chu`ngk6u, wound) is a word you will most likely hear from surgeons, and when discussing a surgery, you may want to choose a plan of action that uses the least invasive techniques, which is 微创 (w8ichu`ng). Surgeons refer to surface wounds as 创面 (chu`ngmi3n) when they are discussing its cleaning or healing. Of course, the character does not just refer to physical wounds, but also psychological or emotional trauma. For instance, the word 创伤 (chu`ngsh`ng) can mean both physical and psychological injury. For instance, “战争给人们的心灵留下了深深的创伤 (Zh3nzh8ng g0i r9nmen de x~nl!ng li% xi3 le sh8nsh8n de chu`ngsh`ng)” means “War leaves deep wounds in people’s hearts.” To refer to the pain and suffering caused by such injuries, use the word 创痛 (chu`ngt7ng). The meaning of “wound” also expands to include setbacks on other general matters. For example, when the economy takes a hit, we say 经济受创 (j~ngj# sh7uchu`ng); when one’s career is on the rocks, it’s 事业受创 (sh#y- sh7uchu`ng); and when someone’s ego gets hurt, we can even say 自尊心受创 (z#z$nx~n sh7uchu`ng). 创 also means “to start something new”, and when it’s used as a verb, the fourth tone (chu3ng) is used. Originally, this meaning belonged to the character 刱 with the same pronunciation. But the former became immensely more

popular in daily usage, so much so that the character was rendered obsolete. 创造 (chu3ngz3o), or “to create”, is the word you want to remember when describing creation on a grand scale, such as in 创造文明 (chu3ngz3o w9nm!ng, to create a civilization), 创造历史 (chu3ngz3o l#sh@, to create history), 创造纪录 (chu3ngz3o j#l&, to set a record), and even 创造奇迹 (chu3ngz3o q!j#, to create a miracle). For something specific, it depends on what you are creating. If it’s literature or art, use 创作 (chu3ngzu7); if it’s a publication, use 创刊 (chu3ngk`n); and if it’s to establish a school, a company, or an organization, use 创办 (chu3ngb3n), with the founder of the organization being 创始人 (chu3ngsh@r9n). To start a website, use the word 创建 (chu3ngji3n) and to create a new school of thought or a new theory, use 创立 (chu3ngl#). But, this is not to be confused with 创利 (chu3ngl#), which means “to create a profit”. To do that, we have to start an enterprise first, which is 创业 (chu3ngy-). Entrepreneurs are actually 创业者 (chu3ngy-zh0). With all this in mind, it should be clear that the subject at hand decides what verb should be used. We celebrate and appreciate genuine creativity and out-of-the-box thinking; the word 创意 (chu3ngy#) represents just that, “a brand new concept or fresh ground”, often in an artistic sense. In the modern world where technology grows ever more integrated, 创新 (chu3ngx~n), or “to bring forth new ideas”, is often heard in regard to science and technology. In a world of innovation, the route to the unprecedented is the quickest to success; it’s the best way to ensure that your idea will be an 创见 (chu3ngji3n, original idea) and your work will be 创举 (chu3ngj^, pioneering work). What are you waiting for? Set your mind free and go to be creative, it’s the easiest and most painful thing in the world. - BY HUANG WEIJIA (黄伟嘉) AND LIU JUE (刘珏)

YOU’VE GOT QUESTIONS, SHE’S GOT ANSWERS (BUT YOU PROBABLY WON’T LIKE THEM) Right, okay, I got a question for you. Why do Chinese folks always look straight ahead when crossing the road? It’s all a bit weird for my liking. R. Ht.

I’ve got a lot of debt. It’s part of the reason I moved to another part of the planet, and I don’t know what to do about it. You got any advice, boss?

怪异(gu3iy#, weird)? Oh, well, so sorry China’s ancient

债务 (zh3iw&, debt)? What do you want me to do? You think I am your 老板 (l2ob2n, boss)? I won’t give you any money. However, since you just 浪费时间 (l3ngf-i sh!ji`n, waste time) writing to magazines, I take it you are not really a 穷光蛋 (qi5nggu`ngd3n, penniless person). I don’t have any money, but I don’t owe any either. Do what you have to and pay the money back. 不入虎穴，焉得虎子 (B% r& h^xu9, y`n d9 h^z@. If you don’t enter the tiger’s den, you don’t get the tiger’s cub). This is China, and we take debt seriously, not like you in the West. It’s your fault for getting into this mess. Remember, 种瓜得瓜，种豆得豆 (zh7ng gu` d9 gu`, zh7ng d7u d9 d7u, plant a melon, reap a melon; plant a bean, reap a bean). I’m homesick. That’s it. Just homesick. I don’t like it here. Everything is difficult, and everyone is mean. Rose Red

Fishermen on the Xiaodongjiang River in Hunan Province practice an age-old method of net casting. Today, this method is used more to lure tourists than to catch fish.

Got questions for our Agony Ayi? Send them to agonyayi@theworldofchinese.com

Illustration

I don’t hear a question. Why are you telling me this? You are just 郁闷 (y&m-n, depressed). Remember, 人无千日好，花无百日红 (R9n w% qi`n r# h2o, hu` w% b2i r# h5ng. No one can remain friendly for a thousand days, nor can flowers be in bloom for a hundred). You’ll get out of your slump soon, but it won’t solve your problem of being a 爱哭鬼 (3ik$gu@, cry baby). It may not be a nice thing to say, but 忠言逆耳 (zh4ng y1n n# 0r, honest advice is hard to hear). Of course, there is the obvious answer: go home. There are probably people who miss you, like your mother. As they say, 儿行千里母担忧 (Ér x!ng qi`nl@ m^ d`ny4u. When children travel far from home, mothers never stop worrying).

Gao Fei

pedestrian traditions make you so upset. The rule is this: you 注意 (zh&y#, pay attention) to what’s in front of you. Beside you is not your concern. This is the rule everyone follows, and if everyone follows it, no one gets hurt. You don’t know what is happening beside or behind you; the street could be full of rampaging elephants—跟你没关系 (g8n n@ m9i gu`nx#, not your business). Be responsible for yourself, and remember that 求人不如求己 (qi% r9n b& r% qi% j@, it’s best to rely on yourself rather than others). This in mind, I do not approve of the modern habit of walking and driving while looking at your phone. But if people keep getting hit by cars, it will eventually stop altogether. After all, 一朝被蛇咬，十年怕井绳 (y#zh`o b-i sh9 y2o, sh! ni1n p3i j@ngsh9ng, once bitten by a snake, one shies from a coiled rope for the next ten years).

Berth from Perth

Issue 3 /2015

酒保，给我来七杯你这里最好的威士忌。

COMICS

CROSS WORD

只有我。

4 3

七杯？都给谁喝？

哦！我从来没见过有人一下子喝掉这么多酒。今天过得不顺吗？

6 7 8 9 13

10 11

ACROSS 我刚才点了很多酒，可我没钱付账。

是啊，我的脸就要挨揍了。

为什么呢？

Man: Bartender, give me seven shots of your finest whiskey. Bartender: Seven? For who? Man: Just me. Bartender: Wow! I’ve never seen someone drink so much so fast. Rough day? Man: Yeah, I’m going to get punched in the face today. Bartender: Why is that? Man: I just ordered a bunch of drinks I can’t pay for.

ANSWERS FOR LAST ISSUE ACROSS: 3. 可乐 5. 水至清则无鱼 7. 东北 8. 调虎离山 10. 江南 DOWN: 1. 扬子江 2. 旁观者清 3. 可有可无 4. 南水北调 6. 鱼死网破 9. 山寨

2. Fight 100 battles, ever-victorious 4. Being a celebrity for a time 6. The TV genre that has kept the Kardashians famous 7. An oh-so precious metal 8. What do wind, a horse, and an ox have in common? 9. Your car, health, and home all rely on this protection 10. What an angry customer might do 12. Great for your health, but hard to keep up 13. The southernmost island of South America

DOWN 1. A number that also means “idiot” 3. The flower Harry Potter’s mum was named after 4. Places tourists visit 5. Event featuring skinny women and weird clothes 6. True gold fears no fire 7. Bovine creatures that can get you all the tickets you want 8. Investment for startup companies 11. China’s young middle class obsessed with all things highbrow 14. Online slang for Japan