Statistics are fun. I like it when a statistic is published like the following one and people are expected to take it seriously.

"For Deng Jun, a child psychologist in Beijing, books such as Give Me Back the Dream portray the reality for millions of young people. 'Official government statistics speak of between 500 and 700 teenagers reported with depression in China, but these figures are very conservative,' she said."

This quote is from The Guardian and the full article can be read at this link.

I really wonder what is meant by publishing a figure like this. Is anyone going to believe it? This would mean there are between two and five depressed teens out of each million or so in China.

I found some great blog posts. Both of them I found through Danwei. The first is about a pamphlet from the eighties right after China began to make reforms under Deng Xiaoping and open up. The pamphlet is all about decadent music from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and America. There is a translation of some good bits from the pamphlet and a link to a PDF version of the original here.

I found a link to a great blog -- Zhong-Mei -- by an American living in China through Danwei, the same site mentioned in the above paragraph. The blogger Zhong-Mei translated a magazine article from tanhuang chunqiu about the Beginning of the Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution in 1966. A very interesting article, translated very nicely. Here is the Danwei link.

I found this link on danwei.org for a video they did on Graffiti artists in Shanghai. Here is the Youtube link for the interview, and here is the link to the same video on tudou dot com if you are in China, it is quicker. Definitely worth watching if the subject interests you. Decent interviews as well as some nice shots of actual work and also information on where to go to find pieces.

As you may have heard in the news, They last three days were national days of mourning for the Chinese people. On Monday there were three minutes of silence in remembrance of all those who died or were hurt in the earthquake on May 12th. On Monday afternoon I went to finish some official procedures for my Foreigner residence permit. I had to go to the Bureau for Public Pacification, get my picture taken and hand in a few forms. On the way there, the radio was announcing the three minutes of silence. While I was getting my form reviewed by the bureaucrat I got a cell phone message saying at precisely 2:28 there would commence three minutes of silence, and also that all boats, trains, trucks and cars would stop and blow their horns. Sure enough, a minute later the bureaucrats all stood up and everyone in line stopped pushing and stood still and quiet for three minutes. I would have liked to have been on the street in order to see the scene, but it was still moving were I was. I was in a large hall that fell totally silent besides a child talking and muted horns and sirens could be heard from outside. I felt as though it was completely appropriate memorial and it was inspiring as well as moving to think that all across such a vast country everyone was doing the same thing.

In addition to the three minutes of silence at 2:28 in the afternoon on Monday, exactly a week after the earthquake, the government also announced three days of mourning. Many newspapers printed one character in black and white on the entire front page of the newspaper, such as the character for mourning. All home pages for websites were changed to black and white. All websites for video and media (the local youtube equivalents) had search functions disabled and the only videos accessible were videos of the disaster.

I think one of the smartest things that the Chinese government has done is to bring so much media attention to the event. Because of this, there is much international support and donations, and the domestic reaction has been huge. When people see the suffering but also see that volunteers and rescue operations are effective, they are also moved to act themselves and donate money, blood, supplies and time. There is also public pressure from citizens on companies to react and donate funds at the risk of losing customers. Besides the timely and proportionate response by the government sending in the army, the media attention has played a great part in letting people know how serious it was. I know I personally didn't really respond the day it happened. I didn't pay much attention to the news until the second day when I finally realized how serious it was

The Times of London ran a great article today about how the media attention that the Chinese have been giving this disaster has brought on a much different reaction than the media coverage the disaster in Myanmar/Burma is getting.

I just returned home from a colleagues house. It was ten PM Friday night, and everyone in the dormitories was chanting go China, go Olympics. It is now 10:45, and groups of students are jogging by on the streets screaming "Go China, Go Olympics." They are blowing whistles and shouting and clapping. I am impressed by the aerobic endurance of the student body.

As you may have guessed, tomorrow, may 17th is the day the Olympic torch rally comes to Wenzhou. My students gave me a Chinese flag in class today. They passed them out during the break, as well as large characters printed on stiff board which when held up in order will spell out a sentence. I had trouble getting them to settle down after the break as they were waving their flags. One was running back and forth with a full sized flag draped over her back. They all got on a bus after class to go to town. They will stay overnight in a hotel so they can be at the right place at six or seven in the morning when the relay starts. I asked them how many people would be sleeping in one hotel room, and they said they were not planning to sleep, so they would all fit in one or two rooms.

Yesterday, the other foreign teachers and I were asked if we wanted to go to the torch relay rally. I had said yes, I wanted to go. Today they said there are no spaces. I am not really disappointed, as I fully expected them to rescind the offer right at the last moment, but I did find it quite rude of them. It sure would have been a sight to see.

This afternoon, I tried to get the teachers to tell me if I could go by myself or not. I was to understand that at some torch relay events, the roads were completely roped off and all spectators had to pass through metal detectors, but that might have just been at the torch lighting and ending ceremonies. They encouraged me not to go as they thought it would be a complete mess and maybe dangerous. The school is also encouraging all the students not to go.

The Olympic torch parade has been quite successful in China so far. As you can tell, the young people are quite wound up. I hope they can get up in time to watch it on TV or in time to get to town after all the running and yelling. It has also been a bigger success for the sponsors who were afraid to advertise heavily on much of the international route for fear of reaction. The same cautious sponsors are going all out here. Coke even sponsored a competition to choose torch relay cheerleaders for all the cities the torch will pass through. Over an hour later, the chanting is dying down. There is still an intermittent "Go China, Go Olympics," but they are fewer and farther between.

The Art of Distilling

This post is dedicated to my brother. I took these pictures with precisely the intent of showing them to you. But it is also dedicated to JPS, JLH, Tom T, Will A, and of course CAB. I didn't drink any, but I was tempted to buy a huge jug. If we had had one of these at UMass, it would have been a time.
This is a traveling distiller with his still. I gather he drives around at harvest time and stops wherever people have been fermenting their rice. He takes the rice wine and makes it into a more potent rice moonshine. I gather the still works pretty fast as there was a pretty large flow of alcohol coming out the other end. He was working at two pm when I left the house and was still there when I came home after five. I took a picture when I was going by the first time, and then when I saw he was still there I asked to take more pictures. When he saw how interested I was, he told me I should take three pictures. One of him stoking the fire, one of him ladling out the booze and reading the alcoholometer and one of him drinking the delicious product. I took as many as I could, most of which have been uploaded for the readers enjoyment.

This is the first picture I took. The light was the best, so this picture came out the clearest. Click on it to see the stream of moonshine coming out of the condenser.

The next picture is the first one I took on the way back.

Stoking the fire under the boiler

Adding more coal

The rightfully self satisfied smile of the distiller. I know I'd be smiling at least that much if I had my own still.

Filling the tasting bowl directly from the condenser

Checking the specific gravity

Tasting the finished product

If you enjoyed these pictures please don't write or comment to tell me its a hydrometer not an alcoholometer. To me, it will always be an alcoholometer.

Sad Post About Cute Animals

This first picture is a super cute kitten that I saw sitting there as I was going to see the puppies pictured below. It just looked sort of sick and was too tired to flee in fear as I stuck my phone camera in its face.

This post is mostly about dogs. My wife used to tell me stories before we were married, not infrequently, of dogs who went missing after going out on the town for the day. She also told a story about traditional dog slaughtering methods that would keep clear the consciences of the hungry, hitherto meatless soul. First a large pot is set to boil, while it is heating up, a plank is set up like a see-saw. when the water reaches a full boil, the dog is then enticed to run up the plank. when it crosses the fulcrum point, the dog tips the see-saw the other way, and it falls into the boiling water. This, of course relieves the consumer of the meat of any responsibility or feelings of remorse, because the dog fell in on its own accord, and now that the dog is dead anyway, it would be a shame not to eat the meat.

The above paragraph gives a little background on these pictures of little pups I am holding. Their mother went out one day and just never came back. Now they are filthy and shivering, but they are big enough to eat on their own.

The next anecdote about doggy suffering is one caused by my own foolishness.

One day after I went rambling in the mountains, I saw a dog on the walk home along the highway. I noticed a metallic sound when it was walking around. The nice doggy had a wire around its neck, so i decided to try to beckon it over to see if i could free it so the wire wouldn't get caught in something causing it to get stuck and starve to death. when i knelt down and made the sort of noise likely to attract a dog, it got scared and ran into the road where it was immediately smacked into by a car. I didn't dare look because of all the screaming it was doing, and I wasn't about to go chasing it around in the middle of the highway. I could only think of the dog dragging itself away from me even when still crippled and not only causing the death of a cute animal, but also several car crashes as well. At least I stopped my well intentioned efforts before taking multiple lives. I would like to talk to a Buddhist about the karmic repercussions of this action, because according to my understanding, as long as intentions are good, it still produces good karma even if the end result is just more suffering. The "fang sheng" or releasing of live animals is a Buddhist tradition here, and it is the cause of a huge traffic in animals who are raised or caught just to be released by people who buy them specifically to release them in order to gain karma. This practice often causes havoc in the local ecosystem, and most of the released animals die anyway.

I chased the dog into the road right after I watched a video on a popular China blog called shanghaiist. You shouldn't watch that video, though Its a Wenzhou university security guard beating a dog to death. What does this say about people and their attitudes towards animals? I don't know. Is this a representative picture of attitudes towards animals in this part of the world? No, not really. I like to think these are the outliers. I'm not really sure I believe the weird story about chasing dogs on a see-saw either. But it makes for interesting reading.