Intellectual Property - 101

Today I was again working for the shrill, panicky girl from the leading Chinese educational publisher who caused me such aggravation the other day.

It was a similar kind of deal, a promotion for some of their English teaching books - but this time a public session in a city bookstore rather than a closed seminar with university students.

About 30 seconds before I was due to go on and do my thing, she told me they were going to film the entire presentation.

"Oh no you're not," I said.

She tried to tell me that this had been arranged in advance with the British education company which had hired me for the gig. This turned out to be a LIE. She then tried to persuade me to relent by telling me how much money it had cost to hire a professional camera crew for the afternoon. I was unimpressed. She then tried to explain how useful it would be to have a permanent record of my teaching they could use with their "excellent students". I was even more unimpressed. She even said she would be willing to negotiate an additional fee with me (after the event - yeah, right!). But I was incorruptible.

Look, lady, I make my living giving presentations like this. People pay me good money to do it because I'm good at it. If you have a bunch of other people who you think would benefit from seeing my presentations, then pay for me to come and present to them live. Or, if you want to make a film that you can show in lieu of a live presentation 100 or 1,000 times...... well then, you'd better be willing to pay me 100 times what I make for delivering a presentation. If you're really prepared to talk about that kind of figure, then maybe we can do business. But understand that this would be only if I were working for myself, using my own material. Today I am representing a famous British education company and my presentation will be based on a set of PowerPoint slides which are their copyright. Filming my presentation and these slides is an unauthorised form of copying and would breach my employer's copyright. Therefore, you will please remove the camera - before I begin the presentation.

Update: A "genuine misunderstanding"? A one-off aberration? Well, maybe. I do try to be as tolerant and forgiving of these episodes as I can be.

But on Sunday morning, I was giving a teacher training seminar in a small university and exactly the same thing happened.

The level of naivety - or is it just sheer bloody front?! - of the Chinese about IPR is quite staggering at times. It just does not compute with them at all.

Today's forecast: SMOKE

Yesterday was Qing Ming, China's major ancestor-worship festival - when families are supposed to return to their ancestral homes and do a little spring-cleaning of the graves of their deceased forebears.

Also, they offer 'grave gifts' to the dead - usually fake money to be burned, but these days increasingly often pictures or paper effigies of luxury consumer goods like cars and golf clubs and..... well, just about anything you care to name (I seem to remember there was a story a few years back about one graveyard attempting to ban the offering of lewd items like, what was it, KTV hostesses or something? Sorry, I haven't got time to dig that one out at the moment. Maybe later.). And if you haven't got time to visit the family graves, you burn even more stuff to try to appease the dear departed, to bribe them into overlooking your impious laziness.

So, this morning we woke to find Beijing under a fine brown fug. It's not very cloudy. There's not much mist or humidity. The traffic is quite light, and the factories are probably mostly closed down (since the government has this year decided for the first time to grant a day of national holiday to the festival, thereby giving us a 3-day weekend). So, it's not our regular Beijing smog. No, it's just SMOKE from all these ancestor-gifts. And it's been getting steadily worse all day: visibility is now down to a few hundred yards.

It's incredible to think that this antique superstition is still honoured on such a scale that it can visit days of enviromental catastrophe on the country. Incredible, but sadly true.

The Problem-Solving Nuts

Tonight's little bit of culture for me is a special concert by Panjir, a group of musicians who play traditional Central Asian Islamic folk music - with just a few infusions of more modern European influences (the group was formed by a pal of mine, British guitarist David Mitchell; but most of the other members are Uyghurs, a Muslim people from Xinjiang in the far west of China).

It's a bigger concert than usual, a bigger line-up than usual (and when they draft in additional Uyghur musicians, the set usually takes on a more traditional character [which I like] rather than spiralling off into the free jazz improvisation that David tends to favour [which I also like, but not quite as much]) to mark Nowruz - an ancient Zoroastrian holiday still celebrated as the Persian New Year, which begins on the vernal equinox and goes on for a fortnight. So, this concert is rather at the tail-end of it, but, what the hey, better late than never. There should be a good turnout from the city's Muslim communities tonight (the boys played a similar show for the Eid al-Adha festival back in December, and it was packed).

Anyway, I learn from the Wikipedia article on Nowruz that for Persians the 'spring-cleaning' holiday, Chahārshanbe Sūrī, just before it is perhaps an even bigger deal. I have learned that amongst the unique traditions associated with this holiday (which occurs on the day before the last Wednesday of the 'old year' - which this year, I suppose, must have been March 18th) is the serving of a special dish called Ajīl-e Moshkel-Goshā - which apparently translates as........ The Problem-Solving Nuts.

Ha! I love that! I couldn't help thinking that that sounds like a good description of my friends and me when we fall to discussing the world's ills over many beers.

It also sounds as though it could conceivably be a band name..... which is an apt reminder to anyone who happens to be reading this on Friday evening (my time, here in Beijing) that you have just a few hours left to post an entry for 'March' in the ongoing Possible Band Names competition over on The Barstool. Last-minute entries?? Oh, the drama!

Traffic Report - blog stats for March '08

There were 58 posts and nearly 19,000 words on Froogville last month.

(I know, it's hard to keep up, isn't it?)

There were 40 posts and around 9,000 words on The Barstool.

The number of posts was perhaps slightly inflated by a few 'cross-posts' (mostly about the recent censorship problems I've been having) appearing on both blogs. And there seems to be an emerging tendency for me to throw in more short posts, especially on The Barstool. In general, though, I think I've hit a fairly steady rhythm now. I probably did so almost from the outset, in fact: if I review the month-by-month figures since I started blogging, I find that there were 'exceptional circumstances' at play in every month where the number of posts was much lower (or much higher) than this. Monthly post output on Froogville is typically something in the 50s; on The Barstool, it started off around 30, but with the increase in the number of shorter, more frivolous posts (and regular features), it has nudged up towards 40.

Some predictability in life is reassuring, isn't it?

According to the Sitemeter 'hit counters' in my sidebars, the number of visitors is very stable - at around 160 per week on Froogville and 120 per week on The Barstool. However, the rather more sophisticated tracking service I set up at Statcounter (which I can hardly ever be bothered to go and check) cites figures about 30% or so above that. After a little bit of experimentation this afternoon, I think I have established that Statcounter records visits via the proxy I am currently using, but not those via Anonymouse (and, presumably, not via certain other proxies either); whereas Sitemeter, I think, is unable to log visits via any kind of proxy. And I think neither of them tracks feed subscriptions. So, the total number of my readers might be very mucher higher.

The more detailed data on Statcounter can prove horribly fascinating, potentially addictive. I learn for example that someone in California got a return on The Barstool for his Google search for "supermodel thighs" (although it was way, way down the results, so will never have been seen). I was baffled by this, and had to follow the link back myself to discover that we have Tulsa to thank for this (a comment of hers on my notorious Asexualismo post).

And the most enthralling part of the statistics is the 'visitor map', which shows you where in the world all of your visitors were logging on. Alas, this graphic does not seem to be dowloadable; but here is the breakdown for Froogville for the last couple of days in table form.

12
Unknown

4
London
England
United Kingdom

3
Franklin
Tennessee
United States

2
Wichita
Kansas
United States

2
Los Angeles
California
United States

2
Boston
Massachusetts
United States

2
Ocala
Florida
United States

2
Brooklyn
New York
United States

1
Littleton
Colorado
United States

1
Seoul
Kyonggi-do
Korea, Republic Of

1
Dallas
Texas
United States

1
Victoria
British Columbia
Canada

1
Beijing
Beijing
China

1
Malacca
Melaka
Malaysia

1
Claremont
California
United States

1
Santa Rosa
California
United States

1
State College
Pennsylvania
United States

1
Pierrefonds
Quebec
Canada

1
Nanaimo
British Columbia
Canada

1
Manila
Manila
Philippines

1
Lenexa
Kansas
United States

1
Salt Lake City
Utah
United States

1
Labelle
Florida
United States

1
Vienna
Wien
Austria

1
Lakeview
Arkansas
United States

1
Bronx
New York
United States

1
Villa Park
Illinois
United States

1
Dorval
Quebec
Canada

1
Dubai
Dubai
United Arab Emirates

1
Syracuse
New York
United States

1
Palo Cedro
California
United States

1
San Francisco
California
United States

1
Brick
New Jersey
United States

1
Henan
Guizhou
China

1
Galway
Galway
Ireland

I know about my clusters of followers - mostly old friends - in the UK (mainly London, Oxford, Edinburgh), and in the north-east United States (worryingly absent so far this week!). But Manila, Malacca, Galway, Oslo, Manila..... and all those other places in unfamiliar parts of North America!! I've got one in Nigeria as well, who drops off this list because his or her location is non-city-specific. Who do I know in any of these places?? Who knows me from there?? Please, stop lurking and say hello!

The list for The Barstool is almost identical (loyal readers following both blogs - I do like to see that!), except for the addition of Mexico City, Riyadh, and St John's (Newfoundland). I never would have guessed I could attract such a diverse and cosmopolitan following.

Please, please, if you are from one of these exotic places, do leave a comment to introduce yourself the next time you drop by.

A time of transition haiku

After cold, dark days
Finally the warmth returns.
Heart also blossoms.


No, this is not optimism, but a reasonable counterfeit thereof.

I remind you that, if you fancy playing with the 5-7-5 form yourself, there is a comment thread just for you.

Actually, I have been thinking about having a competition........ I shall think some more.

The not quite Daily Llama

Did I sound a bit ranty in that last post? Did you envisage me looking like this?

Sorry. That whole concussed-bee, arse-elbow confusion thing about China just gets the better of me a little sometimes. All happy again now. Calm, calm, calm.

Just don't let anyone ever tell you llamas are 'cuddly'. "Cuddle that, and you'll never play the guitar again."

More exasperation with Chinese employers

So..... I'm supposed to be giving a presentation for a UK education company in one of Beijing's more remote universities. The event is being "organized" or "co-ordinated" (the inverted commas are entirely justified here, as you will see) by a Chinese educational publisher.

As is typical for this kind of gig, the administrator at the UK organization gave me contact details for the person in charge at the publishers and told me they would ring me to confirm the details. They didn't. Surprise, surprise. No big deal. Yesterday morning, I tried to contact them - sent an SMS asking them to confirm start time, address, when and where we should meet prior to the presentation. I had been given only a Chinese name for this contact. When someone called me back, they gave me only an English name. They didn't explain who they were or why they were calling (no surprise there!). Then I got another call from a different person - again no explanation of who they were, or what their relationship was to the person I'd previously spoken to. One girl, one guy. I really have no idea what's going on.

Anyway, the girl is the person whose contact details I have been given, so I call her back to try to firm up the arrangements. There is a problem. The start time has been moved back an hour (or I'd been misinformed about it in the first place; the Chinese administrator at the UK company has quite a flair for uselessness on occasion as well; we had been talking about these arrangements only 24 hours previously, and I had mentioned several times my anxiety about getting away by mid-afternoon because I was due to be lecturing in another university - way, way, way over on the other side of town, some 20 miles or so away - a couple of hours later; but she hadn't noticed or bothered to correct my expectation of the timetable, which I'd stated to her about three or four times). Annoying - but not disastrous. I could still make it to my early evening lectures across town: it's just that it might be a bit of an unpleasant rush, and I probably wouldn't have any time to stop and grab some food along the way. I did ask if they could bring the start time forward a little, perhaps to 2pm. No. Oh well.

The girl I've spoken to (shrill, over-excitable, doesn't speak very good English - pretty much par for the course for an educational publisher specialising in English teaching books!) has promised to send me the university's address in Chinese via SMS (again, an utterly standard, absolutely vital aid to ensuring that your presenter can find the venue and arrive in plenty of time). She failed to do so. I sent her a reminder. Still no reply. I try to phone her before I get in a cab. She's not answering her phone. I try repeatedly over the next half-hour that I'm in the cab, but she's not answering her phone. Although reluctant to disturb her (because she's told me that she is delivering a presentation herself at lunchtime on this day - although that turns out not to have been true), I try to contact the UK administrator by phone call and SMS: no reply from her either. Eventually, the publisher girl calls me, but she's pretty incoherent (in Chinese as well, apparently - not much help to my taxi driver). By this stage, anyway, we are literally within sight of the target university - but unfortunately we have missed the exit off the ringroad we should have taken, and end up having to do a big loop back that takes us several miles further than we needed to. Despite all this anxiety (and a not-terribly-smart cab driver: he had an old registration number, but admitted to being unfamiliar with this part of town), I make it to our rendezvous point with one-and-half minutes to spare. I am so relieved. And quietly proud. Punctuality is important to me. Luckily, I had known the location of the university (I used to teach there a couple of years back); it was just that I hadn't known the roads well enough - and didn' t have good enough Chinese - to tell the taxi driver exactly how to get there.

Well, 5 minutes or so prior to my arrival, I've received a phone call from the mysterious publishing house guy. He tells me that he's already at the rendezvous point - the university's south gate - and is waiting for me. That's reassuring. Except of course, that when I arrive - he's not there. I try phoning him. He doesn't answer. I try phoning the shrill, rambling girl. She doesn't answer. I try phoning him again, several more times. He still doesn't answer. Several minutes pass. I'm getting anxious. I'm getting paranoid. When I first spoke to the shrill girl that morning the English name she had used for the university had been different from the one I'd originally been given (similar, but different; a somewhat bizarre departure, given that the university in question has an official English name which appears on its logo, its crest, etc.; it's hard to see how this girl could both be unaware of this official name and so creatively mistranslate the Chinese name for herself, but......). I began to wonder if I'd come to entirely the wrong place, if there weren't another university with a similar name in quite another part of town. Despite having attempted to confirm the real English name of the university in question with the shrill girl, and having confirmed the approximate location, and (later) having had her give directions to the taxi driver about the address and how to get there in Chinese, it did still seem all too horribly possible that in fact there were two universities and I was at the wrong one.

Then the shrill girl calls me: "Where are you?"

Me: "I'm at the south gate. Where we agreed to meet. Where your male colleague just told me that he was already waiting for me. But he's not here."

Shrill girl: "Why are you at the south gate? We are at the west gate."

Well, you know, because I've now had, like, 3 phone calls each with you and your disappearing colleague, in every one of which we had both agreed to meet at the SOUTH gate. I even have it confirmed in a text message still stored on my phone. And The Invisible One just called me 10 or 12 minutes ago to volunteer the information that he was waiting for me at the south gate (which was evidently a complete LIE; and no, it wasn't just that he can't tell 'west' from 'south' in English - he hadn't been at the west gate either; and this university only has the two gates).

I was moderately fuming about the whole business by now. But, at least it was a nice day. And we still had a little time in hand before the scheduled start of the presentation (though, of course, it kicked off 15 minutes late, and then overran by 15 minutes - because of a horribly protracted textbook raffle the shrill girl suddenly sprang on me after I'd finished - which left me with a mad scramble to get to my other university teaching gig in time). I was - amazingly - able to relax, and see the funny side.

I think I am more wound up about it in retrospect. It is so representative of everything I find exasperating about trying to work in this country.

There's incompetence. There's Chinese incompetence. And then there's Chinese incompetence in the education sector - which is just a whole order of magnitude beyond anything you could possibly imagine.

STOP interfering with the Internet!

Free PR advice for the Chinese leadership

I touched on this in my most recent post about my Internet censorship woes, but I feel it bears repeating.

Trying to restrict people's access to information over the Internet is a very bad idea.

1) It's futile. The hackers and other net-savvy dudes are almost always way ahead of the censorship technology; and even Luddite technophobes like me can find any number of new proxies to try. Even the most sophisticated 'block' is going to be defeated within days, if not hours. Very, very few people will actually be prevented or dissuaded from accessing information by these sorts of actions.

2) It attracts attention. Many people who might not otherwise have had much interest in, say, just for the sake of example, the recent events in Tibet, might find their curiosity suddenly aroused by the interference with their Internet access and go in search of the 'forbidden' information which has prompted it.

3) It makes people fear the worst. If you allow continuous media access to a story, public interest in it soon fades (however important the story, however powerful the images accompanying it, however far-reaching the issues involved). If you allow some media access, then cut it off, then allow some again - people wonder what you've been trying to hide during the 'blackout'. If you maintain a consistent censorship regime on the Internet, people become used to it, stop noticing it. If you are constantly changing the the level of censorship, people wonder WHY. And they are going to imagine that the reason might be something very, very bad indeed.

4) It pisses people off. The Internet has become one of the central conveniences of modern life for most of us: a vital component in our social lives as well as our main source of information and entertainment. If you start messing with that, you make people very angry very quickly. A lot of people these days can easily reconcile themselves to the fact that the government might be reading their e-mails, that they have restricted rights of public assembly, that there are certain 'keywords' it might be wise to refrain from using in their blogs or e-mails...... but take away their YouTube and you create instant revolutionaries.

Please, please, please - stop censoring the bloody Internet!

Or, if you must do it, at least be CONSISTENT about it.

More vexation

I was handed a one-off editing job at the end of last week - proofing a new EFL textbook for a Chinese educational publisher.

It was handed to me by one of my contacts at the recording studio where I work most regularly. She is a nice enough woman, but the most hopelessly disorganized person I've met out here (and, god knows, I've met a fair few of those), and I long ago dubbed her 'Headless' M***.

She said it was a bit of a rush job, so I promised to try and get it done over the weekend (probably at least 4 or 5 hours' work, not particularly good pay), and return it to her when I was next back at the studio for some voicework on Tuesday afternoon.

Late on Tuesday morning, just as I had set out for the studio, she called me to let me know that she'd given me the wrong text. Not much by way of apology or explanation. No chance of any additional fee to compensate me for the fact that I might have just done several hours' work in vain.

As it happens, I was ill and sleeping badly (and, yes, staying out much too late) over the weekend, and didn't get down to it. I'd only just begun to make a start on the job on Monday evening, and was intending to defer delivery until today or tomorrow (I'd been told I could have until Friday). Sometimes procrastination is a good thing.

I am tempted to just sit on the new text for a few days, just in case The Headless One belatedly discovers she's made a mistake again.

The Daily Llama

Honestly, I have thought very seriously about starting up another Blogspot blog called The Daily Llama - so that you could all enjoy cute pictures of these impressive animals every day..... and, if you were so minded, you could use the site as a forum for discussing the political situation in the western areas of "China" (something I have been wary of doing too openly on here, for fear of bringing the censors - or the visa office! - down on my neck again), and perhaps even express your support - or otherwise - for the Daily Llama himself.

My thanks to my old friend Snopes for suggesting this punning circumvention of our censorship woes on the Possible Band Names thread the other day (other suggestions on this theme have included Delhi Lamarr and Dolly Lemur).

Alas, I fear I really don't have the time or the energy to try to post a new "llama" picture every day.

And guess what?? The Kafka Boys are alert to the subversive potential of the llama (you just can't be too careful about dyslexic "splittists"!!) and are putting a block on Google image searches for the innocent creature. Really. How petty can you get?!

Well, this is China. They can get very petty indeed.

Last call for band names

A quiet month it has been over on the 'Possible Band Names' thread, but last month's star performers, Snopes and Gary, have belatedly weighed in with some more very fine suggestions. The top contenders include Dane Breath, Queen Kong, The Hip-Hop Replacements (geriatric rap group?), Candy Rabbit and Cutting Room Floor.

Think you can do better? Give it a go.

Since my 'months' on this competition seem to have been running over a week or so into the following month, I will give you until noon this Friday (I work on GMT, remember. Well, now, I suppose, it's British Summer Time: one hour later. I'm English - indulge me!) to post your entries.

Remember, there are supplementary competitions for 'Best Foreign Band Name' and 'Best Cover Band Name', for which you can also leave entries on the same thread.

Happy band naming!

Don't use Chinglish

And another thing! (Supplementary free PR advice for the Chinese leadership)

What is with this "splittist" nonsense?

It sounds like some kind of vaudeville novelty performer, an acrobat who specialises in repeatedly doing the splits.

No, it just sounds like a 5-year-old's first fumbling attempts at word formation.

Guys, you can call them whatever the hell you like in Chinese, but when you're addressing an English-speaking audience in English...... then you should use English, not Chinglish.

You can't just invent words like that. Especially not words that sound so..... well, silly.

And there is a perfectly good word in the English language already. The word is 'separatist'. Use it.

Bad cop, worse cop

More free PR advice for the Chinese leadership

I was really saddened to see Wen Jiabao being trotted out to do the denouncing of the D*l*i L*m* the other week. It doesn't do much to help the situation, and I fear it will tend to tarnish Wen's reputation for many overseas observers.

Sure, he's the guy who gives most of the high-level briefings to the foreign media - perhaps one of the few, if not the only one, of the current top leaders here who are smart enough and relaxed enough to deal with foreign journalists convincingly and respond to impromptu questions. And I think he is perceived, both inside and outside China, as a politician with a human face, affable and sincere (although, of course, this might just be a terribly good act)..... whereas poor old Hu always looks as if he's got a steel rod up his arse. And it makes sense to keep Hu out of the limelight right now, since it would probably not be helpful to have too many reminders of his record in relation to Tibet (he was the Party Chief there during the last major outbreak of protests in 1989; and it was his tough crackdown on that unrest - alleged to have resulted in some hundreds of deaths - that helped to propel him into the Politburo shortly afterwards).

However, it is disappointing to see Wen having to parrot the party line about "the D*l*i clique" and "evil splittists". This might have been an opportunity for Wen to make use of his more moderate and genial image to soften the presentation of the Chinese government's line to the outside world. It would surely have been possible, without necessarily contradicting or disowning the 'official version', to tone down the language used, to spin the message a little differently. I would like to see this whole "D*l*i clique" nonsense dropped from the foreign press briefings for a while. And if it has to be addressed, or is brought up in questions, would it be so unthinkable to shift to formulas like "We suspect people close to the D*l*i may have been involved in directing some of the violence" or "We believe the D*l*i and his advisers can and should be doing more to restrain the violence"? Surely not.

I can't help but wonder if Wen is being set up as a fall guy on this. Although the collaboration between himself and Hu Jintao is generally seen as being very close and 'harmonious' (they both began their political careers around the same time in Gansu Province, and both obtained advancement through the support of the same powerful mentors, Song Ping and Hu Yaobang), Wen does seem to be much less of a hardliner on many issues; and there is a curious see-sawing in the amount of media coverage each receives, which might possibly suggest some kind of ideological tension - if not exactly a "power struggle" - between them.

In summary, I would propose dropping the 'demonize the D*l*i' approach altogether. If that is too radical a move, it should at least be possible to tone down the language of that message so that it seems less hysterical and buffoonish to an overseas audience. And you certainly shouldn't compromise the standing of the only one of your leaders who enjoys a really positive reputation overseas by making him the mouthpiece for these extreme and unpalatable statements.

This week's bon mot

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought."

Basho (1644-1694)

I just wish they'd make their f***ing minds up!

(A cross-post from The Barstool.)

As of yesterday, Blogspot was blocked again in China. Blocked, that is, to the 'second level'.

Blogspot is almost always blocked at its regular IP address. However, most of us foreigners are usually able to access it easily enough via an alternate IP address we've plugged into our Firefox browser. At the 'second level' of censorship arsiness, that gets blocked too.

The 'third level' is blocking even via robust proxy services like Anonymouse. We had that for a while a couple of weeks ago; but mercifully, the Kafka Boys aren't quite that pissed off with us at the moment.

I imagine blocking a multi-server proxy like that must be quite a complex undertaking. So, sometimes the chaps down at Kafka Central will just skip straight to the next level - which appears to be blocking the Net access of individual computers (an IT boffin I know didn't think this was possible, or at least had never heard of it being done - but I've now encountered two other foreigners who suffered from this, as I did, the other week).

The 'fifth level' - one step more extreme than that, but rather easier to implement - would be cutting off your home Internet connection entirely. (Although I suppose these days most people are using wi-fi a lot of the time; that would explain the appeal of blocking computers rather than connections. Maybe blocking a specific computer should actually be regarded as a higher level of obstructiveness.)

And the 'sixth level' would be being taken into custody. I would imagine that only native 'dissidents' would be in danger of that. We irreverent, super-critical laowai will simply be told - if we make one unsuitable joke too many - that our visas or our tax records are out of order, and be asked to leave the country at a few hours' notice.

This constant on/off/on censorship is very wearisome. I am having big problems getting Tor or Hotspot or (new candidate for top proxy gizmo, just recommended to me by a friend) FoxyProxy to work for me (my computer is old and slow, the wiring into my building is old and slow, the Chinese Internet architecture in general is pretty bloody slow, and with all of the extra filtering going on at the moment - well, the whole bloody thing is grinding to a halt). Thus, I am having to rely on web-based proxies, and these can be rather cumbersome in some ways. I am vexed. Mighty vexed.

But I think I'd be a lot less vexed if I knew that this was going to be the situation from here on and I could steel myself to embrace these irksome adaptations to my online life as permanent. The chopping and changing of the censorship regime every few days adds salt to the wounds, even when it's a change for the better.

This endless vacillating makes the Chinese government look even more buffoonish (buffoonish and goonish - not a good combination!) than usual. It makes it look as if they just can't decide what to block and why. It makes it look as if consistency in policy is quite beyond them. It makes it look (and I suspect there is some truth in this) as though the Internet censorship apparatus is so intricate that they're not really fully in control of it ("Ooops, what does this switch do?").

Also, of course, it fuels panicky speculation about the ongoing civil unrest. "They're tightening up on the Net censorship again! Did something really bad just happen out west??"

Trying to censor the Internet like this is just a really, really, really dumbass thing to do. But this is China. The country is run by a bunch of insecure assclowns.

A feeling poorly again haiku

Rasping throat, hoarse voice,
Headache, cough, and runny eyes -
The air in Beijing!

Meanwhile, over on the Barstool I have just instituted a 'What's your porn star name?' diversion. I failed to mention it at the time, but that was Post No. 600 on my 'other' blog. That calls for a drink!

Favourite posts from the 4th quarter of 2007

Pick of the Archive:
Favourite Posts, October-December 2007


1) Mooncakes are SHITE - 2nd October

The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival prompts a brief rant about one of the country's least appealing 'special foods'.

2) Hush - 5th October

Enjoying the sounds of the rain in Beijing....

3) Reading the traffic - 7th October

I compare the hazards of jogging in China to the fiendish difficulty of the Monaco Grand Prix simulation I've been failing to master on my Playstation.

4) Fighting the good fight, Chinglish-style - 16th October

A particularly funny propaganda banner that appeared in the Sanlitun bar district shortly after a notoriously ham-fisted 'crackdown' on drug dealers there.

5) A teaching dream - 17th October

I suffer a rare anxiety dream - in which all of my students are seduced away from me by the rival teacher in the classroom next door (who just happens to be England's funniest [deceased] comedian). There's an additional punchline here.

6) Another thwarted romance haiku - 19th October

Another haiku on my non-event of an infatuation with the perpetually inaccessible Madame X.

7) Return of The Anti-30 League - 20th October

My birthday prompts the revival of a militant post-University campaign for obstinate age-denial.

8) Today's hilarity in the studio - 23rd October

My recording job throws up a couple of especially risible Chinglish moments. This one is possibly even better.

9) Why we love the Internet - 24th October

Because of silliness like 'the Hitler cat', that's why.

10) The Chinese DO have a sense of humour - 1st November

A link to one of the sharpest pieces of Chinese satire I have encountered (on the sorry state of journalism in this country).

11) Things that are SHITE - Employers - 2nd November

My new occasional series on things that really get my goat continues with this diatribe against the UK head office of my principal employer for the stupendous thoughtlessness of their timing of the quarterly 'company meeting'.

12) Important announcement - safety regulations for Chinese air travel - 3rd November

Another stunningly inventive piece of Chinglish prompts reflections on airport security and on the vileness of electronic dictionaries.

13) Great moments in cinema history - 4th November

My life as a cinema-goer: the 10 key moments.

14) Dangerous freedom - 8th November

The prospect of spending a day entirely alone in the office prompts some crazy and mischievous thoughts.

15) Chinese people LOVE me! (3) - 12th November

In which I admit to my lack-of-weakness for Chinese girls.... (a topic later covered in more detail here).

16) No. 038871 - 26th November

Superstitions about the significance of Beijing taxi driver registration numbers - and the birth of a competition to find the city's longest-serving cabbie.

17) My brilliant website ideas - 29th November

More japery, based around my occasional brainwaves for making money on the Internet.

18) Jobs I nearly had - 1st December

December's 'List of the Month' - pretty self-explanatory title!

19) A haunting image - 2nd December

A favourite piece of 'found humour', from a visit to New York a decade ago.

20) A different kind of haunting - 2nd December

Another of my 'list' poems, another of my poems about lost love - you know the drill.

24) Chinese people LOVE me! (9) - 4th December

A "little bit of politics", as I rail against the 'One China' Policy.

25) My fantasy girlfriend - Rhapsody Angel - 8th December

Confessing my childhood infatuation..... with a fibreglass puppet.

26) In praise of cautious fear - 10th December

A surprisingly popular 'bon mot of the the week' - perhaps because it was so evidently a commentary on my continuing inactivity with regard to Madame X.

27) His Left Foot - 10th December

Recollections of the great footballer, Kevin Sheedy (one of the greatest players I ever saw play in the flesh), including a clip of one of his best-known goals.

28) Messy break-ups - 14th December

My brutally abrupt sacking initiates some melancholy philosophizing on the similarities between jobs and girlfriends.

29) The 'Evil Bastard Employers' - a case study - 15th December

A very long post, but an important one: a list of grievances against my first employer in China illustrates many of the problems for foreigners in working or doing business here.

30) A new poem - 18th December

Quite a promising one, I think - again it is about my dismal lack of progress with X, my only topic at the moment.

31) I am a Penguin - 20th December

Christmas is the time for daft 'personality profiling' quizzes!

32) Addiction - 22nd December

I 'fess up to my sorry dependence on a citrus-y sweet called Hi-Chew.

33) Chinese people LOVE me! (12) - 22nd December

Another embarrassing revelation: I frequently sing when walking home late at night through the hutongs.

34) Token schmaltzy moment - 24th December

A link to a feelgood story I found on another website (and some compensatory curmudging from myself).

35) Music & Lyrics - 26th December

My rather good Christmas Day was capped with a viewing of this extremely charming film on DVD (a present from my buddy, The Chairman - who was particularly impressed with Hugh Grant in it).

36) An illustrated haiku for the year's end - 28th December

In praise of 'instant noodles' (though with an admixture of personal shame as well).

37) 421!! - 29th December

The days following Christmas in Beijing were marked by obscene peaks in the Air Pollution Index. (It is particularly nice - by contrast - when the sky clears up again, though.)

38) The Year-End Roundup - 10 Favourite Moments Of 2007 - 30th December

Not such a bad a year, after all......

A Small Plug (=Commercial Notice)

My friend Sarah, The Life Coach, is going back to the UK to see her family in May, and will put on one of her "sort your life out, find a job you'd be happier in" seminars while she's there.

I'd be very tempted to go myself (god knows I need the help!) if I were in the country then. It's going to be a great weekend retreat in a lovely traditional inn (thatched roof and all) called the Royal Oak, in the Exmoor village of Winsford (ah, twinge of nostalgia - I regularly used to go there during my summer holidays as a kid). Do check out this link, and pass it on to anyone you know who you think might be interested.

Belated St Patrick's Day greetings

Interest in The Barstool seems to have been scant over the past couple of weeks. I daresay this has been partly due to the censorship problems we've been enduring here in China - but, hey, things are relatively open again now, so you can't use that excuse any more.

To celebrate the restoration of YouTube the other day (a guy in this Website Design class I'm teaching at the moment told me he knew of a proxy server that gave you access to YouTube even during the recent very tight lockdown; I'm sceptical, but I'm going to get the details next time I see him), I put up some links on my sister site to great Irish drinking songs - the highlight of which is an early TV appearance by The Clancy Brothers, one of the great Irish folk bands and largely credited with the popularizing of traditional Irish music overseas, particularly in the States. Go take a look.

Bbbbrrrrrr........

This always seems to happen in Beijing.

It is as if Dame Nature loves to thumb her nose at our Communist government and its nationally imposed timetable for the provision of winter central-heating.

In November, just around the time all our heaters come on, after enduring a mostly arse-freezing October, we invariably get a late-season burst of warmish weather again - making our first week or so of central-heating uncomfortably balmy indoors.

The even less welcome corollary is that when in mid-March the heating goes off again, our always somewhat half-hearted and tentative Spring weather abruptly disappears for a while. The 'magic date' for cutting the heat is supposed to be March 15th (the official commencement date being November 15th), although there is some local variation of a day or two; and it generally takes at least a few days for the water to drain from the system in a large building like mine, and the pipes retain a vestige of heat for a while. Then, around the 18th or the 20th, we get our arses frozen for a spell again.

Since Sunday evening, the temperature has dropped by 10 or 15 degrees Fahrenheit, with the nighttime lows down around freezing again for the first time in three weeks, and the daytime highs barely limping into the 50s (and nippy windchill, to boot). On Friday, we are predicted to suffer a nighttime low well below freezing - the blossoming trees aren't going to like that.

A week ago, I was struggling to sleep because I was too warm at night, considering retiring my duvet for the next 6 months. The last few days, I have been forced to wear a sweatshirt at night for extra warmth, and to pad around in tracksuit bottoms during the day.

I know, I shouldn't really complain. Everything from just north of the Yangtze on downwards gets no central-heating at all. And those guys got snow this year!

Don't hide behind vaguenesses

Yet more free PR advice for the Chinese leadership

It seems to be something of a problem of the Chinese language that it is tremendously woolly. Perhaps it's a failing of their philosophical tradition too: they never had a Socrates, so definitional analysis never really seems to have taken off here. I don't really know enough of linguistics to claim an authoritative opinion on this, but I suspect that there are so many deficits in the language (paucity of vocabulary, difficulty of new word formation, no tense formation as such, few if any modals, limited use of relative clauses, no articles at all, absence of clear distinctions between nouns and verbs), that precision of the kind we take for granted in English just isn't possible in Chinese.

Making all due allowance for the idiosyncracies and shortcomings of the language, though, I still say Chinese politicians and media tend to rely far too heavily on clichéd phrases that are so nebulous as to be almost completely meaningless. It seems to be a key technique of Chinese rhetoric. And - at least when addressing an overseas audience - it needs to be ruthlessly weeded out. It sounds, at best, tedious and pompous; at worst, evasive, or just plain ludicrous.

I came across a particularly baffling example in one of my recent editing jobs: "the Chinese Confucian circle". Any idea what that's supposed to be? Me neither! Evidently it is becoming a recognised term of art in certain academic circles in China, but its meaning is not readily apparent to anyone else. Is it a club or society to promote Confucian values? Is it a cabal of Confucian scholars? No, it appears to mean "those East Asian countries which share a tradition of Confucian thought with China". So, that would be Korea, then (North and South)? And perhaps (rather more tenuously?) Japan. And you might think that the word "Chinese" could usefully be omitted from the formula as redundant or misleading - since everyone knows Confucius was Chinese, but here we're not talking about Confucianism in China.

The other one that's been appearing everywhere in the local media over the past fortnight is, of course, "the D*l*i clique" (or sometimes, to give us just a little variety, "the D*l*i coterie").

Occasionally, the D*l*i will be vilified directly, but more often of late it seems the Chinese leadership and media are attacking him via this formula. The insinuation that the D*l*i is masterminding the recent troubles is still clear enough, but..... they're trying to give themselves a shred of deniability about that? "Ah, we didn't actually say it was the D*l*i himself."

Well, what exactly did you say? Nothing. Who are the members of this clique? What is their relationship to the D*l*i? Are they part of his intimate circle, or people who only know him at a distance? Do they treat him merely as a figurehead and an inspiration, or do they take instructions from him?

This is just the usual asinine mud-slinging with an overlay of pointless obfuscation. Stop it!

Un-banned!

In only my second or third full week of teaching here in China, I got one of my first tastes of "the Chinese way of doing things" in educational institutions (i.e. complete cock-up).

I had been looking forward to a morning off, because both of my classes were supposed to be attending some kind of "opening ceremony" to mark the beginning of the new academic year. I had only found this out by chance (an overheard conversation in the faculty office); nobody would ever tell you about this kind of thing in a Chinese school or University!

At this stage of my career here, I was still trying to be nice and accommodating and.... all those things I've now rather given up on. So, I double-checked. I went to the faculty office the day before and asked the director's secretary if I had classes the next day. "Oh, no. Your classes are cancelled. The students will go to the opening ceremony."

I treble-checked. "Well, thank you, Angela. But would you mind asking the director for me now, just to be absolutely sure. It seems that most of my colleagues have classes as normal, so I wonder why only my classes are cancelled." Yep, the boss confirmed it - no classes for me on Thursday. Whoopee!

I quadruple-checked. I was in the faculty office early the next morning doing some printing, and bumped into my teaching assistant. "So, no classes for me today, Diana?" "No, class is cancelled."

An hour or so later, I was heading out into the city to enjoy my unexpected day of freedom..... when I bumped into one of my British teaching colleagues. He said, "Diana is looking for you. She says your class has been 'uncancelled'."

We both laughed.

Then I said, "You ain't seen me, right?" and left on my walk.

Ah, those far-off days of innocence!

I did rather enjoy that wonderful non-word: a rare instance of Chinglish being usefully inventive - 'uncancelled'.

And hence, that anecdote was all preamble to announcing that my blog is now unbanned again.

I think, in fact, it was only 'down' for a day or two - but once you've taken to using proxies to evade a block, you don't easily find out when the block is lifted again. I imagine it was probably an automatic sanction, perhaps imposed because I had injudiciously linked to a couple of China-based blog sites that had been blocked already.

Even better news - YouTube is also back!! Heck, the Chinese Internet seems to be pretty much back to 'normal'.

Does that mean the Tibetan crisis is blowing over? Or does it mean that the Chinese leadership has started taking my advice??

No, it's probably just that the hopeless assclowns can't make up their minds.

Albert, again

"Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which the problems were created."

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

How true! And particularly appropriate to the present situation in China!

We are all Simpsons now

Many have asked...... "What does the Froog look like?"

Now, at last, it can be revealed - via the technological marvel of The Simpsonizer.

Of course, the device has its limitations. Everyone starts off with piggy eyes, a button nose, and impossibly low-set ears; and although you can ameliorate these oddities - and the inevitable goofy overbite, of course - the range of customizations available is really pretty small (and some of them don't work at all: you're supposed to be able to use a slider control to vary hair and clothes colour, but....).

This, I think, is not too bad a likeness. At least, it captures my fondness for dark clothes (a dark blue Hugo Boss shirt and black Levi's are my trademark 'look'). I have no idea, though, why it gave me a black thatch; my hair is really quite a light brown. This 'yellow' version of me (working from the same original photograph) is a little closer to the right hair colour, but I couldn't get rid of the tousled style - that's not me.

And just to get really freaky on you, here is me as a chick. You know how I love to stay in touch with "my feminine side"!

Thanks to Leah for alerting us all to this wonderful timewaster!

Don't diss the D*l*i

More free PR advice for the Chinese leadership

If your antagonist has way more moral authority than you, try to close the gap a little by mirroring (and acknowledging) his dignity and restraint. Don't just resort to that tired old mud-slinging tactic to try to lower his standing.

The D*l*i L*m* may not be quite so spotlessly saintly as he is generally perceived outside of China, but he's certainly not the cackling comic-book villain the government here tries to portray him as.

The Chinese have repeatedly asserted that the D*l*i was pulling the strings of all the recent disturbances, and that they have evidence of this. They haven't produced any evidence. It seems inconceivable that there could be any hard evidence of this kind of activity, at least so soon after the events. I read somewhere that the D*l*i has challenged the Chinese government to send a team of investigators to the seat of his government-in-exile to try to find evidence to support this accusation (he's so much better at PR than they are!).

You know what, Chinese leaders? Even if it were true, and even if you had the evidence, you should think very carefully about how to present those facts to the world's press. It might, after all, just be better to keep it to yourselves - because you have so little credibility (as a result of your lousy PR, and your years of mud-slinging) that people are just going to assume you have fabricated the 'evidence' as black propaganda. These kinds of accusations - even if well-founded - are never going to play well with an overseas audience, whose sympathies naturally lie more with the D*l*i than with you. And I mean everyone else in the world, not just 'the West'. Some of the Asia-Pacific countries more immediately within China's sphere of influence might be more supportive of your government, more sympathetic to the use of the force; but just about everyone outside of China has an overwhelmingly positive view of the D*l*i. It's going to be very, very hard for you ever to change that. And half-arsed attempts to do so by childish name-calling are only going to bolster his 'noble martyr' image, while further diminishing your - already negligible - moral stature.

As Will, the Imagethief, pointed out in an excellent post the other day, the Chinese leadership has been peddling this anti-D*l*i narrative to its own people for so long now that it finds itself locked into it. It could be that they value consistency in the abstract (but somehow I doubt that). It could be that they worry that the large foreign media presence in China today means that messages in the domestic media will be widely reported overseas, however much they try to put over a softer line in official briefings for the foreign press only. It could be that they are worried that a different message released to the foreign media is increasingly likely to find its way back into China, especially via the Internet, and thereby confuse the populace and, perhaps, start to undermine the decades of brainwashing they've been subjected to on this issue. Those would be not unreasonable concerns. But you know what - I think actually they just expect us to buy this crap. Because the Chinese people have bought it so readily for so long. Because they themselves have bought it.

And no, I am not going to make any apology for the use of the highly emotive word 'brainwashing' back there. Chinese state propaganda is so thoroughgoing in its methods and its effectiveness that there really is no other word so apposite.

By the by, you may notice that this hysterical China Daily op ed piece (also linked to above) ridicules the notion that T*bet*ns "revere" the D*l*i - yes, their quotation marks, not mine. Sigh.