Foreign Policy/AT Kearney 2008 Global cities index: where do Chinese cities stand?

This recently published ranking is supposedly measures overall globalization, taken as some kind of composite of business activity, human capital, information exchange, cultural experience, and political engagement. New York, London, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong were the top 5. Beijing made it at #12, and Shanghai at #20.

Shanghai’s highest ranked aspect was business activity, at #8， while in the other aspects it didn’t too well, which, at least by their standards, makes sense: Shanghai has attracted a certain creative class to it, both local and foreign, but it’s not like they really wield that much influence. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good creatives here, meaning painters and poets, ad industry people, filmmakers, musicians, etc. etc. but maybe in terms of GDP they aren’t amounting to much yet at least compared to New York, London, Chicago, LA, etc. Cultural experience has improved, with more festivals and biennales and international galleries opening up branches here. Rock stars don’t think it’s altogether that strange to insert a Shanghai or Beijing dates into their concert tours. But as far as cultural experience and political engagement, Shanghai is not going to do that well, for one, Beijing is going to wield more political clout for obvious reasons.

The next few pages present some different groupings. Open cities have a free press, open markets, easy access to info and tech, cultural opportunities: and of course you get NY, London, and Paris at the top there.

Lifestyle centers: where you enjoy life: Toronto and LA. As mentioned before, in terms of best cities to do business, Shanghai ranks 8th and Beijing 9th. A shout out to my bruthas in Taipei–you made it in the top 20 (#19). You guys could learn a thing or two from the communists about how to do business. Technorati Tags: london, beijing, politics, lifestyle, culture, business

Qin Hui interview from Southern Metropolis Weekly: social justice and the urban poor in China

These are some excerpts that I translated from the original article in Chinese.

人物周刊：现在有一个现象，就是在城郊结合部农村集体所有制的土地上，建起了很多村民建的房，一租30年，相当于商品房。许多城里人因为买不起城里的房子，会向那边流动，把外来务工者可以租住的农民房的价格又抬高了。

秦晖：对，这个是国际上贫民住房的一个非常重要的问题。实际上政府也没有驱赶穷人，但是贫民区住的人多，价格抬高，穷人住不起就都走掉了。这是市场经济带来的问题，我觉得还是要靠国家福利来解决。

NFZK: Recently there’s been a phenomenon of city people moving outwards towards the countryside, living in homes that were intended for migrant workers and peasants, raising the prices of real estate there.

Qin Hui: Yes, this is a very important international issue. It’s not that the governments are trying to drive out the poor, but when there are increasing numbers of people living in these areas, prices climb and poor people can no longer afford to live there. This is a problem that arises in a market economy, and I believe that only a social welfare system can address it.

人物周刊：您发出声音的主要对象是谁？是政府，还是大的利益集团比如房产商们？

秦晖：我的意见本质上就是约束政府权力，要政府承担责任，必须给这些进城的人解决住房。如果有能力就给他们盖廉租房，暂时没有能力至少不能撵他们走。

NFZK: Your opinions and analysis–for whose ears are they meant? Is it the government or special interest groups such as real estate developers?

Qin Hui: My opinions boil down to checks and balances on the power of the government, I want them to take the responsibility and solve the issue of housing for the urban poor and migrant workers. If they have the wherewithal, build some cheap housing, and if not, at least don’t try to drive them away.

人物周刊：作为一个城里人，您不害怕城市变得乱糟糟吗？

秦晖：当然害怕。但我们不能以这个为理由剥夺农民的权利。乱糟糟的状况，当然是要解决的，而且世界各国的贫民社区发展史已经表明，这方面有了很大进步，哈莱姆的治安就比以前好很多，它就在哥伦比亚大学旁边，八九十年代去哥大的中国学者住哈莱姆的大有人在，所以我不同意温铁军的一句话，“中国学者一到国外就都是周旋于上流社会，从来没有人去关心贫民窟。”另外他转了一圈发现贫民窟比较恐怖，所以得出的结论和南非白人政权是一样的：必须不准穷人在城里住……新农村建设如果按这个思路搞就和南非一样啊，南非搞的黑人家园就是这种制度：黑人可以在城里打工，但不要在城里安家，打工到三十几岁就该回去了。

NFZK: As a city dweller, are you afraid that the cities are going to become dangerous or experience a breakdown in social order:

Qin Hui: Of course I have those fears. But I don’t believe this is a good reason to deprive other people of their rights. This lack of order is of course something that we have to work on, and the history of slums in other countries indicates that progress can be made; consider Harlem, which is much better than before and is right next to Columbia University. The Chinese scholars that went to Columbia in the 1980s and 90s often set foot in Harlem, so I don’t agree with that Wen Tiejun said about “as soon as Chinese scholars go abroad, they only mingle with the upper crust and never care about what happens in the slums.” On the other hand, he went out to the slums and thought they were scary, and so reached a conclusion similar to that of the South African apartheid government: we can’t let poor people live in the cities…the new construction and development in the village, if it goes down that track, will end up being just like South Africa of that era, when you had Bantustans: the blacks could enter the city to work, but not live there, and after working until their 30s were told to go back to their homes.

人物周刊：这里要打个问号，他们真的好起来了吗？原来在村里一年挣几百块，进了城打工一个月就有500块，“比在老家强多了”。其实很多人在城里谋生，心里是有创伤的，但他怀着希望，要往上游走，因为整个大环境都把这个价值判断塞给他：城里一定是比农村好的。

秦晖：对，你的问号我很赞同。但这里有两个层次的问题：第一，我们所谓的好与不好以什么人的感受为依据？只能以他的感受为依据。只要这个人是健康的、没丧失理智的，那么他就是具有判断力的，这个健康不是指文化上的，若说由于文化素质差而不懂什么是好，这样讲就太不人道了，等于剥夺了穷人的选择权。

第二个层次是，他做出某种价值判断实际上隐含有某种被迫的成分，但是这种成分他没有说出来。比如有人说他进城了，尽管生活很糟糕，一大堆人挤大通铺，妻子儿女留在老家，没有家庭生活，但还是觉得好，起码比原来在农村受苦要好——他实际上有一个预期，虽然这个预期可能是虚幻的，是达不到的。

这时候有两个选择：一是因为认定他的预期是达不到的，就干脆取消他的预期，把他赶走；二是我们来分析为什么他的预期达不到。

一种可能是预期太高：他要当总统、要当大富翁，这是做不到的；另一种可能是在城里不存在公平竞争，哪怕蓝领行业的公平竞争都没有，很多行业他们是不被准入的，那就不能说他这个预期是不合理的；第三种连预期都谈不上，而是本来完全可以做到的、顺其自然的事情，由于人为的阻隔，无法实现。

比如，有些人在城里处在类似打黑工的状态，只能住工棚，没有正常的家庭生活，但他觉得挣点钱寄回家去盖房子也是好的——其实很多进城打工的人没有在城里常住的预期，他们所谓的希望就是35岁以前住工棚，35岁以后回家——如果我们想给他们指出某种希望，不是恰恰要维护他们有在贫民窟生活的权利吗？

NFZK: I think we have to raise a question here–are they really better off in the city? Before, in the villages, it would take them an entire year to earn a few hundred yuan, and now in the cities they can make 500 in a month, which is “much better than at home.” However, in some sense coming to the cities to work is quite damaging, because they come here with hopes of upward mobility, because the entire environment is feeding them these values: cities are naturally better than the countryside.

Qin Hui: Right, I agree with that. But this questions has two levels. Firstly, upon what basis do you judge what is good and bad? We can only rely on their subjective feelings. If a person is healthy and mentally stable, we can assume that they still have the ability to make such judgments, and by healthy I don’t mean educated or cultured, because if we are going to say that they don’t really understand things because they aren’t educated, well, that would just be too unfair and would be tantamount to depriving them of their right to choose.

On another level, if these value judgments are somehow based on things beyond their control, they do not always tell you so. For example, these workers come into the city, and even though their lives are difficult, with everyone crammed together, sleeping on the floor, their wives and children at home and therefore no semblance of family life, they still think it’s good, because at least it’s better than what they would have to endure at home–they actually have expectations, even though these expectations can be somewhat illusory and therefore cannot be reached.

At this point, they are confronted with two choices: one, because they are unable to meet their own expectations, they just forgo these expectations and the other is that we attempt to analyze why their expectations were not met.

One possibility is that their expectations were too high: they want to become president, they want to become rich, these are just impossible. The other possibility is that they are faced with unfair competition, because even some blue collar jobs aren’t level playing fields, in fact they are practically barred from various professions, in which case you cannot say that their expectations are not rational. The third possibility is that there was nothing inherently wrong with the level of their expectations, but because of human obstacles they are somehow unable to realize their goals.

For example, some of the people that come to the cities are working “underground”, so they can only stay in makeshift homes, and don’t have normal family lives, but they feel that remitting money home to build a house is something good–in fact, many of the migrant workers don’t harbor hopes of long-term residence in the city, they just think that before they are 35, they can live in those makeshift dorms and after they turn 35, go home–and if we really want to give them something to hope for, don’t we have to begin by safeguarding their rights in these slums?

人物周刊：户籍也好，违章建筑也好，这一道道的门槛其实是阻碍农村人向城市流动，虽然现在有几亿大军在流动。

秦晖：对啊，实质是剥夺贫民的权利。比如，违章建筑的概念实际上是非常任意的，如果非常明确地规定什么建筑是违章，什么是不违章，而且严格执行，那很可能把城里人也给赶走了。但城里人你是不可能把他赶走的，因为他有城市户口，哪怕他住在狗窝里也不能赶他走，所以这个制度就有了很大的弹性。可是，把外来务工者赶走的理由往往是私设摊点、私搭乱建，并不是说他没有城市户口。

NFZK: Whether it’s the hukou system or the illegal housing issue, these end up just being obstacles thrown up to prevent greater influx of migrant workers into the city, even though there are already hundreds of millions of these people on the move.

Qin Hui: Exactly, these are just ways of depriving poor people of their rights. For example, the illegal housing concept is somewhat arbitrary, if they had an unambiguous definition of what is legal and what is not, and upheld the letter of the law, they might end up kicking out a bunch of urban dwellers. But you can’t kick out the urban dwellers, because they have a city hukou, and even if they live in a dog house you wouldn’t be able to expel them from the city, and so you can see this system’s flexibility. However, one of the main reasons for expelling migrants are the private markets and stalls they set up, or the haphazard houses being thrown up, not because they don’t have a city hukou.

秦晖：前几年讨论民族主义的时候，有人说西方的民主很虚伪，比如看起来对黑人多好，其实白人心里还是很歧视黑人的。已故的何家栋先生就写了一篇文章，提出伪善和伪恶的概念。他说，对，其实西方很多白人心里是看不起黑人的，但行为上他们必须对黑人非常尊重，说这是虚伪也可以，但这种虚伪是一大进步；“文革” 时，很多人其实是很同情“牛鬼蛇神”的，心里并不认为他们是坏人，但必须表现出一种对他们的歧视甚至仇恨，上去踢两脚打两拳，否则就可能受到责难和迫害，这就很糟糕了。

我认为一个社会应该有伪善机制，因为人性总是不尽善的。荀子很早就说过“人性本恶，善者为也”，善都是装出来的，你可以说他是提出了伪善的概念，但如果社会有一种机制，让好人能做好事，坏人至少不做坏事，或被迫做一些好事，那当然是有积极意义的。应该避免一种机制，使人表现得比他心里想的更坏。

Qin Hui: A few years ago, some people were discussing democracy and saying that western democracies were in fact hypocritical, for example because it seems that they treat black people well but in fact white people still, in their hearts, look down on black people. As a consequence, people like He Jiadong wrote an essay about hypocritical values of good and bad, and said that even though many white people still look down on white people, they still had to treat black people with respect, and you can call that hypocritical if you want, but such hypocrisy is still a sign of progress: during the Cultural Revolution, many people believed in the “ox spirits and snake gods”, didn’t think they were bad people, but had to publicly express a form of hatred or discrimination towards them by kicking and punching them, for otherwise they would receive condemnation themselves, which is really terrible.

I believe that society ought to have a mechanism for producing or encouraging such “hypocritical” goodness, because human nature is not perfectly good. Xun Tze said that people are by nature evil, but can learn to act good, so you could say that he was the first to propose this concept of hypocritical good, but if society had a mechanism for such a thing, to let good people do good things and let bad people not do too much damage, or be forced to do some good things, this would still be a positive thing. What we should avoid is a system where there are more evil actions in actuality than exists in the heart.

china, urban, rural, poverty, hukou, justice, philosophy, housing, house, slums, history, Beijing, Qin Hui, professor

RedBox Art Guide for Shanghai and other cities: a pocket guide for the arty

I was at the Ke Center about a week ago for the opening of their new exhibit, and met the lovely Kat(therine) Don, director of RedBox Studio, who do graphic design and are also involved in the contemporary art scene in China. They made a bunch of these little colorful pocket-sized guides as a bit of a pet project. As you can see from some of the pictures above, the little foldable thing has a map on one side, addresses of some major art venues and galleries in the city, as well as some local and international events. It’s probably a bit more small and handy than having a magazine or guidebook, and perhaps more convenient than common digital forms of information, ie phones (Guanxi, smartphones), especially if you are an out of towner…and just want a simple thing you can slip into a pocket or purse.

I don’t mean to do promo for them. Just something that I noticed and thought was nifty.

art, redbox, guide, information, contemporary, shanghai, beijing, hongkong, scene, musuem, galleries, artists

Onion interactive maps doesn’t have Shanghai

…but it does have Beijing. I learned about this interactive map from Lifehacker (source of all good information in the universe), it’s kinda nifty, for example in the Beijing one the usual suspects are featured — the Bell and Drum Towers, Tiananmen Square, Lama Temple, CCTV building and tower, etc. There is basic information about each attraction, how much it costs, etc. But the overall loading is a bit too data intensive for our connections here in China. Would be nice to see Shanghai on the map, but then again it would be more nice to see some real fucking attractions that would be worth putting on maps in this city….

Could the Chinese rip off Bon Jovi to sell sneakers?

Sure, why the hell not. Like Frank Yi said they copied his way.

I mean the publicly listed Chinese fashion sportswear company, Xtep, whose recent commercials during the Olympics caught my attention because of the music used. The song is called “It’s My Way” and it doesn’t take a New Jersey-born fan of 1980s hair rock to know that the song is a rip off of Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life”…I don’t know who the singer of the song is, but you can tell that they are going for the same kind of vocal style as well.

The commercial features some of the hottest youth stars from Taiwan and Hong Kong, including Nicholas Tse, the Twins, Jolin Tsai, and Wilber Pan, most of whom I thoroughly detest. From what I can tell on the commercial, their shoes look like shite too, but nonetheless, they are still a fairly big player in the China sportswear market, where they are still behind Anta and the now household name of Li Ning. And apparently they are also part of the Carlyle Group’s portfolio, which given the affiliations behind that group make me incredibly cynical about the world and reinforce an outlook which could be summarized thus: some shit capitalists are out there making shitty derivative products, and yet there are some powerful and elitist capitalists out there making sure that the former succeed for their mutual benefit.

Here’s a vid of the commercial, this one meant for the Olympics in particular:

and here’s the whole song:

A couple of thoughts on that commercial: firstly, it always get my goad when Taiwan and Hong Kong stars shil for mainland based products, just because if you are famous and from those parts of nominally free China, I somehow feel you ought to shil for some better brand–I mean what does it say about you that these shoes cost 150-300 RMB? On the other hand, I know that they’d never be remotely considered for brands like Nike and Adidas, who go for the real top-flight athletes. In that sense, Xtep is smart because they go for the youth demographic, for the fashion sportswear market, sell the image, sell the lifestyle. It’s not and has not been about the specs of the shoes for a long time.

It’s also ironic because the commercials plays on those common Olympic tropes of “1.3 billion people’s dreams and hopes”, which nauseates me to no end, and again, makes me wonder why Taiwanese and HKese stars would go for that. Oh yeah, maybe they are proud of the Olympics, and maybe they are getting paid a fuckload of money. Oh well Peijin, hold your nose and look the other way.

Last thought on this is the Wilbur Pan’s role in the commercial, where he plays the role of a street basketball player—that cheesy layup at the end and his knife across the neck motion—it’s like he’s some bad-boy gangsta baller, but I bet he’s a weakling on the actual basketball court. I doubt he really plays in the streets of anywhere, not even Taipei, where, if you know where to go, there are some ballers wid skeels. Wilbur is basically a pretty boy that likes to appropriate the tropes of hip-hop and b-boy culture to sell his image, which he can then parlay into record sales and concerts, sportswear and soda commercials. There is no need for him to be anything other than what he is. It’s one unified image, and all he’s selling are the various products that help him realize his lifestyle, one which, provided you outfit yourself with the same shit, you can have too.

Unfortunately, that’s another aspect of greater Chinese pop culture that I detest too—and I know that there’s no point in crying about the commercialization of hip-hope or black culture, that’s been the status quo for years and it’s not going to change. It’s just that to me, it’s even more meaningless when it comes from Chinese people. I know pop culture has an easy, lowest common denominator type universality to it, but somehow there’s a very atavistic and inchoate impulse towards Chinese purity that I cannot quite explain. It’s not that everything has to be traditional, it’s more that I was hoping that one day even in the realm of popular culture and lowbrow consumerism, Chinese people might do something that at least strikes people as having one or more iotas of originality.
Li Ning vs. Nike and Adidas, Lenovo vs. Apple, Baidu vs. Google—the west has a head-start and a superior advantage. Mimicry is a form of flattery. I talk of inspiration and originality, while these Chinese brands are locked in a fierce to the death battle for every percentage point of market share they can get.

Not sure what to think from here. Maybe better solution would be to put on some Bon Jovi, which always reliable source of low dosage escapism:

Protesting in China, or the red tape Olympics

Chinaelections.org has an interesting essay on the rules pertaining to public assembly and protest in the PRC. This was written before the Games, and in light of all that (didn’t happen) during the Games, the information here might be worth reviewing to get a better legal and historical context for why commies love repression.

The author divides the legal conditions for protests into two categories: those that are protective and those that are restrictive. Although I think the categories make sense, I am not sure that I totally agree with how he divvied them up. For example, he considers article 21 of the Assembly and protest law to be protective. The article says, according to what he’s quoted, that when there are unforeseen circumstances the police responsible for regulating traffic with relation to the protest route can change the protest route—ideally that means that the routes aren’t changed at the whims of the police, but of course, this is China, and if you the protester wanted to take a route in front of Disneyland, where there are loads of people, or in front of the government offices, where there is a lot of symbolism and media, do you think the Chinese police would actually let you? Hell no. They would steer you into some street where the chefs squatting on the road or the old men playing chess could get a clear look at your and political demands and banners, but for the protester that might just be defeating the whole point.

The author claims that there are certain articles that aim to both be protective and restrictive. Article 8 says that there has be someone in charge, someone to be held legally responsible for whatever happens during the protest. This person has to deal with the red tape and provide information such as the purpose of the protest, the mode of protest, the banners used, the slogans to be shouted, the number of people, number of vehicles being used, the number of speakers or amplifiers being used, the time the protest starts, the route including where it starts and ends, the legally responsible person’s name, occupation and address.

Now I suppose on a general level you could say that having someone responsible, is better than having huge spontaneous crowds of hoi polloi that you can’t really pin down.

All that information is a catch-22: you have to tell them everything to get an approval to protest, but if you tell them everything truthfully you run the risk of being rejected. And then there’s the issue of who in their right mind would want to be one of the official organizers or people responsible, knowing what the system in China is like? It’s a huge risk to take.

Onto some of the restrictive conditions: Article 15 states that you can only participate in protests and demonstrations in the place where you are registered to live. Article 16: government employees cannot take part in protests that go against their duties and responsibilities—I surmise that this legalese means, in the real world terms, complete loyalty to the government. No whistle-blowers, no biting the hand that feeds you. Article 34: without special approval, no foreigners can take part in protests or demonstrations of Chinese citizens.

Restrictions on place: no protests or demonstrations 10-300 meters from government offices and organizations, such as NPC offices, military committees, the People’s Supreme Court, major military facilities, airports, air facilities, train stations, etc. Provincial and local governments have their own regulations as well: Lanzhou stipulates that all protests and demonstrations in the city squares must be approved by the municipal government, etc.

Time restrictions: Unless given special permission to do otherwise, all demonstrations must be held between 6am and 10pm.

Modes of protest restrictions: in general, all demonstrations must be peaceful and legal. They cannot go against the interests of the country, society or general collective interest or impinge on the legitimate rights and freedoms of other people. They must be peaceful: no weapons, explosives. All demonstrations must be follow the conditions filed in the application, i.e. use the slogans and banners that they applied for, start and stop at the time stipulated in the approved application, etc.

The author levels several criticisms against the rules. Regarding the time restrictions, the author says that the 6am-10pm rule contradicts the rules regarding the “immediate protest rules”: that is, Chinese citizens have the right to protest after some unexpected “event”—a demolition, a ruling, a murder, diplomatic brouhaha, badly called football match, etc. However, given the nature of these events, they could be happening sometime between 10pm and 6am—and therein lies the contradiction.

Modes of protest: you are not allowed to let people join–the people that are legally allowed to demonstrate are the ones that were included by name or organization in the application. Of course, this is quite different from how most protests and demonstrations work, both in China and elsewhere: other people, not affiliated with the sponsoring group, join, whether it be for fun or solidarity. However, doing so in China would, legally speaking, automatically render protest illegal.

The “content” of the protest: this one is perhaps the most devious one, because it states that you cannot protest against the country’s laws, the country’s territorial integrity and unity, etc. Of course, no one would ever be dumb enough to hold a demonstration calling for Tibetan independence, but this means that you might not even be able to legally protest against a law that you think is unjust.

On having your application rejected: if your protest application is rejected, you can re-apply once, and after that you have to take it to court. However, the People’s Supreme Court has decided that it’s better NOT to allow people to take the issue to court. Therefore, after having your application rejected twice, you have no further legal recourse and are, as they say, shit outta luck.

These are the laws as they hold for Chinese people, in “regular times”—one could reasonably expect the Olympics to be different, even if only because the Chinese love nothing more than putting on symbolic shows for the west. But as we saw, there were limits: no protesting on anything related to Tibet. Those that went ahead with that were either deported or given a ten day detention after which they were deported. As for other planned protests that ought to have been held in the official protest zones:

But Western media have reported that Chinese citizens who applied for a protest permit instead were arrested.

IOC president Jacques Rogge told reporters Sunday that 77 protest-zone applications were received in a city of 16 million and a nation of 1.3 billion.

“We found that unusual that none of these applications have come through with a protest,” he said, adding that Beijing Organizing Committee officials told him the protests didn’t occur by “mutual agreement.”

On this point, I have to agree with most of the western media commentary. Some people were detained for just asking or applying to protest. I don’t think the Olympics ought to be overly politicized, but on the other hand, if Beijing decides that they are up to holding this most prestigious of international sporting events, they have to follow the accepted standards, and one of those standards is some respect for free speech and the right to demonstrate. But basically, everyone saw the opening ceremony and was ooh-aah’d into intellectual submission. Everyone got caught up in the sports and Beijing got away with this huge PR coup with nary a challenge.

How to be an Chinese Olympics sports commentator

I was watching the Australia-China women’s basketball last night and listening to the commentary, I finally snapped: I’ve just become to sick of hearing them say the same things over and over. Most of the time it’s stuff along the lines of:

我们在跟世界一流的队的对抗中可以发现自己的不足。
我们跟世界一流的篮球对还是有一定的差距。
亚洲人不能光靠速度取胜，外国队也很灵活的。
经过跟世界一流的队的对抗我们可以不断提升我们各方面的素质、水平。

yadda yadda yadda. It’s like they barely talk about the game. They don’t try to be funny. Some commentators do, and I appreciate that, but that sure was not the case last night with the Australia-China game. Whenever China is really far behind—Australia had a twenty point lead most of the game—they have to talk about why this is, they have to take on this developmental perspective which is fine and valid in itself but really detracts from the viewer’s (or should i just say MY) appreciation and enjoyment of the spectacle (game+commentary) as a whole.

And it’s been repeated throughout the Games, and forms the standard interpretation of events at any sporting event where China loses or gets its ass kicked by another team. In that sense, it’s nothing new and why I’m yammering on about it is beyond me, and perhaps beyond you as well. It just irks me.

While I’m in the mood for getting things off my chest, I might as well add that I hate the whole “1.3 billion” (十三亿）business, which usually modifies something like “dreams of”, as in “the dreams of 1.3 billion people” (十三亿人的梦想）or in “the Olympics of 1.3 billion people.”

I’ve been traveling to China throughout my whole life, starting in 1980 at the tender age of three. I’ve been around Chinese people my whole life, though not necessarily mainland Chinese. And yet, because I grew up in America, where the individualist ethos is so strong and ingrained (the pioneers and explorers are part of our cultural-historical narrative), I simply just cannot fathom this collective ethos, this insistence on the unity–indeed, homogeneity—of the group. Everyone is their own person, their own individual, but somehow when you get to these public announcements, like ads on TV or the speeches of China’s leaders, you have to adopt this “1.3 billion” rhetoric, snap your fingers and somehow they all fall into line into some intellectual phalanx formation. I just think it completely laughable for anyone to speak of the entire nation as one. I would find it insulting. Even in the aftermath of 9-11, when we were all New Yorkers, this kind of rhetoric was not present. There was a kind of national unity and solidarity, but that was in response to attack and tragedy. You could never imagine anything like “the dreams of 300 million people” intoned the same way it is over here.

As I write these last sentences, I am watching a Toyota commercial where the audience is told: “You are no like no one else. But you have to have your own style.”

Liu Xiang’s 100 million RMB insurance policy

According to an article on netease, Chinese insurance company Ping An of China offered Olympic hurdler Liu Xiang a 100 million RMB insurance policy on accidental injury to his body; now Chinese netizens are talking and voting on whether or not Liu Xiang ought to get his 100 million RMB check or not. The company states that injuries of this sort are not covered because they only cover accidental injuries, and one could argue that Liu’s current injuries are the result of shit luck and/or over-training. However, most netizens (58%) believe that Ping An ought to pay up. The article points out another interesting fact: Ping An has worked Liu and other athletes in a variety of ways before, and most of the athletes have some kind of insurance with them, but for most of them it’s only worth one million RMB whereas Liu Xiang got the VIP one-year, 100 million package, which is good until October 31, 2008. The article then mentions that insuring body parts (eg Beckham’s legs, J-Lo’s booty) is a more common practice in the west, but not many people do that in China. However, in the spirit of promoting Chinese athletics, Ping An hopes to develop this kind of service.

Liu Xiang’s policy is an accident-type policy and doesn’t cover his Achilles tendon or any other body part in particular. For his part, Liu has decided to not pursue the money.

American looking for Olympics basketball tickets video

This guy had it all going for him: the Cat in the Hat hat and the Sichuan earthquake relief T-shirt…but could not, for the life of him, get 500rmb tickets. Last night, talking to scalpers, it seemed the going price for most events is 1000+ for most tickets, regardless of what the face value is. My friend managed to get a track and field ticket for 500rmb, which is a minor miracle. They wanted over a 1000 but there was only one (most people are selling in groups of two or three, adjacent seats) so let it go for 500. The ease with which we got it this one after spending a fruitless half hour going through the scalpers market made me somewhat suspicious. I guess tomorrow we will know if it all worked out or not.

Businessweek on what is wrong with Lenovo ads in the US (and a collection of Lenovo ads)

Lenovo’s Olympic ads – BusinessWeek

I think they use completely different ads here in China. The sumo wrestler/Xpad 300 ad is this one:

Here’s even more bleeding edge avant-garde one for the Z60:

And here’s a Chinese one featuring Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi from way back when:

This Xpad 300 one is rather tepid by comparison:

Here’s another Chinese one that is snazzy but not quite as avant-garde as the newest ones:

Here’s yet another dated, sports-related one from China:

You can tell the Chinese ones and the US ones are quite different in style. I suppose that reflects a change in their marketing strategy, maturation of the brand, and perhaps change in commercial production personnel…anyway, Business Week thinks that these are perhaps too edgy for the Olympics and are better suited for the Superbowl…