Today, while walking home from teaching an English class, I was stopped on the street by a lady. She started telling me about the Red Cross, asking me if I was familiar with it, and detailing specifically what it does in Spain. I followed her explanation okay for a while, but got lost at some point and I had to ask her to slow down. Up until then, she didn't know that I was a foreigner. She just thought I was a regular Spaniard, like most of the people walking the streets in this country. That is something I really like here. With a single glance someone assumes that I am native enough to speak the language, vote, donate money to the Red Cross, or give directions. My first few weeks in Spain, when I was mostly in touristy locations like Madrid, I was asked for directions half a dozen times. Do I just exude an aura of confidence that makes people assume I know my way around? That is something that often got on my nerves in China: I was not invisible.
On the contrary, even in a city with upwards of 15 million people (like Beijing), in China I was always hyper visible. People noticed me, and not for anything special I was doing nor for any special clothing that I wore, but merely because I was white. In the same way that people in Spain assume I am a local and I am aware of things, people in China assumed I was a foreigner and ignorant of everything. I only remember one time in which a stranger approached me to ask for directions: she came from behind me, and as soon as I turned and she saw my face she instantly apologized and asked someone else for directions, assuming that I didn't know. Ironically, I knew the location she was asking about, and I knew how to get there. She didn't listen to me, but instead listened to the Chinese guy standing next to me who didn't know where it was, and continues to wander aimlessly for a while, despite my intentions to help her. Normally, strangers in Beijing assumed that I was ignorant until it was proven otherwise. Until I opened my mouth to speak (not flawless, by any means, but I think) pretty damn good Mandarin, I was considered to speak only English. Until I displayed my excellent knowledge of Beijing's geography (at least the western and central areas) I was assumed to be lost.
There were certainly some parts of Beijing that I did know pretty well. Granted, I was a foreigner there, there were (and always will be) some things that I wasn't aware of. Nonetheless, I often ended up knowing Beijing better than Chinese people from outside of Beijing. On many occasions Chinese friends of mine weren't familiar with a particular location in Beijing, but I was able to direct us there. (There were practical reasons for this: I went outside my home to other parts of the city more often than they did)
In Spain people don't assume that I am ignorant and incapable unless I prove myself ignorant and incapable. I guess I really enjoy that.
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
China Shakes the World
Although I finished reading China Shakes the World a few weeks ago already, I still have a strong impression of it. This is not because it was such a wonderful book, not was it absolutely horrible either. I have no doubt that the book was better back in 2006 when it first came out, but the biggest impression that I had of the book was this: reading it was a waste of my time. Now, to be honest, there were things in the book that were new to me. There were some interesting stories and a few facts that I found interesting. In total, however, I believe that the time I spent reading the book was not well spent, and could have been better spent reading a different book.
I was wary from the beginning about reading a book that was so old. I wouldn't consider all books published in 2006, to be hopelessly out of date, but since China is changing so fast I was automatically turned off by knowing the book was more than two years old. This may sound very strange to people who are not Sinologists or China watchers. Think about it though: the economy, society/culture, political situations and even the language are changing so quickly that a delay of a few years makes knowledge ancient and obsolete. Some books are still applicable after a few years, but many of the China watcher books are made obsolete by changing conditions. However, after seeing that Mark's China Blog Reviewed this book, I decided to give it a chance. I should have trusted by gut reaction.
I think that most of the information that I got from the book was interesting, but were things that I already knew. I see this as complicated/exacerbated by two things. First, I read blogs (and when I have enough free time, tweets) about China, so I stay very up-to-date. For instance, nobody is gonna read anything about the attempted Jasmine Revolution at Wangfujing in a book for at least a year and I have great doubts that Yu Jianrong's micro-blog will get written in a book anytime soon, regardless of how revolutionary it has been. On a good day I know about the events and happenings before they even get published in the Washington Post or the New York Times. On a bad day I get the inside scoop on China issues that most people in the U.S. have never heard about, and that China watchers restricted to the New York Times, The Economist and Foreign Policy (as I used to be) won't hear about it for a week or more.
The second factor is that I already know so much about China. I am not gonna make any exaggerations: there are still loads of things that I don't know; I am not the smartest China watcher in the world; I often don't even draw my own conclusions. However, having taken a few undergrad classes, read a few books and having lived in Beijing and had plenty of conversations with smart people a lot of the information I get out of books or articles targeted and "regular" consumers are nothing new or special for me. May shocking news about how ethnically diverse China is, or about how China has so many polluted cities, or about China's this or China's that would be new to someone who isn't a China watcher. I am a part of this small population though; we are people who make a hobby/living out of knowing what is going on in this country. A lot of the info in China Shakes the World was like this: I already knew it. It is occasionally nice or pleasing to read things that just confirm what you already know, but rarely (ever?) is this intellectually stimulating.
I will just have to be a bit more selective with what China-focused books I read.
I was wary from the beginning about reading a book that was so old. I wouldn't consider all books published in 2006, to be hopelessly out of date, but since China is changing so fast I was automatically turned off by knowing the book was more than two years old. This may sound very strange to people who are not Sinologists or China watchers. Think about it though: the economy, society/culture, political situations and even the language are changing so quickly that a delay of a few years makes knowledge ancient and obsolete. Some books are still applicable after a few years, but many of the China watcher books are made obsolete by changing conditions. However, after seeing that Mark's China Blog Reviewed this book, I decided to give it a chance. I should have trusted by gut reaction.
I think that most of the information that I got from the book was interesting, but were things that I already knew. I see this as complicated/exacerbated by two things. First, I read blogs (and when I have enough free time, tweets) about China, so I stay very up-to-date. For instance, nobody is gonna read anything about the attempted Jasmine Revolution at Wangfujing in a book for at least a year and I have great doubts that Yu Jianrong's micro-blog will get written in a book anytime soon, regardless of how revolutionary it has been. On a good day I know about the events and happenings before they even get published in the Washington Post or the New York Times. On a bad day I get the inside scoop on China issues that most people in the U.S. have never heard about, and that China watchers restricted to the New York Times, The Economist and Foreign Policy (as I used to be) won't hear about it for a week or more.
The second factor is that I already know so much about China. I am not gonna make any exaggerations: there are still loads of things that I don't know; I am not the smartest China watcher in the world; I often don't even draw my own conclusions. However, having taken a few undergrad classes, read a few books and having lived in Beijing and had plenty of conversations with smart people a lot of the information I get out of books or articles targeted and "regular" consumers are nothing new or special for me. May shocking news about how ethnically diverse China is, or about how China has so many polluted cities, or about China's this or China's that would be new to someone who isn't a China watcher. I am a part of this small population though; we are people who make a hobby/living out of knowing what is going on in this country. A lot of the info in China Shakes the World was like this: I already knew it. It is occasionally nice or pleasing to read things that just confirm what you already know, but rarely (ever?) is this intellectually stimulating.
I will just have to be a bit more selective with what China-focused books I read.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
South-South Relations
While read some blogs on Brazil recently, I stumbled across something mentioning Brazil’s growing projects in Africa. My interest was instantly piqued, and I suddenly realized that I wasn’t only interested in China-Africa relations, or China Latin-America relations, or China-Brazil relations. Something broader described my interest. It is only a description, of course, since to define is to limit, and my interests are wide and highly mutable. Regardless, describe (this facet of) my interests it does: South-South relations. What a beautiful phrase, allowing me to briefly describe a curiosity of and/or interest in all the BRICs (minus Russia), the N-11 countries, everything south of the Rio Grand, and the entire landmass between the Mediterranean Sea and South Africa. I wonder if South-South relations are something that I can actually claim as a field of study? Is it too broad? The breadth of SSR as a potential field certainly does match that of my interest and curiosity, but it also goes beyond. For instance, I am not particularly interested in Central Asia, Western Asia or Eastern Europe. South East Asia intrigues me, but not at nearly the same level as Africa or Latin America. This may require some pondering
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Although France sending its nuclear waste to China may have made it into a paper, this kind of thing is nothing special for China. China has been importing the garbage of other countries for years. Usually countries pay to import items, but China is at times paid to act as the landfill for many OECD countries. I wrote a sloppy undergrad paper about the international trade in electronic waste (e-waste), and if you don't mind the poor grammar and poor formatting which my paper was subjected to, it is available for you to read on my long abandoned attemt and being intellectual and philosophical through analyzing the world. For proffesional information avaiable from the Worldwatch Institute and a particularly groundbreaking report titled Exporting Harm – The High Tech Trashing of Asia by the Basel Action Network.
I actually visited one of the center of e-waste processing during a trip when I was in China for my junior year. Although I lacked the resources (money, time, connections) that professional reporters and investigators had, it was still an amazing experience to see just how filthy the place was, and having read previously about the cancer and other side effects caused by exposure to that level of toxic chemicals (commonly found in computers) gave my experience a unique depth.
It was also during the writing of this paper that I began to really get into the idea of re-use of products. Imagine this: If after being used for a few years could be sent back to the company that made it. This company could take apart the components, use whatever is still usable, and dismantle and cannibalize whatever isn't usable in it's current form. For an even simpler concept imagine that the bottles that beverages come in could be returned to the local 7-11, where they would be filled with a new beverage and re-labeled for its new contents. Imagine that candy bars came in re-usable and returnable Tupperware-like containers rather than disposable plastic. *sigh* What a world.
I actually visited one of the center of e-waste processing during a trip when I was in China for my junior year. Although I lacked the resources (money, time, connections) that professional reporters and investigators had, it was still an amazing experience to see just how filthy the place was, and having read previously about the cancer and other side effects caused by exposure to that level of toxic chemicals (commonly found in computers) gave my experience a unique depth.
It was also during the writing of this paper that I began to really get into the idea of re-use of products. Imagine this: If after being used for a few years could be sent back to the company that made it. This company could take apart the components, use whatever is still usable, and dismantle and cannibalize whatever isn't usable in it's current form. For an even simpler concept imagine that the bottles that beverages come in could be returned to the local 7-11, where they would be filled with a new beverage and re-labeled for its new contents. Imagine that candy bars came in re-usable and returnable Tupperware-like containers rather than disposable plastic. *sigh* What a world.
Friday, November 5, 2010
At least there is some good news in the world (or, a billion links with what I read recently)
I am so glad to find news that is not related to the mid-term elections in the United States. Even all of my regular foreign and international focused news sources have been running material about the elections.
Other than a new mysterious writer in China, the PRC government trying to throw it's wight around (once again, like an immature schoolyard who has suddenly realized that he is bigger than most of the other kids on the playground) bully to influence European governments and some entertaining multicultural iconic romance, there has been a lot of writing about India recently, presumably due to the upcoming Obama visit. I assume it will made away after Obama leaves south Asia.
I just read that, according to a UN study, the world is now better off since people are, in general, "healthier, richer and better educated than ever before, with most developing countries registering huge gains over the last 40 years." With a more critical perspective, however, a Foreign Policy article on the subject mentions how inequality is still high. Fortunatly, alternatives do exist, even if many of them are a bit idealistic rather then practical, some make a difference.
In what I see as positive news, two fairly bright fellows have made a comparison between China's current state and that of the United States of America in the mid 19th century. I think zooming out to this kind of a big picture is something that Americans (myself included) do not do often enough, but I suspect that it may be a basic part of Chinese culture to look at the bigger picture and interpret things more holistically and with more context.
Okay, so add in a plane nearly crashing into Singapore and a volcano and I guess that more things are happening in the world than just the U.S. mid-term elections.
Other than a new mysterious writer in China, the PRC government trying to throw it's wight around (once again, like an immature schoolyard who has suddenly realized that he is bigger than most of the other kids on the playground) bully to influence European governments and some entertaining multicultural iconic romance, there has been a lot of writing about India recently, presumably due to the upcoming Obama visit. I assume it will made away after Obama leaves south Asia.
I just read that, according to a UN study, the world is now better off since people are, in general, "healthier, richer and better educated than ever before, with most developing countries registering huge gains over the last 40 years." With a more critical perspective, however, a Foreign Policy article on the subject mentions how inequality is still high. Fortunatly, alternatives do exist, even if many of them are a bit idealistic rather then practical, some make a difference.
In what I see as positive news, two fairly bright fellows have made a comparison between China's current state and that of the United States of America in the mid 19th century. I think zooming out to this kind of a big picture is something that Americans (myself included) do not do often enough, but I suspect that it may be a basic part of Chinese culture to look at the bigger picture and interpret things more holistically and with more context.
Okay, so add in a plane nearly crashing into Singapore and a volcano and I guess that more things are happening in the world than just the U.S. mid-term elections.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Chinese views of the U.S.
In a recent post from a site I follow (which basically just translates popular Chinese BBS topics) I was suddenly reminded as to how ignorant people can be of things that are far away, that they perceive as having a very small impact on their lives, and which they have no personal experience of. I am sure that this can apply to many countries and many peoples. How many U.S. citizens know where Suriname is? How many Europeans understand the ethnic/linguistic diversity of China? How many South Africans know how the Japanese political system work? Of course, is also is perfectly logical to me that people are unaware of things that are completely irrelevant to their everyday life. I myself, in a slightly confrontational situation, was made aware of this in myself about a year ago when a Russian acquaintance berated me for having never even heard of the largest city in the eastern half of Russia. But what my attention was drawn to from this article in specific where some of the comments people had written which described situations in other countries. Rather than summarizing them, I think I will just post these in their entirety below:
The specific thing that I find interesting is the claim of the second poster (bjwh50) that "If you’re within two meters of a police officer, you have to raise your hands, otherwise American police have the right to shoot you dead." I do not know where the poster got this opinion, but the fact that it is being expressed, and therefore spread, is somewhat alarming to me. I readily admit that the U.S. police force is far from the best in the world, for I also know that this claim isn't true (right?). If this kind of mis-information is common on the Chinese-language internet, then the perceptions of many Chinese people toward the U.S. might be based off a a United States which is quite different from the real United States. Of course, U.S. citizens do the same thing to China.
英语绵绵 (on Tianya) & 七夜 (on LiuLiu):
All this is easy to fix, just use violence. China uses the hukou system to keep the poor population from settling in cities, and then uses chengguan [thuggish city management officials who are supposed to keep order on the streets but who often end up abusing citizens, see here and here] to beat the rabble to death. The cities will then look very nice.bjwh50: (responding to above comment)
Actually, this is exactly how America does it, using violence to beat the Indians [Native Americans] to death, pushing the Asian, African, and poor out into the country, running the poor white people into the surrounding outskirts of the cities. America’s police are even more terrible than China’s chengguan. If you’re within two meters of a police officer, you have to raise your hands, otherwise American police have the right to shoot you dead.
The specific thing that I find interesting is the claim of the second poster (bjwh50) that "If you’re within two meters of a police officer, you have to raise your hands, otherwise American police have the right to shoot you dead." I do not know where the poster got this opinion, but the fact that it is being expressed, and therefore spread, is somewhat alarming to me. I readily admit that the U.S. police force is far from the best in the world, for I also know that this claim isn't true (right?). If this kind of mis-information is common on the Chinese-language internet, then the perceptions of many Chinese people toward the U.S. might be based off a a United States which is quite different from the real United States. Of course, U.S. citizens do the same thing to China.
Anti-China sentiment in the U.S., protectionism & nationalism
A fear mongering video which seems to predict the coming fall of the United Stated alongside the rise of China had become a bit of a sensation. It is very high-quality, and its nationalist/xenophobic message is shortly (but nicely) critiqued here. It has also spawned a parody which signifigantly alters the political message. This add in particular, and the anti-China/pro-China retoric in the United States in gerneal, is critiqued quite well in one of my favorite China watcher blogs.
There have also been some very xenophobic and anti-Chinese attack adds paid by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as a part of the U.S. election. One add implies that living outside the United States is somehow bad (one of the last things we need is fewer U.S. citizens going aborad and experiencing the greater world). These attack adds are nicely analyzed here. Indeed, since seeing the Obama presidency, taking a class in which the professor stressed the inefficiency of the U.S. political process, and now seeing some of the lunacy of this election, I am pretty much fed up with the current United Stated style of democracy, which I think consists of insults, the loud stating of claims without significant factual basis, and one's favorite color of a binary option. Seeing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's homepage just amplifies my view of U.S. democracy as a one-on-one fight between two giants in which money matters more than anything else. I am gonna have to get dual citizenship in another country someday.
There is a brief call for logic and sanity when thinking about international economics here. Indeed, the very way that international trade and the assembly of products works nowadays makes traditional ideas of national origin rather obsolete. Using the example of Apple's iPod (how ubiquitous can this product and brand become?), Shikha Dalmia writes:
There have also been some very xenophobic and anti-Chinese attack adds paid by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as a part of the U.S. election. One add implies that living outside the United States is somehow bad (one of the last things we need is fewer U.S. citizens going aborad and experiencing the greater world). These attack adds are nicely analyzed here. Indeed, since seeing the Obama presidency, taking a class in which the professor stressed the inefficiency of the U.S. political process, and now seeing some of the lunacy of this election, I am pretty much fed up with the current United Stated style of democracy, which I think consists of insults, the loud stating of claims without significant factual basis, and one's favorite color of a binary option. Seeing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's homepage just amplifies my view of U.S. democracy as a one-on-one fight between two giants in which money matters more than anything else. I am gonna have to get dual citizenship in another country someday.
There is a brief call for logic and sanity when thinking about international economics here. Indeed, the very way that international trade and the assembly of products works nowadays makes traditional ideas of national origin rather obsolete. Using the example of Apple's iPod (how ubiquitous can this product and brand become?), Shikha Dalmia writes:
"Think about the IPod, for instance. It is designed in America and its 451 parts are made in dozens of different countries. But just because it is finally assembled in China, it officially counts as a Chinese import and therefore a contributor to America’s trade deficit — never mind that the Chinese add only $4 to the IPod’s $150 final value. Imposing duties on IPods to slash the deficit, then, won’t just cost Chinese jobs in Beijing assembly plants, but American jobs in Cupertino (Apple’s headquarters) computer labs."A recent WTO speech by Pascal Lamy focused on a nearly identical topic, and I consider it well worth reading in full as a reminder to not get caught up in the rhetoric of economically protectionist and politically nationalist arguments.
Friday, October 8, 2010
How to Stay Up-To-Date on China
I would like to let everyone know exactly how I get my information and stay up to date on China. Although Democracy Now!, The Economist, and Foreign Policy are mainstays of my general news intake, this post is going to be focused on China-specific news. This is mainly meant for people who wish to be well-informed and stay up-to-date on China issues. I will divide this into four categories: Podcasts, Blogs, Tweets, and other sites.
PODCASTS
Podcasts are perhaps the most convenient way I have of consuming information. The fact that it is given to me through an audio medium means that I do not need to use my eyes or my hands, making it ideal for consuming while walking, talking the bus, or doing other tasks. Of all the ways I have of consuming information, podcasts lend themselves to multitasking to a far greater extent than any other format.
The combination of the Sinica Podcast and The China History Podcast, hosted by Kaiser Kuo and Lazlo Montegomery, provide excellent information of the china of today and of history. Kaiser and his friends have very high quality discussions about a wide range of issues relevant to contemporary China, while Lazlo Montegomery is clearly well versed in his field and delivers very informative and very digestible summaries of Chinese History.
BLOGS
Although there are plenty of blogs I would like to recommend on language learning and other interesting things, I will limit this to China-related blogs.
To start out fairly light-hearted, I would highly recommend ChinaSmack to anyone interested in the popular and sensationalist news that is happening in China. From BDSM Dungeons in Nanjing to Chinese netizen's reactions to important international political events, this gives the reader a quick glimpse at what is happening online for Chinese people. To get good recommendations of Chinese (including Taiwanese and Hong Kong) movies, as well as films from Japan and South Korea I would say that Populasian is a great resource. I have been pointed to numerous high-quality film through this blog, and without it I would have missed out on the vast majority of quality film that I have seen over the past year. Moving to more serious readings, ChinaGeeks does an excellent job analyzing news, and the folks at The China Beat to a great job reporting on it. China Hearsay, Mark's China Blog, and The Peking Duck all provide good information to me on a more seriously level than movies of SM in Nanjing. The mainstays of my blog digest, though, consist of China Digital Times and Danwei, both blocked in China, and both highly attuned to political news, and (in my opinion) valuable fonts of straightforward information about China in the modern day. Aside from the two behemoths of online China news in the form of CTD and Danwei, I find Fool's Mountain to be some of the most intelligent blogging about china on the web today. Some posts on Africans living in China and some vicious racism concerning a black/Chinese girl were some of my favorites. (the complete list of blogs that I follow is available here)
TWEETS
I just started using Twitter a few weeks ago, but after a few incidents of being aware of events before said events were reported in the western media (beating the New York Times on the news is certainly a point of pride for me!), I now swear by it as an excellent way to get up to the minute information. Of the few dozen Twitter accounts that I follow(the full list can be found here), imagethief, niubi, ChinaGeeks, Jeremy Goldkorn, and GadyEpstein tend to give me the best information. Aside from that, a lot of these guys (along with Kaiser Kuo, FoundinChina and David Moser) talk with each other via Twitter too, so following their conversations can give me some excellent clues. The Asia Society, an excellent resource in general, has their own Twitter account, and Eric Olander focuses intelligently only China-Africa issues.
OTHER NEWS SOURCES
I want to recommend all kinds of global news sources, from Times of India (most widely read English-language newspaper in the world) to Al Jazeera (now a widely respected source of world news), I will again restrict myself to China-relevant news sources. Within this category of the obligatory Wall Street Journal's China topic page and the New York Times's China page (a great number of NYT's china articles are authored by Edward Wong, whom I am beginning to respect). Aside from those big names are anything that The Economist or Foreign Policy happens to have on China, while the East Asia Forum is a bit more of a focused and specialized site. I get all of this information through Google Reader by use of RSS feeds, which I highly recommend EVERYONE look into as a fast an easy way of having your news delivered to you.
And that is everything. All the information I wield about current events in China come from the resources listed on this blog post. Although I by no means consider myself an expert on China (except perhaps in the realm of China's minzu and ethnicities, but even that would be a pretty shaky claim: all I did was read a hell of a lot of sources and the summarize some of them), with these fonts of information supporting me I hope to gain more and more knowledge of China and it's role in the world.
PODCASTS
Podcasts are perhaps the most convenient way I have of consuming information. The fact that it is given to me through an audio medium means that I do not need to use my eyes or my hands, making it ideal for consuming while walking, talking the bus, or doing other tasks. Of all the ways I have of consuming information, podcasts lend themselves to multitasking to a far greater extent than any other format.
The combination of the Sinica Podcast and The China History Podcast, hosted by Kaiser Kuo and Lazlo Montegomery, provide excellent information of the china of today and of history. Kaiser and his friends have very high quality discussions about a wide range of issues relevant to contemporary China, while Lazlo Montegomery is clearly well versed in his field and delivers very informative and very digestible summaries of Chinese History.
BLOGS
Although there are plenty of blogs I would like to recommend on language learning and other interesting things, I will limit this to China-related blogs.
To start out fairly light-hearted, I would highly recommend ChinaSmack to anyone interested in the popular and sensationalist news that is happening in China. From BDSM Dungeons in Nanjing to Chinese netizen's reactions to important international political events, this gives the reader a quick glimpse at what is happening online for Chinese people. To get good recommendations of Chinese (including Taiwanese and Hong Kong) movies, as well as films from Japan and South Korea I would say that Populasian is a great resource. I have been pointed to numerous high-quality film through this blog, and without it I would have missed out on the vast majority of quality film that I have seen over the past year. Moving to more serious readings, ChinaGeeks does an excellent job analyzing news, and the folks at The China Beat to a great job reporting on it. China Hearsay, Mark's China Blog, and The Peking Duck all provide good information to me on a more seriously level than movies of SM in Nanjing. The mainstays of my blog digest, though, consist of China Digital Times and Danwei, both blocked in China, and both highly attuned to political news, and (in my opinion) valuable fonts of straightforward information about China in the modern day. Aside from the two behemoths of online China news in the form of CTD and Danwei, I find Fool's Mountain to be some of the most intelligent blogging about china on the web today. Some posts on Africans living in China and some vicious racism concerning a black/Chinese girl were some of my favorites. (the complete list of blogs that I follow is available here)
TWEETS
I just started using Twitter a few weeks ago, but after a few incidents of being aware of events before said events were reported in the western media (beating the New York Times on the news is certainly a point of pride for me!), I now swear by it as an excellent way to get up to the minute information. Of the few dozen Twitter accounts that I follow(the full list can be found here), imagethief, niubi, ChinaGeeks, Jeremy Goldkorn, and GadyEpstein tend to give me the best information. Aside from that, a lot of these guys (along with Kaiser Kuo, FoundinChina and David Moser) talk with each other via Twitter too, so following their conversations can give me some excellent clues. The Asia Society, an excellent resource in general, has their own Twitter account, and Eric Olander focuses intelligently only China-Africa issues.
OTHER NEWS SOURCES
I want to recommend all kinds of global news sources, from Times of India (most widely read English-language newspaper in the world) to Al Jazeera (now a widely respected source of world news), I will again restrict myself to China-relevant news sources. Within this category of the obligatory Wall Street Journal's China topic page and the New York Times's China page (a great number of NYT's china articles are authored by Edward Wong, whom I am beginning to respect). Aside from those big names are anything that The Economist or Foreign Policy happens to have on China, while the East Asia Forum is a bit more of a focused and specialized site. I get all of this information through Google Reader by use of RSS feeds, which I highly recommend EVERYONE look into as a fast an easy way of having your news delivered to you.
And that is everything. All the information I wield about current events in China come from the resources listed on this blog post. Although I by no means consider myself an expert on China (except perhaps in the realm of China's minzu and ethnicities, but even that would be a pretty shaky claim: all I did was read a hell of a lot of sources and the summarize some of them), with these fonts of information supporting me I hope to gain more and more knowledge of China and it's role in the world.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Back to Beijing, and then Back to my Future
I have been back in China for a full three months now (tourist visa has expired), and I have fully settled into my new home and gotten into the swing of life here. I juggle, I dance, I teach, I live and I learn. What more is there to say about my life than that? Recently I have been sleeping less and going out less frequently too. I have been waking up quite early (around 6:30) naturally, and I have normally been staying up until around midnight. I can tell I am tired because every now and then I stumble over my own shoes while walking, which is something I tend to do when I haven't gotten enough sleep. If my body doesn't even have enough energy to lift its feet, then there is something amiss. Mid-Autumn Festival is coming up though, and I have three days off. The National Day holiday is coming up too, which will give me a week of travel with my sister. It will be nice to have a vacation.
The biggest thing here recently has been my managing of some Sunday performances in The Village. Normally, Federico would manage these performances, but Fede is in Tibet for two weeks, so he has me running the shows. It is fun and exciting, it gives me good experience, and the money is good for the amount of stress and pain that I go through (moderate stress, no pain). In fact, I have kind of become Fede's sidekick. Somewhere between and intern, an apprentice, and a part-time employee who is not paid in regular amounts or with consistency. Regardless as to how one chooses to describe it, I am loving it so far.
I have fairly solidly decided that I will only stay in Beijing for one year. Summer 2011 is gonna be pretty busy for me, as there is Jocco's and Allie's wedding in the U.S., another friend's wedding in Spain, and I really want to go to both of them! I will also have my oral assessment with the U.S. State Department, so I can do that next summer. I am planning on applying for the ‘teaching English in Spain' program again, and doing that for the next year of my life. I still really want to improve my Spanish, and Europe is a place that I want to experience too. I am also looking forward to that program in Spain requiring me to work less that 40 hours/week, which will give me more time to read, practice things (juggling, dancing, martial arts, languages, or whatever else catches my fancy), and do freelance or other work on the side.
Speaking of Spain and Spanish, on Tuesday my Noché de Conversación will start, and I am very excited to have a group which will allow me to practice my Spanish. I have posted to CouchSurfing and on DouBan about the event.
The biggest thing here recently has been my managing of some Sunday performances in The Village. Normally, Federico would manage these performances, but Fede is in Tibet for two weeks, so he has me running the shows. It is fun and exciting, it gives me good experience, and the money is good for the amount of stress and pain that I go through (moderate stress, no pain). In fact, I have kind of become Fede's sidekick. Somewhere between and intern, an apprentice, and a part-time employee who is not paid in regular amounts or with consistency. Regardless as to how one chooses to describe it, I am loving it so far.
I have fairly solidly decided that I will only stay in Beijing for one year. Summer 2011 is gonna be pretty busy for me, as there is Jocco's and Allie's wedding in the U.S., another friend's wedding in Spain, and I really want to go to both of them! I will also have my oral assessment with the U.S. State Department, so I can do that next summer. I am planning on applying for the ‘teaching English in Spain' program again, and doing that for the next year of my life. I still really want to improve my Spanish, and Europe is a place that I want to experience too. I am also looking forward to that program in Spain requiring me to work less that 40 hours/week, which will give me more time to read, practice things (juggling, dancing, martial arts, languages, or whatever else catches my fancy), and do freelance or other work on the side.
Speaking of Spain and Spanish, on Tuesday my Noché de Conversación will start, and I am very excited to have a group which will allow me to practice my Spanish. I have posted to CouchSurfing and on DouBan about the event.
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