Most 二奶 receive "rental on a fashionable penthouse in one of the city's dazzling white apartment blocks, plus a 5,000-yuan (about £350) monthly budget for clothing, haircare and skin-whitening treatments. That's more than double China's average monthly income."Is this wrong? Is this right? I don't know. However, I do know that this is all created by the income disparity that exists between people from the countryside and those from the cities, between the young and old, between women and men.
In turn her 'husband' - a successful industrialist whose factories stud mainland China - entertains Little Snow once or twice a month. The nights are raucous, but the sex lacklustre, to Little Snow 'a function no different from brushing my hair or drinking a glass of water'. He's up before the sun rises, sometimes leaving a rose on the pillow.
The country has changed rapidly; but Chinese thinking hasn't caught up with this new reality,' says Yang Erche Namu, aka Namu, one-time mistress to a diplomat and now a postergirl for modern Chinese feminism, whose ballsy bestselling books urge Chinese women to pursue emotional and financial emancipation. 'Some men are getting very rich, with cash to throw around, but at the same time the wealth gap is widening and the countryside is full of young girls living in poverty. So it's natural that love becomes a transaction - it's a simple case of supply and demand.'In addition to the young 2nd wives, there are also 2nd husbands, gigalos or 鸭子 [yazi] in Shenzhen. While this usually occurs less frequently, it is still a part of the culture. A recent Malaysian article described a young, 22 year old Shenzhen man blackmailing his 50 year old wife for 1 million HKD.
The NBA has formed a joint venture with Anschutz Entertainment Group to design and develop about 12 multipurpose arenas in major Chinese cities.The NBA already has a considerable footprint in marketing itself in China.
"We think of this over the next 20 years, not the next year or two," he said, adding some would be new arenas and others would be created by renovating existing facilities.
"You're going to see a combination," Leiweke said. "Most of them will be built and designed from the ground up."
"Where feasible, the arenas will be developed in conjunction with surrounding cultural and entertainment districts potentially comprised of restaurants, retail outlets, cinemas, hotels, residential areas, sports training facilities and smaller live entertainment venues," the NBA said in a statement.
At Wangfujing - these people know 4 different languages
A girl got lost in the metro station! Here come the volunteers.
China Mobil Volunteer station near the Beijing Military Museum
Old People hanging out
Young People hanging out
Everyone's an volunteer.
China Mobile Volunteer Stand near the Guo Mao area
In a recent press release published online by Marketwatch, on Oct. 27, 2008, Shenzhen will officially opened a office in New York City.
China is getting fat and less healthy. It's true.New figures from the Health Ministry show that urban Chinese boys age 6 are 2.5 inches taller and 6.6 pounds heavier on average than Chinese city boys 30 years ago.Chinese children have a lot of factors working against them in the battle against bad health and obesity:The average 6-year-old in Beijing or Shanghai weighs nearly 47 pounds and is 3 feet, 10.5 inches tall, ministry figures show. The average American of the same age weighs just over 50 pounds and also is 3 feet 10.5 inches tall, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As of 12 am on Friday, family members of 31 victims of the fire had signed compensation agreements with the local government, according to the Longgang district authorities.On the following day, Xinghua reported the arrest of officials allegedly involved a factory fire that happened back in February in Shenzhen.The Longgang district government is paying kin of those who died 250,000 yuan.
The property of Wu Wang Club has been frozen and the lawsuit over the fire is expected to take a while. Family members of the victims can file a suit and claim for compensation from the frozen club property. The club will pay back the government after the court ruling, said Huang Wei, spokesman for the Longgang district government.
Some 43 people injured in the fire are still in hospital. Four of them are on life support. Medical experts assigned by the Ministry of Health said the injury to their nervous system as a result of suffocation is most likely beyond recovery.
Despite a citywide drive to preempt such incidents following the nightclub fire, a fire broke out at an old factory of a Taiwan-funded company in Shajing of Shenzhen's Bao'an district around 4 am on Friday. It was put out in five hours. There were no casualties.
Nine people including four government officials have been arrested in connection with a fatal factory fire that claimed 15 lives in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, in February.As I have seen personally in the past few days, hopefully this kind of attention will bring greater awareness for fire safety in the city.
The four officials, identified as Huang Hanguang, Zeng Hongbo, Lin Guozhong and Yi Rao, were from the city's fire fighting bureau and environment protection bureau. They were arrested on charges of neglecting their duties and misconduct, said the press office of the Shenzhen government on Sunday.
After going inside Richy club, it only looked like it was 70% capacity as it used to look before the incident. The dance floor was gone while at least 8 tables next to high traffic areas were taken away. This left huge spaces for people to walk around. Some of the VIP sofas were also removed in favor of wider paths for club-goers. All of these measures definitely walking around earlier but a lot of the ambiance was destroyed. Now instead of a packed, really intimate feel, it felt like it was 9pm and people were just kind of hanging out.
I personally have never been to the Longgang area. It is as far and different from my Luohu and Nanshan clubs as the Bronx would be for Meatpacking district Manhattan. (So thank you to all of my friends who messaged me asking if I was ok).
We are on final countdown till the next group of Chinese taikonauts go into space. Tomorrow night, 9/25/2008 at around 9:50pm, Shenzhou 7 will lift off for a mission in space. This will mark the first space walk ever by an Chinese astronaut, or 太空人.
The park, 125 kilometers from the Vietnamese capital, aims to attract 170 Chinese manufacturing companies in the clothing and electronics industries to take advantage of the country’s cheap labor and the government’s preferential policies and tax incentives...
I finally came back to Shenzhen after staying in Beijing for the Olympics and post-Olympic festivities for about a month. After a few days of movie watching, video games playing and takeout in my new apartment, I finally decided to venture out into the local neighborhood in the Nanshan district.After attending the spectacular closing ceremony at the Beijing Olympics and feeling the vibrations from hundreds of Chinese drummers pulsating in my own chest, I was tempted to conclude two things: “Holy mackerel, the energy coming out of this country is unrivaled.” And, two: “We are so cooked. Start teaching your kids Mandarin.”However, I’ve learned over the years not to over-interpret any two-week event. Olympics don’t change history. They are mere snapshots — a country posing in its Sunday bests for all the world too see. But, as snapshots go, the one China presented through the Olympics was enormously powerful — and it’s one that Americans need to reflect upon this election season.
China did not build the magnificent $43 billion infrastructure for these games, or put on the unparalleled opening and closing ceremonies, simply by the dumb luck of discovering oil. No, it was the culmination of seven years of national investment, planning, concentrated state power, national mobilization and hard work.
Seven years ... Seven years ... Oh, that’s right. China was awarded these Olympic Games on July 13, 2001 — just two months before 9/11.
As I sat in my seat at the Bird’s Nest, watching thousands of Chinese dancers, drummers, singers and acrobats on stilts perform their magic at the closing ceremony, I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years: China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for Al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones.
The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnetic propulsion instead of steel wheels and tracks, to get to town in a blink.
Then ask yourself: Who is living in the third world country?
Yes, if you drive an hour out of Beijing, you meet the vast dirt-poor third world of China. But here’s what’s new: The rich parts of China, the modern parts of Beijing or Shanghai or Dalian, are now more state of the art than rich America. The buildings are architecturally more interesting, the wireless networks more sophisticated, the roads and trains more efficient and nicer. And, I repeat, they did not get all this by discovering oil. They got it by digging inside themselves.
I realize the differences: We were attacked on 9/11; they were not. We have real enemies; theirs are small and mostly domestic. We had to respond to 9/11 at least by eliminating the Al Qaeda base in Afghanistan and investing in tighter homeland security. They could avoid foreign entanglements. Trying to build democracy in Iraq, though, which I supported, was a war of choice and is unlikely to ever produce anything equal to its huge price tag.
But the first rule of holes is that when you’re in one, stop digging. When you see how much modern infrastructure has been built in China since 2001, under the banner of the Olympics, and you see how much infrastructure has been postponed in America since 2001, under the banner of the war on terrorism, it’s clear that the next seven years need to be devoted to nation-building in America.
We need to finish our business in Iraq and Afghanistan as quickly as possible, which is why it is a travesty that the Iraqi Parliament has gone on vacation while 130,000 U.S. troops are standing guard. We can no longer afford to postpone our nation-building while Iraqis squabble over whether to do theirs.
A lot of people are now advising Barack Obama to get dirty with John McCain. Sure, fight fire with fire. That’s necessary, but it is not sufficient.
Obama got this far because many voters projected onto him that he could be the leader of an American renewal. They know we need nation-building at home now — not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in Georgia, but in America. Obama cannot lose that theme.
He cannot let Republicans make this election about who is tough enough to stand up to Russia or bin Laden. It has to be about who is strong enough, focused enough, creative enough and unifying enough to get Americans to rebuild America. The next president can have all the foreign affairs experience in the world, but it will be useless, utterly useless, if we, as a country, are weak.
Obama is more right than he knows when he proclaims that this is “our” moment, this is “our” time. But it is our time to get back to work on the only home we have, our time for nation-building in America. I never want to tell my girls — and I’m sure Obama feels the same about his — that they have to go to China to see the future.
Professor Friedman is the best teacher I've had. He is brilliant (you may think you've had brilliant professors before but this experience will make you re-evaluate that), intellectually rigorous (what do you say about a teacher who is able to tie all the tangents together), challenging (you WON'T find anyone who thinks like him and he expects you to think for yourself as well) and compassionate (really listens to students and seems to care). I have also never taken a class with such devastating intellectual and political implications.
He made people feel self-conscious about the quality of their comments in class. But, I will be forever grateful that I took this class because I got over my fear of public speaking and it really opened my mind and challenged me to think constantly during the class. He comes off as opinionated, but I think that's just because he knows he's right :). He really took the discussion to places I have never before nor since traveled to in any other class here. Always challenging us NOT to assume things, not to be lazy in thinking liberal ideology is always right, to read critically - to have our "bullshit detector" always on.
He's simply mind-blowing, funny, and the smartest person I've ever met (and that's genius level, because I like to think I'm pretty smart myself!). His democracy class was the best class I've taken at BC-- the readings on public ignorance and human fallibility were so compelling that I can no longer read the NY Times in the same complacent way I used to. Really, he should write a book and change the world.
The world can be divided in many ways — rich and poor, democratic and authoritarian — but one of the most striking is the divide between the societies with an individualist mentality and the ones with a collectivist mentality.
This is a divide that goes deeper than economics into the way people perceive the world. If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim.
These sorts of experiments have been done over and over again, and the results reveal the same underlying pattern. Americans usually see individuals; Chinese and other Asians see contexts.
The world can be divided in many ways — rich and poor, democratic and authoritarian — but one of the most striking is the divide between the societies with an individualist mentality and the ones with a collectivist mentality.
This is a divide that goes deeper than economics into the way people perceive the world. If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim.
These sorts of experiments have been done over and over again, and the results reveal the same underlying pattern. Americans usually see individuals; Chinese and other Asians see contexts.
When the psychologist Richard Nisbett showed Americans individual pictures of a chicken, a cow and hay and asked the subjects to pick out the two that go together, the Americans would usually pick out the chicken and the cow. They’re both animals. Most Asian people, on the other hand, would pick out the cow and the hay, since cows depend on hay. Americans are more likely to see categories. Asians are more likely to see relationships.
You can create a global continuum with the most individualistic societies — like the United States or Britain — on one end, and the most collectivist societies — like China or Japan — on the other.
The individualistic countries tend to put rights and privacy first. People in these societies tend to overvalue their own skills and overestimate their own importance to any group effort. People in collective societies tend to value harmony and duty. They tend to underestimate their own skills and are more self-effacing when describing their contributions to group efforts.
Researchers argue about why certain cultures have become more individualistic than others. Some say that Western cultures draw their values from ancient Greece, with its emphasis on individual heroism, while other cultures draw on more on tribal philosophies. Recently, some scientists have theorized that it all goes back to microbes. Collectivist societies tend to pop up in parts of the world, especially around the equator, with plenty of disease-causing microbes. In such an environment, you’d want to shun outsiders, who might bring strange diseases, and enforce a certain conformity over eating rituals and social behavior.
Either way, individualistic societies have tended to do better economically. We in the West have a narrative that involves the development of individual reason and conscience during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and then the subsequent flourishing of capitalism. According to this narrative, societies get more individualistic as they develop.
But what happens if collectivist societies snap out of their economic stagnation? What happens if collectivist societies, especially those in Asia, rise economically and come to rival the West? A new sort of global conversation develops.
The opening ceremony in Beijing was a statement in that conversation. It was part of China’s assertion that development doesn’t come only through Western, liberal means, but also through Eastern and collective ones.
The ceremony drew from China’s long history, but surely the most striking features were the images of thousands of Chinese moving as one — drumming as one, dancing as one, sprinting on precise formations without ever stumbling or colliding. We’ve seen displays of mass conformity before, but this was collectivism of the present — a high-tech vision of the harmonious society performed in the context of China’s miraculous growth.
If Asia’s success reopens the debate between individualism and collectivism (which seemed closed after the cold war), then it’s unlikely that the forces of individualism will sweep the field or even gain an edge.
For one thing, there are relatively few individualistic societies on earth. For another, the essence of a lot of the latest scientific research is that the Western idea of individual choice is an illusion and the Chinese are right to put first emphasis on social contexts.
Scientists have delighted to show that so-called rational choice is shaped by a whole range of subconscious influences, like emotional contagions and priming effects (people who think of a professor before taking a test do better than people who think of a criminal). Meanwhile, human brains turn out to be extremely permeable (they naturally mimic the neural firings of people around them). Relationships are the key to happiness. People who live in the densest social networks tend to flourish, while people who live with few social bonds are much more prone to depression and suicide.
The rise of China isn’t only an economic event. It’s a cultural one. The ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream.
It’s certainly a useful ideology for aspiring autocrats.
The 2008 Beijing Olympics have officially come to an end. The stadiums are silent. The medals have been given out. The athletes have left. I cant believe the Olympics are already over. After spending soo long perparing for it, the 16 days quickly passed and we're now at Post-Olympics Day 2.
"The Chinese did it again the closing was amazing. First class and out of this world. The one negative was the London Show what in the heck was that. In Athens when the Chinese did there welccome to show it was amazing and you knew you where going to get something special in Beijing. I hope that London does better than what they showed to-day."
"It has been a long time that I felt embarrassed for 8 long minutes. I really hope the organizers get there act together for the 2012 Olympics in London, because whether we like it or not the Chinese did a wonderful job from beginning to end. Whether true or false, let us hope the Red Arrows will do a fly past at the opening ceremony in London because that will be something worth watching, unless of course Boris has something up his sleeve to surprise us all."
-Rose, Bicester
"The Chinese showed their rich heritage and history in a dignified and beautiful performance. Us? We showed just what a farce 2012 will be. Our country's heritage (prior to the last government!) is one to be proud of. We have customs and a richer history than many others. So why are we showing a logo from the 70's (I'm a designer, it's shocking!) and a display of ageing rock, one-hit wonders, chavs and only modern London? I'm proud to be English, but in 2012? I may be moving..."
-Angela, Chesterfield
My first Olympic event that I went to was the Men's basketball preliminary game between the USA and Angola.
