Colloquial Australian have many uses of the word "piss", including to emphasise the weakness of something or alcoholic beverages. For example, "American piss is piss-weak". Bear that in mind while reading this from today's (unlinkable but soon to be improved) SCMP on a test done in some Chinese hopsitals:
Can analysis of a cup of green tea indicate that you are sick? The answer is probably yes - if you are having a test done at a hospital in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province. Television journalists, investigating viewers' complaints that they had been overcharged in hospitals, passed off the tea as urine samples and submitted them for tests.
Six out of 10 hospitals, including two state-owned provincial-level ones, said they found white blood corpuscles or red blood cells in the samples and concluded that the "patient's" urinary tract was infected. Five of the six hospitals prescribed medicine costing up to 1,300 yuan. The Zhejiang Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, rated one of the best in the province, suggested the patient undergo liver function tests.
"The samples were taken from the same cup of green tea. We later ordered a test for the tea and found no red blood cells or white blood corpuscles," said a Zhejiang Television Station journalist who headed the investigation. A biology professor confirmed blood cells could not be found in the tea, even though it might be contaminated, the journalist said...Several hospitals later blamed "low-quality lab technicians" for the scandal when confronted by the programme. They said microscope observations should follow a machine test of the urine sample, but some technicians might omit the procedure, or, in some cases, modify their own results to match the ones from the machine.
"They said something like `the technicians are of low quality. They trust the machines because they are very good and expensive'," the journalist said.
Zhejiang health authorities have ordered a thorough investigation of the scandal and told laboratory technicians to "raise their quality", but the case has stirred anger nationwide amid growing discontent over the mainland's failing health care system. "Patients have become automatic teller machines for the hospitals," read a commentary by Guangzhou-based newspaper the Southern Metropolis News.
I felt like I was in a 1930s movie yesterday in Hong Kong. Mainly, because the haze and visibility were so bad that colors were simply removed from my visual spectrum. Surprisingly, the API for Sunday was only "high", despite the fact that Lantau and Lamma Islands had disappeared from my apartment window in Pokfulam, and, while I was in Tung Chung for the afternoon, a vaguely plasticine odor hung in the air. 'High', according to the Environmental Protection Department, means that there is no immediate harmful effect on health. You may only find yourself coughing up blood a few years from now after prolonged exposure (or something to that effect). Perhaps they are not putting the sensors in the right place (i.e. buried 20 feet underground).
Given my smoggy, sepia-toned palette yesterday, I was very surprised to see this article about the ban on electric bicycles in Guangzhou. I assume there must be some traffic-related reason for this, but in an age of blanket smog, surely people riding electric bicycles can't be such a bad thing? Granted, the electricity used by bikes may very well come from a coal-fired plant (but maybe it's Daya Bay). The article unfortunately, did not shed light on why the bikes were banned. Anyone out there know why?
I believe it is the goal of the GZ government to match or exceed the traffic issues of
Bangkok.
A couple years ago, the government cancelled any renewals of motor scooter licenses. At the same time, numerous restrictions went into place as to where and when motor scooters and motor cycles could travel in the city. Essentially, it was completely cut off. As licenses were not renewed, the government began confiscating scooters and cycles that were not licensed. There are a couple of lots in the city which are full of, literally, thousands of these rotting carcasses.
At the same time, the government began turning bicycle lanes into extra traffic lanes for cars. What were once full of bicycles and motorcycles, are now full of cars.
So...the advent of electric scooters came along and now the subsequent ban on those.
There are a couple theories as to why.
1. The local government is very bad and and does not like to enforce traffic laws. Anyone who has ever driven around GZ...can just go to Foshan or Zhuhai to see how civilized Chinese driving can truly be. Having the extra traffic of scooters, bikes, etc., just makes the problem even more problematic...when cars are the preferred method of the government.
2. Cars are the preferred method of transportation. The government earns major tax dollars on each vehicle sold. Also, given that the largest supplier of cars in GZ actually makes the cars in GZ (Honda), you have to believe there is a brother or uncle involved in that relationship somewhere.
Shenzhen banned them about 2 or so years ago, though a scattered few can still be seen and/or deftly dodged as the operators heedlessly steer them through the crowded sidewalks.
The danger to pedestrians was the "official" reason, though Shenzhen city officials have never shown any real concern for pedestrian welfare otherwise. (See ESWN's chilling Nov. 8 "An incident in Shenzhen" in which video footage documents a city truck purposefully crushing an elderly trash collector to death. http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20061108_1.htm).
GZ Expat's analysis is pretty much spot on, I believe.
The Haze in Singapore has been aweful, This is because the fires in Indonesia, I sure that not getting to Hong Kong thou.
Hit the worst since 1997/98 the other week ahhhhh just horrible.
I write on my blog about cars and follow all the news that are somehow related...I should say I was surprised by that news and that don't understand the real reason of this prohibition
One of China's biggest problems is finding someone to speak up for oppressed minorities...as the SCMP reports:
Controversial sexologist Li Yinhe has been rebuked by a family planner for promoting the rights of swingers on the mainland. Dr Li triggered debate after writing on an online forum last month that swingers, or couples who swap sexual partners, were no threat to society as they did not breach the principles of confidentiality or consent among adults. ...Dr Li also advised mainland swingers "to get around the law by only sleeping with one person at a time". Under mainland law, it is forbidden for more than two people to engage in sexual activity in one location.
Did you know that a menage a trois is illegal in China? Be warned.
I for one was pleased to see the release of Sir Nicholas Stern's report on global warming and greenhouse gas emissions. I have been a convert to the concept of the linkage between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming for some time, but I would like to pose a question to those head-in-the-sand, in-denial ostriches who are not (in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and an unprecedented, almost complete consensus in the scientific community).
Do you buy insurance? If you buy fire insurance, what do you think the chances are of a catastrophic fire destroying your home? To make my point more specific, even if you think that it is not a cast-iron certainty that we will end up having to give up 20% of our present GDP per year due to climate change, at what percentage of risk are you willing to pay out say 1% per year in environmental damage control 'premiums'? Particularly when every scientist that isn't a crackpot is willing to say that climate change is happening, and that the repercussions are likely to be completely disastrous. Even if you only think there is a 10% chance of disastrous climate change, it would be completely rational for you to support staving off potential environmental apocalypse.
Especially when every indicator points to that percentage being well over 50%. This is not a bet any insurance company would be willing to take on. Will you still sniff at the writing on the wall and say it's not happening?
You confuse "the climate is changing" with "and if we do X, Y, and Z the climate will not change". The scientific consensus is about the former. The mob hysteria is about the latter.
What if the other influences on climate, such as human changes to land use, human changes to Earth's albedo, and solar and terrestrial climate cycles, are what's driving the current set of changes?
What if the "make the nasty carbon go away" movement is just really intense wishful thinking? We broke it, therefore we can fix it, and nature has no power over us that we don't let it?
What if the choice is between "spend $100 billion on failing to stop the climate changing" and "spending $100 billion helping people deal with the consequences of the climate changing"?
(Scale up amounts to taste.)
Or, what if the choice is between spending 50% of GDP on rolling back climate change or 20% on living with it?
What if some of that 30% difference was going to pay for feeding and housing you for the next year?
Only, oops, we've spent it on carbon credits from Russia and now that the sea's rising anyway, no funds left to help you and no-one else to borrow them from. But no worries, you'll have that warm fuzzy Kyoto-compliant feeling as you starve.
Or perhaps not. Maybe beating this straw man to death will prove to be an adequate substitute for critical thinking about the problem. At least for you.
Posted by Horatio Davis at November 1, 2006 08:31 AM
My post specifically is addressed to people like you Horatio! My point is that even if you believe there is only a 10% chance that greenhouse gas emissions lead to warming, it would still be worth spending the money to try to stop this from happening now. While there is certainly an economic cost to this, there is also a huge healthcare disbenefit to not helping, if only because a major push in greenhouse gas emissions is with dirty coal-fired power plants that make most of China's air pretty unbreathable.
You might be right, although chances are, you're not. I would also disagree with you and say that there is large-scale consensus on the warming being caused by CO2 emissions. In any case, the point of my post is that even if you think there is only a small chance of that linkage being there and proving a clear danger to our future, it is worth insuring ourselves against it. That is the only rational choice.
It's official - there are now more fat or obese people in China than there are in the US. The percentages of course are still heavily pointing to America as having the most fat people (and Illinois the fattest state), but the trendline is alarming.
So nix the carbs in the white rice. All you Cantonese, mebbe go easy on the dim sum too. You northerners, well, maybe more olive oil, less zha jiang mian and peking duck! Or if you're on the Atkins diet, eat only Peking Duck, just leave off the flour wrappers...:)
It's not the white rice. They used to eat lots of white rice during the "good old days", together with pickles and vegetables. The problem today is that they're eating the same volume of food (in cubic inches) that they used to, but the portions of rice, vegetables and pickles have been reduced, and the portions of meat are way up. Chinese food is inherently greasy, because of stir-frying and deep-frying. This was OK when most of the food consisted of vegetables and pickles. Today, most of it is pork and chicken. But look for the local media to blame McDonald's. And Frito Lay's (even though Chinese sweetmeats are way greasier, not to mention less tasty, than their Western equivalents).
A third of deaths were not reported to the country's national surveillance system, it says. About one in five hospitals did not report any deaths at all.
Even where deaths were reported, there were often delays and mistakes. In about a quarter of cases, the cause of death given just related to symptoms, such as heart or lung failure.
If bird flu hits, you know you'll be safe in one of these hospitals.
Wal-Mart has a special relationship with China - it sources huge amounts of its product from China and single-handedly accounts for 10% of US imports from the place. Wal-Mart is also famously anti-union, fiercely resisting them in any of its stores. But with the juicy carrot of Chinese retailing dangled in front of them, they've given way and allowed unionisation of their workforce in China.
Yet such a breach of Wal-Mart's fortitude is not what it may seem. Official Chinese trade unions are not the same as those in the West:
On the face of it, the conflict between the global retailer and the world's biggest labor group, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, might seem of epic potential.
But less is here than meets the eye. The federation's not a union alliance in the Western sense. It's controlled by the ruling Communist Party, allows no competing labor unions, rejects free elections of its leaders and often goes to bat on the side of management over workers under the guise of harmonious economic development.
It's also a federation in a fix. It struggles to gain dues-paying members in the thriving private sector and craves international legitimacy. Almost no union confederation abroad recognizes it officially.
And union recruiting certainly differs to the West:
As Nanjing's top labor chief, Chen said it wasn't hard to recruit some 30 of the local Wal-Mart store's 300 employees and persuade them to form a union.
"I presented them with a TV set, a DVD player, books and 20,000 yuan (about $2,500) in cash," Chen said. "I also treated all Wal-Mart employees to an American blockbuster movie, `Mission Impossible III.' You know, with Tom Cruise."
And it's hard to know what the union is going to actually do...
Even so, Wal-Mart sounded unsure of what unionized workers might desire. All of Wal-Mart's Chinese workers get retirement benefits, medical insurance, workers' compensation, maternity and paternity leave, paid holidays and annual health checks, said Amy Wyatt, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart's international affairs.
And there's one more difference from Western unions:
It's not too early to predict, though, that the new unions will be denied a basic entitlement of unions in the West: the right to pick union leaders in democratic elections.
This is a very useful piece of information that supports Sojourner's argument, as articulated over at the very thought-provoking MAJ-Sojourner Debate, at www.journeysthroughchina.blog.com
Sojourner, incidently, argues that China is the world's most let-it-rip exploitative form of capitalism, and the most consumer-fetishist society on earth. MAJ only partially agrees, and offers a more positive outlook, while some guy named Disco Mao pushes the idea that China would be better off under Maoism - he represents the Maoist Internationalist Movement!
They discuss trade unions in China at one point, and so someone here really ought to come to Sojourner's aid by referring to this post about Wal-mart and unions.
Unionization is likely to become the norm for large international firms in China. Better start picking your leaders now. It looks to be part of policy shift, so don't get in the way of this.
Posted by Shanghai Joe at August 20, 2006 12:12 PM
The enlightened efforts in China to advance understanding of HIV/AIDS took a small step backwards yesterday. The SCMP:
Shanghai police yesterday locked down a hotel where a group of haemophiliacs seeking compensation for being infected with HIV by a tainted blood product are staying. At least one foreign reporter who met the victims was detained.
The group of about 40 haemophiliacs and their relatives travelled to Shanghai from all over the mainland this week to demand redress from the government-backed Shanghai Biological Products Research Institute for selling a contaminated product in the 1990s.
Authorities surrounded the small hotel, shut off the elevators and prevented anyone from leaving after the group met journalists yesterday afternoon. Police also detained a US reporter for nearly three hours.
No group members were formally detained, but they complained they had been shadowed all week and harassed.
Not in Hong Kong anyway. A recent Greenpeace study on vegetables available at leading supermarket chains Wellcome and Park N' Shop demonstrated that the veggies they were selling to hapless consumers had pesticide levels well in excess of recommended limits, and used banned substances such as DDT.
The unspoken, shocking thing about this, of course, is that most consumers go to those supermarkets because they think that the beans and tomatoes there are somehow 'cleaner' and less 'local' that the produce on hand at the wet markets. But a Wellcome choi sum offering, for instance, had 240 times the EU limit on pesticides, and other fresh veggies offered by both stores were tainted by up to 5 different pesticides that act like a 'cocktail effect' that can multiply their effects by up to 100 times. All this produce is naturally coming from China.
Aside from prompting questions of why people on the mainland aren't just dropping dead (and in the countryside, many are), is there really any way local consumers can stop poisoning themselves? In the short-term, aside from the option of paying megabucks for a Japanese radish or a Dutch tomato, there really aren't any foolproof methods. One hopes though that China will eventually impose some sort of standards for their agricultural exports, and failing that, that Hong Kong perhaps needs to set one up for imports to set its citizens' minds at ease.
I'm not sure that the "Japanese radish" is a solution to the problem. Last time I saw statistics on this, Japanese farmers used eight times the dioxin-based pesticides, etc., that American farmers did....
I have been a bit of a ranter in these pages about the horrible pollution in China, and how much of it does drift south to Hong Kong.
China has just announced that it is building two large new nuclear power plants, one in Shaoguan in northern Guangdong, and the other near the ancient port city of Quanzhou, in Fujian.
China currently has 4 nuclear plants in operation, and plans to build 30 more by 2020 to increase energy supplied from 'nu-cu-lar' power from 2% to 6% over that period. It is meant to deal with power consumption in urban areas and to cut down on pollution from dirty coal-fired plants.
But not so fast. Even in a best case scenario, if nuclear power still only serves 6% of power in 2020 even with 30 new plants, imagine how many more coal-fired plants there'll be. Given Chinese government assumptions about power requirements almost tripling in the next 15 years, it basically means that the number of coal burning stations will more than double, no doubt particularly in the factory-laden Guangdong area.
There's also the question proper maintenance, and of where all those spent radioactive rods are going. Are they all getting shipped to Xinjiang's Taklamakan Desert?
Double the plants, double the smog. Eeech. It's time to get out of Hong Kong. Or start investing in bottled air.
Don't forget the power generated from the 3 Gorges Dams...that will also take away a good portion of coal fired plants in the central part of the country.
I don't think it is only the coal fired plants...there are also a multitude of factories that are powered directly by coal...most notably cement factories in this area. Add to that the millions of homes that are using the coal 'hockey pucks' for heating and cooking.
But...I've got to admit. From 1996 when I first arrived, to today, the pollution is far less/better than it was back then. The amount of construction and the use of leaded gasoline was a huge cause of the most of it.
You have a pount, GZ Expat, although this would merely reduce the increase in the number of coal-fired plants rather than result in any decommissioning. The unfortunate thing about even the new coal-fired plants in China is that many of them are still very 'dirty' by any standard.
I am very surprised that you've found pollution to have gotten better - here in Hong Kong the pollution has gotten much worse since I came back in 1995. The number of bad air days is far more, and pollution median indices much worse, than ten years ago. While about half is internally generated, it seems the highest growth in pollution is coming from north of the border.
The government's plans for expanding power from hydro call for the equivalent of a 3 gorges project every two years, and then they've got the wind power plans (admittedly still a bit pie-in-the-sky). Perhaps the biggest change will be in gas though - currently there are very few gas powered stations, but that's likely to change in the next decade as the gas from these multi-billion dollar deals with places like Australia and Iran starts flowing in. Still, it's not like coal's going to go away, so we'll have to hope that they get serious on the scrubbing technology...
Oh...nobody told you about the giant fans they have installed which blows all the crap to the south then, eh?
My anecdotal observations...
1. We can actually see blue sky more than one day in a row now. In 96, we'd be lucky to get a day of it.
2. Birds...lots of them. When I first moved to GZ, I lived in the city. No birds. None. Lots of bats, though. We moved north of the city in 1997...no birds. When we moved back in 2004 to the same location as we lived from 97...we are awakened in the morning by the songs of birds.
3. Stars. The only stars we would ever see at night was the moon and venus. Today, you can see a handful of stars at night from the city.
Now...if you were to visit me today, you'd think I was totally full of it, because the pollution today is brutal. Rains are coming.
Yes, GZ Expat, I did notice that Guangzhou's pollution yesterday was off the charts. I was not going to comment on just one data point though.
Duncan, I hope you're right about the gas-powered stations - now if we can just keep gas prices low enough we might have a solution. Hydro power is great too although the effects on river traffic, silting, agriculture and the environment may yet prove too problematic.
As you say, wind-turbine generators are not really dependable, and can only be put in a few places that consistently get wind. My office window faces the one on Lamma island. I don't see it turn much, sadly.
Gas, unfortunately, is probably the fossil fuel which will run out first. Nuclear power has the same problem, only more so, due to even more limited stocks of uranium. This can be circumvented through reactors, with the unfortunate side-effect of producing lots of plutonium. Hydro-electricity is not very applicable to HK, and big dams like those in the 3 gorges project tend to silt up rather rapidly and lose much of their capacity.
Solar power is looking better, as it's an improving technology which is likely to become reasonably economical (especially when alternatives become more expensive. Plus, less smog = more sunshine = more solar power.
Realistically, however, coal is it, with all their emission problems (including fallout - 'dirty' coal-burning stations spray out considerable amounts of radioactive material contained in coal). The only way forward is through technological emmission reduction (liquidised bed combustion, emission scrubbing requiring large amounts of processed limestone, deep carbon capture, etc.).
Unfortunately, these all cost more than not using them. No power company in their right mind will reduce their profit margin if not coerced into it by a regulatory body.
BTW - none of this particularly concerns me, because I expect to be long gone by the time the glaciers of Greenland finally slide into the North Atlantic. It would be nice to be able to see across the harbour, though.
Posted by Argleblaster at February 17, 2006 05:36 PM
EDIT: Sorry, fist paragraph should say, "fast breeder reactors".
Posted by Argleblaster at February 17, 2006 05:40 PM
Are there any solutions for this enegy related air pollution problem?
rank in terms of cleanliness:
hydro/wind/tide/solar, nuclear fusion, nuclear fission, gas, oil, coal
the energy generated by class one (natural) is limited, nuclear fusion is still under development (not in the near future).
so that give nuclear fission (U/Pu) the best alternative.
the last 3 classes are fossil fuels. they will last for a few more century, but not forever.
in contrast, the amount of Uranium can support human being for another few milleniums, at least.
I don't dispute that plutonium can, of course, be used as fuel. However, what worries most governments is that it can also be used for nuclear weapons.
As regards uranium reserves, beware of dubious internet referencing. Billions of years? That exceeds even the most optimistic estimates of the nuclear industry. From the International Atomic Energy Agency:
"There are proven reserves of coal sufficient for some 200 years, of natural gas for 60 years and of oil for 40 years. New technologies to increase fossil fuel extraction could be developed, but financing and price volatility could then become leading concerns. Known uranium reserves ensure a sufficient supply for at least 50 years at current levels of usage. Recycling of separated plutonium from spent fuel would increase the energy potential of today's uranium reserves by up to 70 times, enough for more than 3000 years at today's level of use. Uranium used in a complete fuel cycle not only maintains itself but also significantly increases the resource base."
The key is "current levels of usage" - growing energy demand in China, India, South America and (in the future) Africa will considerably reduce these forecasts. There are undoubtedly considerably more reserves of uranium in the Earth's crust, but it is not a naturally-occuring mineral and the energy costs of extraction may outweigh the energy gain from its use. The practicality of fast breeder reactors has not been proven after many decades and millions of dollars spent on research (my old environmental science lecturer admitted this, and he had spent 25 years doing that research).
As regards fossil fuels, there is another problem which outweighs the availability of reserves. Even if no further reserves are discovered, buring all available resrves at today's rates of emmission is very likely to cause an unacceptable rise in CO2 within the atmosphere.
Posted by Argleblaster at February 22, 2006 03:49 PM
The new survey, conducted with the World Health Organization and Unaids, lowered the country's estimated number of HIV and AIDS cases to 650,000 from the official 840,000 figure released in 2003. Many experts and AIDS activists have long believed that China had at least 1.5 million cases, possibly far more.
At a news conference, Chinese and international health officials endorsed the new findings but also warned that China still has a serious AIDS problem that could rapidly worsen if testing, education and treatment programs are not expanded.
That's the good news. But...
...the survey found that while the overall number of cases is less than previously believed, the rate of infection is rising, with 70,000 new cases in 2005. Drug users and prostitutes transmitted the virus in most of these cases, but the report also found that the disease is now spreading from such high-risk groups into the general population, raising the risk of a broader level of infections.
...Since late 2003, China has mounted an aggressive nationwide campaign against AIDS and introduced pilot programs that provide condoms, methadone and even anti-retroviral drugs for free.
The joint effort between China, the World Health Organization and Unaids in drafting the study reflected the improved openness of Chinese health officials on the issue. But that collaboration also underscored the fact that the outside world would probably be skeptical of any study conducted solely by the Chinese government.
The government is starting to confront and deal with the problem, and this new found "openness" in the survey is a promising development. Let's hope it continues, and not just on AIDS.
Yes, I believe the problem arose several years ago when the government overestimated the number of cases in the country, and then in 2003, when it realized its error, decided not to lower the figure and keep the number constant. This may be the first 'real' or partly accurate number we have seen.
But as you say, there is no reason for complacency given the trendline for increases.
The Chinese government's strangle hold on the press is old news but the results from that hold has created a two faced China. One in which human rights violations, forced population movements by the government, or anything that might tarnish China's image to the world. The other face is the phenomenal economic success that the Chinese government fully endorses the press to print. The 21st century China will not jeapordize her economic growth even if it means lying to the world to achieve her goals.
Regards,
Mr. Chrysantha Wijeyasingha
New Orleans, LA. USa
I just got back from Beijing. Wonderful city, a bit nippy, but a pleasant place to get lost by Hou Hai Lake or even in Hai Dian. Food was excellent! Much higher quality than when I was a liexuesheng at Shi Fan Da Xue.
I did, however, note with concern the fact that my flight to Beijing had to be diverted to Taiyuan in Shansi province because of 'fog'. The visibility at the airport was apparently limited to 100 metres. It was not much improved when I landed three hours later.
So it was with some interest that I saw the latest pollution readings for cities in China by the China Environment Monitoring Center via TMC.net. The trouble with all such readings, though, is the basis for its measurements (because the whole world has totally different measures from one another). Basically, though, China has a scale from I to V, with I being an excellent, or 'G' rating, and V being terrible, or an 'XXX' rating. Beijing was rated III.
So I had a look at Shenzhen and Shanghai - they both had I, for excellent.
Hmmm....doesn't sound right to me! If Shenzhen and Shanghai are excellent...better start planting more trees!
I read with interest this article on how a restaurant in Harbin has been carved out of 800 cubic meters of ice from the Sungari (Songhua) River. Similar to ice hotels and bars in Scandinavia, the restaurant is made completely out of ice, relieved and insulated only by very heavy carpets - patrons nevertheless must don heavy parkas. Allow me to quote the People's Daily:
It took workers more than 20 days to finish the construction, using some 800 cubic metres of ice, according to Liu.
The restaurant can hold some 100 people, with six large tables in the main hall and an adjacent separate room.
The most vivid design is the ice bar counter, where customers can sit on the ice stools while sipping hot drinks.
The main food offered in the restaurant is the traditional Northeast China's hotpot, with families or groups of friends sitting around a table to eat from a steaming pot in the middle.
But customers are advised to wear their thick winter clothes while enjoying the "extreme delicacy."
Thick carpet is laid on the floor to restrict the cold air from the ice floor below and the ice stools are all covered with woollen cushions.
"Of course, we aim to attract them to sit down not to freeze them," said Liu.
Liu said there was no need to worry about the hot air produced by the steaming hotpot melting the ice dome as it is very high up.
I found that last quote particularly amusing given the ill-famed effects the recent toxic spill into the river had on benzene levels in the H20. No need to worry indeed! I picture the writer a cross between an old-style Communist cadre and Alfred E. Newman.
But equally interesting are the ingredients put into the local hotpot, at least as listed by the People's Daily:"The restaurant is offering four special hotpot dishes, with some ingredients which can be rarely seen in common hotpot restaurants, such as meat of wild boar and deer, gnosis and ginseng, [the proprietor] said."
Now the other three I can understand, I grant you - but gnosis was something that rang a bell from my ancient philosophy classes. Allow me to quote from the Merriam-Webster dictionary online:"esoteric knowledge of spiritual truth held by the ancient Gnostics to be essential to salvation."
Perhaps a bit more "gnosis" in hotpots everywhere in China would be a good thing. Especially with the water quality being what it is, people'll need it in the afterlife!
To remain fresh, the deep-water tuna must be stored at -55 Celsius to remain fresh for the consumer. Once it is not, tuna changes in color from a deep red color to a brownish shade. Given that such low temperatures are not possible in China, tuna is often treated with carbon monoxide. This is potentially quite damaging for the consumer's health, particularly the kidneys.
The report quoted a local tuna expert, Professor Wu Jiale of the Shanghai Fisheries University, as saying on last Thursday that a study group he heads has finished drafting an industry standard for tuna eaten raw as Sashimi. The draft, now submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture, is expected to go into effect next year.
It may affect nearly all the restaurants and supermarkets in Shanghai offering tuna Sashimi, industry insiders worried, because most of the tuna on the local market is treated in this way.
In the meantime, we suggest everyone stick to turkey for the holiday period...unless you noticed it was sneezing a fair bit and had chills before it met its maker.
I'm glad they'll get around to banning it next year - there's no rush. After all, people have been eating such treated sushi for years in Shanghai without ill effect.
Yes HKMacs, but then imagine the lines! We'd need to establish system with some sort of pecking order to prevent fowl play...
Ugh...no more pun attempts from me today.
Simon I quite agree that the human body, so far, has demonstrated quite remarkable powers of survival despite man's best efforts to poison himself.
Perhaps the real story here is the fact that despite massive anti-Japanese sentiment, people in China still have the stomach for Japanese food (unlike some grannies I know).
After reading this article on organic food apparently being on the rise in Asia, I am prompted to ask the readership this question: when in Chinese, produce is labeled 'green food', does that mean it's organic, or is that just a meaningless label any produce-grower can stick on its vegetables? I've wondered every since I started seeing packs of 'green food' bok choy and choi sum in my local Park N Shop.
All of is grown in China, which naturally has thus far prevented me from actually buying any of it or allowing myself to have any faith at all in the 'organic'-ness of the produce in terms of not using dangerous pesticides, etc.
Park N Shop and Carrefour both advertise 'organic' produce in their stores here in GZ. A neighbor of ours was the general manager of a Carrefour store in GZ and my tai-tai asked him just how 'organic' thier produce was. He told us that Carrefour has representatives that visit these farms often and inspect the site and test the produce for any sort of chemical additives.
Knowing that companies such as McDonald's actively monitor their suppliers of beef and potatoes to ensure everything meets their quality standards...I felt Carrefour's efforts were probably honest.
Park N Shop, on the other hand, I am not certain what their policies or procedures are.
Based on the above...my tai-tai shops at Carrefour when she can.
About a month ago I noted a report that found China's estimated HIV population may be signficantly lower than the previously estimated 840,000. Now the SCMP reports on the problems officials are having with releasing that number:
Authorities are reportedly in a bind over how to announce a new and supposedly more accurate HIV estimate that is significantly lower than previous figures...Senior officials said the assessment was now being verified by the World Health Organisation and UNAids experts. However, UNAids said it was waiting for Chinese officials to finalise the assessment...
A government source also said the new assessment was significantly lower than the 2003 estimate of 840,000 HIV carriers. Although the final figure may change at the last minute, the new estimate could be up to 20 per cent lower than the original figure...
Government officials are reportedly concerned that the public would doubt the credibility of a new estimate, and question whether the difference was the result of patients dying from Aids over the years, or whether the government was playing down the gravity of the situation. Another worry is whether a lower-than-expected prevalence would dampen the enthusiasm of the central government and international agencies for injecting resources into Aids prevention and treatment.
It's great news, but a problem of the government's own making. Events as recent as last week in Harbin show the Chinese government is not known for its openness and reliability when it comes to reporting. Getting international, independent groups to verify the data is a good first step. Even if the number comes out 20% lower, however, there is still plenty to worry about. Good statistical measurement is only the first step in dealing with disease outbreaks. Even with 600,000 people infected, the major worry is the potential is further infections.
A new report on the potential for a bird flu epidemic in China reveals that corrupt or inept officials and bureaucratic problems may hinder efforts to halt the viruses' spread. Not exactly Earth-shattering. What is far more disturbing is the latest numbers on a virus that is already a proven killer approaching epidemic proportions: HIV/AIDS.
The SCMP reports that Vice Premier and former Health Minister Wu Yi has found the problem with dealing with China's AIDS problem:
Vice-Premier Wu Yi yesterday attacked local officials for disregarding national policy on Aids prevention and treatment, as the number of confirmed cases rose to a new high. The official number of people infected with HIV rose to 135,630 by the end of September, up 50,000 to 60,000 from last year, according to the State Council's Work Committee on Aids Prevention and Treatment.
But this figure was only 16 per cent of the estimated actual total of 840,000. Ms Wu blamed inadequate monitoring and testing for the shortfall...But the latest report shows the sharing of needles by drug users has become the most common form of transmission, accounting for 40.8 per cent of infections. Blood transfusions accounted for 23 per cent of infections and sexual transmission 9 per cent. About 23 per cent were infected through unknown means, but it is believed most of these were cases of sexual transmission.
My emphasis on the estimated real total. Ms. Wu also knows why local officials are not supporting national efforts to provide free treatment and education on prevention. It is a combination of ignoring the reality (ie blissful ignorance) and that promoting prevention and treatments could adversely impact local area's image, business and investment (ie AIDS is bad for business). The SCMP follows with the obligatory heart-breaking personal story, in this case a mother and son infected with HIV via a blood transfusion (full story below the jump).
It's a start that someone as enlightened and pro-active as Ms. Wu is leading the national fight against HIV/AIDS. It's a tragedy that such efforts are stymied at a local level by the very corrupt and inept officials the bird flu report is fretting about. Most importantly, instead of panicking about a potential bird flu epidemic, China and other countries should worry about the HIV/AIDS epidemic they already have.
When eight-year-old Zhu Mengchang saw soldiers raising the national flag on Tiananmen Square this month, he told his mother he wanted to be a soldier when he grew up.
Liu Xianhong promptly burst into tears.
It was not that the mother of two was not moved by her son's ambition. Rather, she was beset by the uncertainties lying ahead, because they have both tested positive for HIV.
It was their first trip to Beijing, to petition the Ministry of Public Security over an assault on members of their family by about 30 police officers and security guards during a sit-in outside a Hebei hospital.
The raid on October 17 outside the Xiandewang Coal Mine Hospital in Xingtai put six of Ms Liu's family members in hospital.
"We were sitting in the yard of the hospital. Suddenly a group of policemen stormed in. They all wore helmets and held batons. Then they started beating us. Someone shouted, `Beat them to death. The coal mine will be taking care of this'. Then they beat us for roughly 20 minutes, and so many people collapsed," she said.
Ms Liu's husband, Zhu Xianping, and his parents are still in hospital. Mr Zhu suffered severe head injures and broken bones.
The sit-in was part of their battle to seek compensation and an explanation for her HIV infection through a postnatal blood transfusion at the hospital in 1995. She passed the virus to Mengchang, who was born two years later.
"It [the blood transfusion] was on the first day of the eighth lunar month. I clearly remember the date. It's my daughter's birthday," she said.
"I felt OK after giving birth to my daughter. But the doctor said I was weak and needed a transfusion. My husband said I should listen to the doctor, so I accepted it - the only transfusion I have ever had in my life."
It was only after tests by the Xingtai Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the Zhu family in February that they realised the 400 yuan blood transfusion had cost them more than that.
"My family knew that I was infected with HIV before I did. They didn't want to break the news to me because they thought I couldn't handle it. But I grilled my husband because I found it weird that he was in tears whenever he saw me," Ms Liu said.
Only Ms Liu and Mengchang tested positive for HIV.
Shocked by the news, Ms Liu went to the CDC to try to find out how she and her son had contracted the Aids virus.
"I have never worked outside Xingtai. We are decent people who have never done anything immoral. Experts from the CDC said the only way I could have been infected would be through a blood transfusion, and then I passed it to my son," Ms Liu said.
Attempts to contact Xiandewang hospital were unsuccessful.
A lawsuit demanding compensation of 1.2 million yuan from the hospital was filed in July.
Ms Liu's case is not a unusual in Xingtai, where Aids activist Li Qianji said at least 200 people were infected with the virus through transfusions of tainted blood.
Last year, Mr Li revealed to China Central Television that the Xingtai Blood Centre illegally bought blood from Shanxi province - mainly from the cities of Yuncheng , Linfen and Yongji - from September 1995 to January 1997.
Media reports prompted the Ministry of Health to order the Hebei provincial Bureau of Health to investigate blood supplies in Xingtai in December and January.
Ms Zhu and her family started holding sit-ins almost every day outside Xiandewang hospital after they filed the suit, in an attempt to seek an explanation from the hospital and to settle the case outside court.
Wang Liming, Ms Liu's lawyer, said a civil lawsuit could take up to six months to settle.
"She's HIV-positive and doesn't know how long she is going to live. By settling the case with the hospital, she thinks she can get the compensation to secure her son's medical expenses sooner. And she is willing to accept a lower figure as long as the hospital agrees to settle it," Mr Wang said.
But the family have never had a single meeting with hospital management during three months of sit-ins. Mr Wang said the hospital was unable to provide Ms Liu's medical record, as required by law.
Mr Wang said the Xingtai Public Security Bureau had set up a team to look into the case and Ms Liu would file a lawsuit against those who carried out the assault once the investigation was over.
He added that a ruling on Xiandewang hospital would be handed down soon.
A coal mine branch of the Xingtai Public Security Bureau said the case was under investigation, but denied police assaulted the family.
Yet another article, same day, Xinhua is slapping itself on the back that China's output of coal is set to increase, easing supply concerns of the dirty, highly polluting carbon fuel. Of the 2.1 billion tons of coal, power plants will consume 1.18 billion. TWO BILLION TONS. That's well over a ton of coal per person in China.
Sort of answers a few questions at once, doesn't it? Dying miners, corrupt officials, poisoned environment. But there seems to be no stopping China now, driven to put coal into its veins to get the high of more industrial production, a few million more US dollars in exports. Let's face it - China has a coal addiction.
But I guess after last week, trying to shift to a reliance on gas, petroleum or indeed anything PetroChina produces must seem not like too attractive a solution...
A bureaucrat's instinct when faced with a problem is to cover it up. And so it has proved in Harbin, where a toxic chemical spill into the Songhua river has finally been confirmed. Rumours had swept Harbin on Monday of some kind of water trouble, which lead to scenes of panic buying and water hoarding amid the confusion. The government cut off the water supply "at wee hours Wednesday" (could Xinhua be in the pun business?), leaving a city of almost 4 million literally without water. The chemical spill has passed Harbin at around 5am this morning and supplies have resumed again, although would you drink that water?
Far more interesting will be whether the chemical plant where the explosion occurred will be investigated and prosecuted if (as seems likely) found negligent. Much depends on how long media focus remains on Harbin.
Perhaps because I come from Sydney, Australia, a city and country constantly worrying about water supplies, I find the next water story staggering. It all began back in 1989, when Hong Kong reached an agreement with Guangdong to secure water supplies for the Big Lychee. That agreement gave Hong Kong priority access to Guangdong's water (which supplies 80% of Hong Kong's water needs), in return for Hong Kong paying well in excess of normal rates. In typical style the deal allocated a rising amount of water to Hong Kong to allow for growing water usage over the years. According to the SCMP, Hong Kong is due to receive 810 million cubic metres a year of water from the East River. But because public servants have no idea how to guage future demand, it has turned out Hong Kong has used less than its full allocation. The twist is Hong Kong has already paid for that water. So what does it do? It dumps it in the sea! Between 1999 and 2003 more than 500 million cubic metres of water, which at the agreement rate of HK$3.085 a cubic metre represents HK$1.5 billion worth, was dumped because Hong Kong's reservoirs were full.
The new agreement is a step in the right direction. Hong Kong will guarantee to buy a minimum of 600 million cubic metres and pay only for what it uses. In return it will increase the per unit price by 10%.
Haste makes waste, but waste is a hasty bureaucrat.
It goes beyond bureaucracy, of course, doesn't it, Simon?
China is a land ruled by man. So, to me, that means indecency at the appropriate times, manipulation and the horror of denial and obfuscation is prized over law.
Rule of law became an important ingredient to a stable society precisely because humans in a system that prize cheating will do anything and harm other people in the outcome.
Sometimes I get the feeling that if I was a Chinese, I would be pissed off at my country's government, and I would really like to get them out.
I'd take a more economic tack - people are driven by self-interest and incentives. When those incentives are properly conceived, individual self-interest leads to a greater overall good - the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. At other times self-interests and incentives can be destructive to the greater good.
Some Chinese insurance compnies are taking a big chance on the possible spread of avian influenza among humans as an opportunity to expand their business. Beijing Minsheng Life Insurance on November 7th was first to launch a policy that would pay the insured if they are infected by the H5N1 virus. Four days later, Shenzhen based Hua-an Property Insurance followed. The Hua'an policy costs 100 yuan for each 200,000 yuan of compensation. It is valid for a year for anyone aged 3 to 70. Analysts say the odds are that the two insurers will make money given what they consider is the low probability of a serious pandemic.
A couple of interesting implications. Firstly these insurance companies are putting the chance of dying from bird flu in the next year at 0.05%, and that includes their profit margin so in reality it's even lower. You won't read that on the front page of the panicky press. Secondly this could be a great opportunity for these Chinese insurance firms to expand offshore - imagine the demand around the world for these kind of products. Thirdly, it's good to see the private sector becoming part of the policy solution in preparing for bird flu. Lastly, this is a perfect example of innovative capitalism at its finest - a pricing of risk in response to clear demand. All from the heart of Communist China.
Eventually the world will learn it can sometimes learn from China.
$100 a year for $200K of coverage just for bird flu? It's a rip. I can get $250K of term-life coverage covering everything except war and skydiving for $250
Are chickens chicken about needles? China plans to vaccinate China's 14 billion chickens against bird flu. This leads to two questions. Firstly, will such mass vaccinations help eliminate bird flu? Secondly, how is it they can produce 14 billion doses of chicken vaccine but Roche will take years to make mere millions of Tamiflu doses?
Singapore's former Prime Minister has taken another leaf out of the China book and said that there can be such a thing as too free a press. The SCMP:
Former prime minister Goh Chok Tong has defended Singapore's pro-government media industry from international criticism, saying a liberal press is not necessarily good for every country...Lee Hsien Loong, said Singapore's government and economic performance proved the city-state's system worked.
"Western liberals often argue that press freedom is a necessary ingredient of democracy and that it is the fourth estate to check elected governments, especially against corruption," he said in a speech on Monday night. "But a free press by western standards does not always lead to a clean and efficient government or contribute to economic freedom and prosperity."
The article doesn't mention if he provided examples to support this last statement, but I doubt it. Singapore was ranked 140th out of 167 countries for press freedom, while China was 159th (and Hong Kong 39th). As if to back up the ex-Prime Minister, the SCMP notes China's enlightened policy to coverage of bird flu:
ontrols over reporting on bird flu outbreaks have been tightened, despite Beijing's pledges to employ "complete openness" in the fight against the potentially catastrophic virus.
In a recently issued directive, the Publicity Department ordered newspapers to seek approval from the authorities before publishing any reports on new outbreaks of bird flu and any animal or human deaths which result...
Apart from the reporting of outbreaks and any deaths they cause, news about an exercise to prepare for the closure of ports in the event of human-to-human transmission of H5N1 has also been kept under wraps. Authorities were wary that news of the drill could spark speculation that human cases had been reported, according to government sources.
As a vote of thanks to Singapore, it appears PBoC's Huijin Investments has rejected Singapore's state-owned Temasek Holdings from taking a 10% stake in Bank of China (although Bloomberg contradicts the Caijing Magazine report). Why the rejection? The SCMP again:
"Huijin is BOC's major shareholder and at present it does not agree with Temasek becoming a strategic investor," a senior China Banking Regulatory Commission official told the South China Morning Post...The eight-member board of directors at Huijin, which controls 78.15 per cent of BOC, voted to reject the deal because Temasek's investments were seen as excessive, according to a report in Caijing magazine...
"What the government wants to do by allowing foreign strategic investors is to bring in the products, the management skills and the banking technology, and Temasek is not actually a bank," said Frank Gong, the chief economist at JP Morgan. "Temasek clearly doesn't bring as much to the table as Bank of America and Royal Bank of Scotland," added ABN Amro banking analyst Simon Ho, referring to the two banks' investments in China Construction Bank and BOC, respectively. "It brings a lot of money but not banking technology per se."
Journalists adopting unethical tactics to pursue stories are ruining press freedom and destroying the credibility of the media, industry representatives warned yesterday. The accusations came after two reporters from a Hong Kong-based publication allegedly broke into Canto-pop star Gigi Leung Wing-kei's room in China World Hotel in Beijing last month while she was there to attend a Ferragamo fashion show...
Tam Chi-keung, vice-chairman of the Journalists' Association and convenor of its ethics committee, condemned media members who worked "under the umbrella of press freedom but were actually destroying it".
And you thought Western paparazzi were bad. At least you know in Hong Kong your personal data and privacy are well protected by the mis-named Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data. Right? Ummm...the SCMP one more time:
A privacy watchdog has found no reasonable grounds to launch an investigation into the disclosure of e-mail subscribers' information by Yahoo! that led to the imprisonment of a mainland journalist.
Commissioner Roderick Woo Bun told a special Legco panel meeting on information technology and broadcasting yesterday that Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) had only disclosed information related to an office of a Chinese newspaper. He said that according to a verdict of the Changsha Intermediate People's Court in Hunan , "the information disclosed by Yahoo! ... to mainland authorities was only about the Contemporary Business News office in Hunan, which is not personal data".
To sum up: free press is bad for you, agreeing with China won't get you a piece of their banks, being a celebrity sucks, China learnt nothing from SARS and your email isn't private. Welcome to the Asian Century.
There's another possibility to consider with Avian Influenza: that the Chinese govt has learned its lesson from SARS, but is helpless to apply that experience in the face of bureaucracy: no one wants to report bad news without being able to report it "solved" at the same time. That results in a near-guarantee of hesitation.
Bureaucracy swallowed the Mongols and made them Chinese. Bureaucracy swallowed the Manchus and made them Chinese. I'd say the Communists resisted for a few decades in the Mao Zedong Cult of Personality, but especially after the demise of Deng Xiaoping, the Bureaucracy trumps Communist ideology.
I wouldn't be surprised if we start hearing that the Eunuchs of the East Chamber are plotting against President Hu...[grin]
Thanks Doug. Maybe I'll try more "summing up" in future.
Nathan - interesting interpretation but I'm not that optimistic. Manadarins' natural reaction is still to cover-up and evade, not be open and deal with the problem. And that applies to far more than just health issues.
Bates Gill is not just a spoonerism of the world' richest man. He is a noted expert on China and amongst other things, the HIV/AIDS problem in China. Meanwhile China has a well-known penchant for fiddling statistics, especially as many public servants are measured by these statistics. Worst of all, often the same person compiles the numbers they are measured by. But sometimes this can hide positive trends for fear of ridicule. The SCMP reports on Bates Gill's observations:
Beijing may be keeping new estimates of the number of HIV infections on the mainland secret because they are lower than previously published figures and could undermine the government's credibility...This could be the reason why the official HIV figure had remained at 840,000 for the past two years, said Bates Gill, a China expert at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
"What I've heard is that with further modelling and more fine-tuning of their approaches, they now ... have come to the conclusion that the number may be actually lower than 840,000," he told a briefing in Beijing. The new estimate had not been made public because of concern about the political impact of such an announcement, he said.
"Clearly the immediate reaction might be, `Oh my God, they really are meddling with the numbers and they're trying to put forward a picture which is less serious than it actually is'," Mr Gill said...
The estimate of 840,000 HIV-positive cases was arrived at using modelling techniques, and was the result of a co-operative effort between China, the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids. The central government had only directly diagnosed HIV in 120,000 people, said Mr Gill, who regularly travels to the mainland to meet Ministry of Health and other senior government officials. "What I'm saying is that nine out of 10 people or so in China today - according to the government's own statistics - who are HIV positive don't know it," he said. "And the government doesn't know who they are or where they are."
So there's good news, but we can't be told about it. That aside, the main issue is the one I've put in bold in the quote: dealing with the potential for a wider HIV/AIDS epidemic in China. Forget about bird flu. The stigma of AIDS, combined with old fashioned values and widespread ignorance, means China is at the cusp of a potential widespread problem. A problem that can be prevented if the political will is there.
Bird flu has pushed AIDS far from the front page, so in that sense it has already started affecting human health.
A 12-year old girl has died from flu-like symptoms in a Hunan village where the mainland's third outbreak of bird flu in a week was confirmed. He Yin and her 10-year-old brother fell ill about a week ago at their home in the village, Wantang, after eating a sick chicken that had died, according to their farmer father, He Tieguang . She died soon after reaching the Children's Hospital in the provincial capital, Changsha .
So far there is no evidence linking her death with the outbreak of bird flu in Wantang.
Moral of that story: don't eat sick chickens. And once you've finished stockpiling your Tamiflu, check the used-by date, says the SCMP:
Doctors and pharmacies in Guangzhou have accused Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche of dumping Tamiflu medicine close to the end of its shelf life on the mainland market.
One doctor said he bought his first batch of the drug in August and the medicine had a January 2006 expiry date. A second batch bought last month was good until May and the last batch bought last week had a January 2007 expiry date. "The normal practice is to give us medicine with at least one year of shelf life remaining, but they told me they had no more stocks. They only have 2006 stocks. I think they are clearing old stocks. This is so unethical," he said.
But before you panic, I implore you to read this piece from The Standard, titled Battling an epidemic of fear. It is not 1918. In the words of a famous book: Don't Panic.
I'd go for the expired medicine as opposed to no medicine since recently expired medicines are usually 90+ per cent effective, so maybe you have to take a little more.
According to an NPR report, the dispute concerning the first region of the world, China, Italy, or the Middle East, to feature noodles on the menu, is settled. According to archaeological remains from present-day northwest China, the Lajia site is the winner by thousands of years. The noodles, made from millet, disintegrated into dust upon contact with the air. If only those annoying little morsels of noodle too small to pick up did that.
Yknow, when I saw this story, the two words that stuck out for me were "northwest" and "neolithic". These noodles are from the Lajia site in Qinghai, and date to the Xia/Shang dynasties - which never reached as far as Qinghai, except perhaps in limited trade. The Lajia site was part of Qijia culture, which seems to have had as many links west as they did east. They had jade from Xinjiang and lived a semi-nomadic life like other Central Asian cultures.
I'm trying to get material together to post on just how "Chinese" the Qijia were. The concept of "China" didn't exist at the time, so that limits it right there. Just like some white dude from Boston claiming Lakota artifacts as "American".
The article in the New Scientist doesn't cover this either. I should have said present-day China, of course. The interesting part is that the noodles were made of millet, establishing links with other cultures using that grain.
What you say also goes to explaining why Middle Easterners claim the noodle, too. Perhaps this story is more appropriate in a central asian blog.
if memory serves me right. it is the middle east that first grew wheat. so it is not at all unlikely that noodle was invented while wheat was passing from ME to the yellow river area.
in any case, it seems unlikely that noodle is invented by the italians. :)
about qijia, people moved a lot in 4000 years. the miao/yao used to occupy the yellow river as well, but were driven to the mountains after defeated by the han.
so i am not sure if we can establish solid link between geography and the people who live here in present days. the only evidence that might shed some light on the issue, is probably from the artifact connections.
Millet noodles, according to the BBC article, are still eaten by the poorer farmers in the region, wheat obviously being preferable. It also says the types millet used are oxtail millet (Setaria italica) and broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), and those are indigeneous.
Sunbin, the fact that they moved around a bit is kind of the point. They were nomadic. I just think it's inaccurate to say that these noodles are Chinese. That's like saying totem poles are American. Either statement is only true in the sense that the artifacts are found within modern day borders of states created by other cultures. There was no such thing as "China" back then and the Qijia aren't really part of the ancestry. They were the neighbors of the Xia dynasty, not part of it.
Dave, I am not if you are right. "Qijia didn't belong to Xia" doesn't mean people at Qijia were related to Chinese. It's actually depending on how you define "Chinese".
If Chinese was already an established concept long before Qijia culture, probably you are right. However if Chinese is only an aggregate of many different tribes and itself was a forming concept at that time, then Qijia people probably belong to one of the ancestor tribe of Chinese. It also should be noted that ancient people at that time were mobile. This culture might migrate from the East or West.
I say it's a very advanced development in Chinese history, if you could prove your argument below
“Qijia aren't really part of the ancestry”
Points taken. I guess it is better to understand "China" as a geographic concept in today's definition, rather than as a ethnic definition. this applies to all archeological cases. That is how I read it.
example: early homonoid(?) in ZhouKoudian near Beijing, or homo erectus in Kenya - their genetic relationship to present day chinese, africans, americans are probably the same.
OTOH, the descendents of Qijia, might well have moved and mixed with the Han people during the 3-5th century grand migration or later.
---
i missed the millet part. if that is the case, there is a strong case against the ME/Persian theory.
Qijia and other Yangshao tribes probably did enter the gene pool of modern day Chinese to some extent. It was Longshan culture, however, that was sedentary and inhabited the Eastern regions. The Yongshao were nomadic and lived in the north and east. Many aspects of their culture were far closer to that of Central Asian nomads. And I'd love to see what their DNA looks like... there's a distinct possibility they're genetically closer to steppe peoples.
My main point is not that Qijia did not have some influence or connection to modern Chinese (Chinese did not exist as a concept back then Lin). My point is that the Lajia camp was not Chinese. It was Qijia. A woman named Fitzgerald-Huber has apparently written about how the Qijia were a link between the Longshan and Eurasians like, presumably, the Persians. I just don't like the fact that if it's within China's borders, it automatically culturally belongs to China. Just like I don't like modern Americans co-opting totem poles and tomahawks. When you think about it, it's just silly to credit a modern culture with the achievements of an extinct one. And yes, I extend this to modern day Italians and Greeks as well.
Oh, and millet doesn't count against the ME/Persian theory. Someone invented how to make noodles out of some kind of plant. These guys made it with the local plants available. Remember, the poorer farmers in Qinghai still eat millet noodles, presumably because its cheaper and easier to grow there. Millet may simply have been a substitute they used because they didn't have anything else to use.
Also, Lin, my point of ancestry was not about genetics. It was about the fact that the earliest dynasties started in the east, not the west, of China, and they were sedentary, not nomadic. As far as cultural ancestry, there is a more direct line from the Longshan to the Xia and Shang. And let's not forget, the Qinghai region was for foreign barbarians for most of Chinese history. The previous dynasties usually considered this area non-Chinese.
And Sun Bin, if we are saying China is strictly a geographic concept in archaeology... then really all we're talking about is shallow nationalism, aren't we? (I mean when people write things about who gets credit for noodles, Italy or China).
Also, Lin, my point of ancestry was not about genetics. It was about the fact that the earliest dynasties started in the east, not the west, of China, and they were sedentary, not nomadic. As far as cultural ancestry, there is a more direct line from the Longshan to the Xia and Shang. And let's not forget, the Qinghai region was for foreign barbarians for most of Chinese history. The previous dynasties usually considered this area non-Chinese (or at least foreign).
And Sun Bin, if we are saying China is strictly a geographic concept in archaeology... then really all we're talking about is shallow nationalism, aren't we? (I mean when people write things about who gets credit for noodles, Italy or China).
"then really all we're talking about is shallow nationalism, aren't we? (I mean when people write things about who gets credit for noodles, Italy or China)."
yes, it is. the truth is more important than national pride, esp in these cases where what difference does it make? you are not going to get a patent for it.
i am only interested in the scientific implication. who among present people gets the credit, is something i really don't care.
that is my point when i raised the homo erectus issue. genetically, we all are just as close as, and as distant from, those bones in east african rift valley.
how the skill move and get transferred? how these people moved or assimilated, why did they do that? did noodle got invented after pottery bowls (hence soup) was invented? is there any implication/relation to the chopsticks (or the forks?)
these are more interesting questions to ask, and to answer.
"I just don't like the fact that if it's within China's borders, it automatically culturally belongs to China. Just like I don't like modern Americans co-opting totem poles and tomahawks."
if this helps to raise fund and attract attention to academic research, why not use it?
there is really no harm done.
critically minded people are able to separate facts from interpretations.
theoretically, it is possible that Qijia taught the Han (before other) of this technology given the geographic proximity, either by teaching or mixing with them. It is also possible that people in the geographic proximity (Han or people in Yunnan or Tibet) invented the tech and passed to Qijia.
your hypothesis of persian is also possible, though less likely given the difficulty in travelling techonologies.
as i said before, i believe they need to examine the artifact styles to establish the connections.
you said, "millet doesn't count against the ME/Persian theory." could you elaborate?
the noodle found we made on indigeneous millets. if we assume we cannot find noodle earlier than this. that means noodle was first made from millet, near the qinghai/gansu area.
so it is very unlikely than persian invented it?
btw, since the noodle were found inside a pottery bowl. it is very likely it is 'soup noodle'. since we do not have soup spaghetti, maybe we can say it is not favorable for the italian theory?
dave, another question (since you seem to be studying archeology)
if you can read chinese, check this out about qijia
http://www.lx.gansu.gov.cn/printpage.asp?ArticleID=129
it said,
they are agricultural people (you are right that some believe they are a branch of yangshao culture), they grow millet and rear pigs. what was the interpretation that they are nomadic and relate to persian?
-- btw, i read they found a lot of links between qijia and lajia and it is quite sure about the connection. + that lajia site was a result of a major earthquake.
i googles Qijia + Fitzgerald-Huber,
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/earlychina/publications/ecjournal/ec20/fitzgerald-huber.html
Found her 1995 article abstract:
"This paper investigates the relationships between the Early Metal Age cultures of the Inner Mongolia and Gansu-Qinghai area with the Erlitou culture of the Central Plains region, and addresses the issue whether specific metal objects characteristic of these cultures may have their source of inspiration in areas as remote as southern Siberia and presentday Afghanistan and southern Turkmenistan. The proposal that China at the very beginning of its Bronze Age may have been affected by longdistance cultural transmissions depends upon recent re-evaluations of the early history of the Eurasian steppe, in particular the advent of nomadic pastoralism and horse riding, and upon newly re-calibrated carbon dates ascertained for specific Siberian sites and for the Bactrian-Margiana complex."
So she said the steppe nomad probably influenced (maybe settled as?) Qijia culture. But there is no evidence that Qijia people become/influence the nomad (after settleing). Once Qijia settled in agriculture, I presume it is very unlike they would move West again?
all of that looks extremely interesting, thanks for finding it all. That's the discussion I'd much rather hear than the one in the press about Chinese vs. Italians. I'm going to go over the stuff you linked to and try and do a post on it. I'd like to pursue this further and get more of your input - I just happen to be a bit busy this week.
I'm not saying the Qijia didn't invent it first, or that they have no connections to East China. I'm just saying I don't like the way its framed in the media, and that I think there's too much emphasis in both Western and Chinese popular thinking that China is somehow discretely separate from the world. I think more emphasis should be put on grey areas where the two blur together, and I think this is an example where that emphasis is missing when there could be more.
As for your comment about "why not let it be spun that way if it gets money for academic research", I hear that kinda of rationale in the academic community all the time. Don't you find that kind of a cynical and implicitly elitist way of thinking about it? It implies that you do the research only to enlighten some tiny minority. It seems unsavory to me; it may be what academics have to resort to, but I don't think they should accept it as unalterable, which I think some do. That seems a bit hypocritical and, well, suggests the rest of the world is stupid and always will be. I'm not saying that's what you think, just that I get that impression from academia quite often.
academic funding: i am just a pragmatist and 'black cat/white cat' believer.
let me first admit i am a sympathizer of "elitists", literally. even though i don't understand what you mean by "tiny minority", were you refering to the academics, the sponsors or the audience?
yes, i sympathesize with the tiny group academic/elite, assuming that they pursue truth and knowledge and that benefits all of mankind. we can agree to disagree there.
(was off-topic comment from me originally)
---
We have some common grounds now, I hope you don't mind me venturing into somewhere we may not agree. to continue my pragmatism:
let's assume (HYPOTHEICALLY) there are present day descendents of Qijia, who are "DIFFFERENT" from Hans, and hence discriminated by "Han chauvinism", and people cannot have equal opportunity in finding jobs. now due to this publicity, the "chauvanistic" portion of the Han people become proud of Qijia and they convince themselves they are also Qijia and that Qijia are part of their extended family. they become happy to provide good jobs to them.
As a pragmatist I welcome such outcome and do not mind taking such path to achieve equality.
Don't we all believe in that everybody is equal, and that there should not be your race vs our race? Isn't this the celebrated dream and ideals such as that in American constitution? To me the broader concept of 'chinese'ness is helping this cause.
I know you prefer to equate "Chinese" to "Han", and view the broader definition of "Chinese" to include everybody living inside the current border as CCP conspiracy. My take is rather different. I view this distinction in semantics in a more benign way. It can be turned into something promoting ethnic/racial harmony. Just in the way that native/african/hispanic/white/asian americans are all americans. they are equal.
you may argue for a more neutral name instead of the word 'chinese'/'china', because of historic association and historic Han dominance. e.g. why not "singaporean" or 'east asian'? if that is what you care, i really do not disagree with you, except that as a pragmatist i do not really care. and i view that the benefit far outweighs the downside which bothers you.
because, i worry that being too rigorous on semantics will lead to ethnic distinction and hence ethnic conflict. in such case it would be the minorities who suffer.
yes, i sympathesize with the tiny group academic/elite, assuming that they pursue truth and knowledge and that benefits all of mankind.
Yeah, I agree. It's just that if the truth your pursuing is historical truth, and your funding comes from something that obscures historical truth, then your being funded by something that actually prevents you from sharing the knowledge you discover with mankind, doesn't it?
I don't see the definition of "Chinese" as being a CCP conspiracy. I see nothing wrong with Tibetans or Hui or Miao or whomever being considered "Chinese" as in belonging to the PRC. That's fine, and true. But when talking about history, "China" becomes a more complicated concept - as you pointed out yourself. And there is this pesky habit both within China and without to make things black and white: there's China, and there's everybody else. With Central Asia, particularly, there's this idea - found in Western, Central Asian and Chinese thinking - that as you move east you see, to put it in grossly oversimplified terms, white people, white people, white people BAM Chinese people. The Tarim Mummies in Xinjiang were presented on the Discovery Channel with the emphasis on "How in God's name did a Caucasian end up within the borders of Modern China?!!!??!! This is impossible!!!", when it's not such a sudden shift in genetics or culture at all - there are far more ties and gradations. But common thinking is that Chinese people and Central Asian people (and therefore by association Europe, the Middle East and radiating outward to the rest of humanity) are two completely different people separated forever by a big wall.
I think that this misconception contributes negatively to China's relationship with the world. Too often China is portrayed as "different" from the rest of Eurasia, when China is really part of a continuity. Emphasizing that continuity, I think, is especially necessary as the PRC continues to open up and reform. My experience in China was that Han Chinese students and teachers tended to think of different races and cultures almost as if we were entirely different species. Likewise alot of popular Western notions of China and Asia in general is that, well, they're inscrutable and alien. Saying that historical links and transitional peoples, like the Qijia, are "Chinese" is to miss an opportunity to emphasize that continuity. To reframe Chinese history within world history as one of belonging to a spectrum of the worlds people, rather than a special case, would be of benefit to China and everybody else.
I'm having difficulty expressing this clearly, so I hope that made some sense.
Just to confuse my point further, from my point of view minorities such as the Uyghurs, Mongols or Kazakhs and regions such as Xinjiang or Qinghai become a way of emphasizing inner China's links to the rest of the world and other cultures. But rather than emphasize just how different these minorities are, the PRC goes to ludicrous lengths to emphasize their oneness with the East of China and what is primarily Han history. This is a terrible loss, and actually fails to achieve what they want it to; instead of making minorities feel closer to the center, they recoil instead.
i think we achieve a lot of common grounds. ;)i do agree with what you said, and i think i got your points, esp the "continuity", which is easy to see if one thinks in the context of genetic theory and why i said when i read it, the only assocaition is the geographical context of (present day) china.
p.s. research: my premise is that the funder does not interfere with truth. they can make their own interpretation of the results, but they cannot ask the academic to distort the facts.
otherwise, it is called not academical result, and is no different from those publications commissioned by lobby group
Central Asian blog? Lajia culture is in Minhe County, which is in Eastern Qinghai. Qijia culture itself centers around Eastern Gansu, Ningxia and Western Qinghai. These are not "Central Asian". At most, Xinjiang could be considered related to Central Asia, along with the part of Gansu west of the Jade Gate Pass.
As Lin mentioned, "Chinese" is an aggregate identity, as are many modern ethnic and national identities. It cannot be limited to the tiny patch of purported prehistorical Huaxia territory along the Yellow River. If Qijia is not Chinese, then neither are Longshan, Yangshao, Dawenkou, Peiligang, Liangzhu, Hemudu, Hongshan and every other neolithic culture across China. Then we'd be left to wonder where on Earth all those Chinese came from.
Monty Python had a famous song about traffic lights. It began (the full version is below the jump):
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
No matter where they've been.
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
But only when they're green.
It appears China has taken the message to heart. Today's SCMP reports on the latest efforts to prepare China for a potential flu outbreak with....you guessed it, a set of traffic lights with Chinese characteristics. Below the jump is the flu system, with the added bonus of a blue light at the "don't panic" level. But this isn't the first time we've seen the blue/green/yellow/red lights. Only last month the Income Research Institute said China's income gap was approaching the yellow light area. I'm waiting for someone to introduce the "walk/don't walk" scale.
In a country where 100,000 people died last year from traffic accidents, it's a shame the only traffic lights that get noticed are in newspapers.
China's flu alert system
The full Monty Python traffic light song
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
No matter where they've been.
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
But only when they're green.
He likes traffic lights,
He likes traffic lights,
He likes traffic lights,
No matter where they've been.
He likes traffic lights,
He likes traffic lights,
He likes traffic lights,
But only when they're green.
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
That is what I said.
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
But not when they are red.
He likes traffic lights,
He likes traffic lights,
That is what he said.
He likes traffic lights,
He likes traffic lights,
He likes traffic lights,
He likes traffic lights,
He likes traffic lights,
But not when they are red.
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
Although my name's not Bamber.
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I like traffic lights,
I...Oh God!
In a related Python-moment:
I LIKE CHINESE
(Spoken)The world today seems absolutely crackers,
With nuclear bombs to blow us all sky high.
There's fools and idiots sitting on the trigger.
It's depressing and it's senseless, and that's why...
I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
They only come up to your knees,
Yet they're always friendly, and they're ready to please.
I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
There's nine hundred million of them in the world today.
You'd better learn to like them; that's what I say.
I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
They come from a long way overseas,
But they're cute and they're cuddly, and they're ready to please.
I like Chinese food.
The waiters never are rude.
Think of the many things they've done to impress.
There's Maoism, Taoism, I Ching, and Chess.
So I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
I like their tiny little trees,
Their Zen, their ping-pong, their yin, and yang-ese.
I like Chinese thought,
The wisdom that Confucious taught.
If Darwin is anything to shout about,
The Chinese will survive us all without any doubt.
So, I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
They only come up to your knees,
Yet they're wise and they're witty, and they're ready to please.
[From Eric Idle Sings Monty Python: I like Chinese,
I like Chinese
We sometimes bomb theire embassies,
But we don't really mean to we thought they were trees]
All together.
[verse in Chinese]
Wo ai zhongguo ren.
Wo ai zhongguo ren.
Wo ai zhongguo ren.
Ni hao ma; ni hao ma; ni hao ma; zaijien!
I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
Their food is guaranteed to please,
A fourteen, a seven, a nine, and lychees.
I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
I like their tiny little trees,
Their Zen, their ping-pong, their yin, and yang-ese.
I like Chinese.
I like Chinese.
They only come up to your knees...(fade)
Music and lyrics by: Eric Idle
Arranged by: John Du Prez
Sometimes a blogger will struggle for a title for a post. Other times, they write themselves. The People's Daily says China is to send pig sperm to space. This vital step forward for China's space program is an attempt to see how the DNA is altered in space:
About 14 grams of pig sperm will be taken into space in October this year. Under the effect of microgravity, high radiation and strong magnetic field, DNA of the sperm may alter, said Wang Jinyong from Chongqing Academy of Animal Husbandry Science.
After four or five days in space, the sperm will be brought back to Earth and used to fertilize pig eggs in test tubes. The DNA may change for better or for worse, and we must preserve good changes and eliminate bad ones so as to improve quality of pigs, Wang said.
That's right, China is trying to breed super-pigs. Their poor porcines cousins, confined to the tight bounds of Earth, are spreading streptococus suis and infecting Hong Kongers. Consumers can't wait for genetically modified astropigs.
"Sometimes a blogger will struggle for a title for a post."
Or sometimes he will copy it from an identical headline about exactly the same story from another blogger who posted it exactly one month ago to the day:
Plagiarism is the highest form of flattery - actually I meant to add a smilie after the initial post so you would not mistake the tone in which the reply was meant to be written. I thought it was quite funny.
![[boomerang]](http://simonworld.mu.nu/boomerang2.gif){kind=small}
Posted by 
