The Wayback Machine - http://web.archive.org/web/20040522213431/http://www.brainysmurf.org:80/

What crack is Kim Jong-il smoking? A picture of North Korea’s estimated 130 forest fires that’s been circulating on the internet for a few days (originally via the Marmot).

Reminds me of a mere three decades ago when China watcher’s only live hint of the devestation of the Cultural Revolution was in bodies that turned up in Hong Kong. There’s a kind of perspective in remembering China’s previous isolationism.

Kahn on gov. job discrimination. Via Richard I was pointed to an article that I thought was particularly sloppy. NTY’s Kahn has always been hopelessly out of touch with China from my perspective, so I thought that I could mark my return to blogging by pounding his head in with a brick.
Ms. Chen, 35, is a prim and confident member of the Communist Party. She scored high on the entrance exam, impressed her interviewer and made the short list of 80 finalists, whittled down from more than 600.
That’s odd, why no educational qualifications? Why no mention of her experience? Oh, that’s right, because China’s labor market is at the quasi-stage of Gee Ping, we’re actually pooling for applicants and we can pick and choose what kind of person we want! and not, you know, just picking people based on whether or not we owe a favor to our wife’s brother. Goodness, to think of this time-warp of a change to think that hiring procedures would be oh so unenlightened!
She knew her application was in trouble, though, when she was called in for a second physical checkup. Soon she got the bad news: she could not get the job, she was told, because she is half an inch too short.
I can imagine the rude nurse announcing “Nope, short of the standard!” I bet it’s just sort of echoes in the woman’s mind. SHORT OF THE STANDARD. Kind of like that time when my fiancee was told by her employer she wouldn’t be promoted because she doesn’t have a white face. Heh.
Ms. Chen is one of many Chinese who are denied government jobs because they do not meet an often unwritten code of fitness - height, looks and robust good health …
Um, actually there Kahn, these things are actually often written down. Oh and by the way, do you really think height and looks counts as fitness?
… that many say has nothing to do with their ability to perform the task in question.
Many say? Isn’t that kind of like saying that many say Americans consider speech to be a right that the government should protect? You might get some shrugs from your Chinese friends, Kahn, but you’re writing for the NYT you be writin for edjumacated Americans. We do know our raghts.
Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and began interacting more with the outside world, it has worked to project a positive global image. Government departments are being told to raise their stature and put their best face forward. Some have been following the instructions literally.
Odd, that. Last I heard The WTO hasn’t done much to change how much China is interacting with the outside world. People keep complaining that it hasn’t put the pressure they thought it would on China. (Imagine that, China reforming on their own time schedule.) Double odd, I thought the period known as when China started “interacting more” with the outside world was back in the 80s.
“They are trying to attract the tallest or the prettiest people, because it makes them look good,” said Ms. Chen, who at 5 feet 1.3 inches is just below average for adult women in China. “But it is completely random and unfair to everyone else.”
Word up sister. Although not random. I prefer short women myself, but hey every Rome has it’s statue.
The standards are a sign of how far China has drifted from the Communist Party’s stated socialist values. Officials are no longer selected based on the basis of ideological fervor or working-class background, but rather in ways that seem more reminiscent of China’s imperial history.

Now as then, Chinese officials reject popular elections as unsuitable. Instead, they intimate that they are naturally selected to lead. They try to recruit the best, the brightest and, sometimes with surprising frankness, the most beautiful people to hold public positions.

China’s 33-million-member public sector is more meritocratic than it was in Mao’s time, with rigorous exams required for many positions. But the notion of merit includes some traits that are basically genetic and others that seem highly subjective.

Okay, now I’m lost. I see where Kahn is going by indicating that China is shredding it’s “ideological fervor” (a term that only makes sense for mere few years during the Cultural Revolution, by the way) and going back to it’s imperalistic days. Which is fine, because you have lots of scholars who are making the same observation. (What an original concept.)The government is legitimate as long as they have the Mandate of Heaven blah blah blah the masses aren’t educated enough to choose their own leaders blah blah blah.

But where the fuck is this belief coming from that China’s leaders being “naturally selected” to lead is reminiscent of their imperalistic days? It’s like he’s saying it was some sort of Nazi state. There was actually quite a lot of rationality behind the whole “trust our leaders” idea, thank you. Confucianism and neo-Confucianism emphasized relationships, in particular the relationship of the dutiful son to the father, as well as the dutiful subject to the leader. The beaucracy’s top posts depended on exams and the Emporer, heh, the Emporer … well there wasn’t a lot of rationality there but then neither were the idea of Kings.

In Hunan Province in central China, for example, women seeking any government jobs had to demonstrate that they had symmetrically shaped breasts. The requirement was dropped only in March, but only after a public outcry by women who had been denied jobs on those grounds.
Clearly, there is something else going on here. It’s not about some notion about leaders being naturally selected to lead. It’s all about honking boobies. So they aren’t Nazis, Kahn, but horny toads with ugly wives. Clearly. Moron. That natural selection bit was just pathetic.
When the government-run Nanchang Institute of Aeronautical Technology vets candidates for jobs as flight attendants for the national airlines, applicants are asked to parade on stage in swimwear. School officials said the bikini test was part of a comprehensive examination that also focused on general aptitude and proficiency in English.
Oh yes. horny tasteless toads with ugly wives. My three trips on Korean Air had me drooling, but I’ve been on twice the amount of China Air lines and I’ve not seen too many Chinese stewardesses I’d like to see in swimwear.
Rigorous requirements for height and physique have been used for years to screen people who want to work in China’s most internationally visible jobs, like Foreign Ministry posts. The ceremonial guard of the People’s Liberation Army, which performs for state visitors, for example, has long been noted for the uniform height and build of its soldiers.
Careful, there, Kahn, you’re going down a route that’s intellectually difficult to sneak out of. Ceremonial guards are what they are, for show. Which means there’s an argument for screening applicants based on stuff like build and height. It only demeans your argument. Oh, unless you’re going to go to say … I hope you’re not going to argue that …
But now the idea is catching on even in some out-of-the-way cities, with standards that vary from place to place. People who applied for jobs in agencies as varied as the tax bureau in the southern city of Shenzhen; the city government of Suqian, near Shanghai; and the central bank branch office of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, say they were denied positions because they fell short of local height requirements. “The government is giving a really bad example to the rest of society by discriminating in this way,” said Zhou Wei, a lawyer in Sichuan who has fought in local courts to have height requirements overturned. “The only way to stop this kind of outdated thinking is to outlaw it entirely.”
I should have known. Now you’re arguing that the government practice influences what happens in the regional cities, and somehow I feel Kahn is speaking through that quote. Okay, very clever. Let’s say China does the enlightened thing and outlaws the practice. The horny toads can’t do that anymore, they stop writing down height requirements, they stop asking women to parade in swimsuits, and they stop calling in people for examinations, well the problem will still remain because — gasp — they’ll still be horny toads with an unfair labor market and therefore possessing the basic ability to fondle and harass their workers. Obviously, China would be a better place if harassment of this sort was outlawed, but one just has to point out that a one shot deal like “outlaw it” doesn’t solve the problem. The problem lies in there are millions of women but only a small number of good jobs and the (mostly) men who decide to hire them, men who probably rose to their positions in the economic run-up during the 80s and 90s, got their wealth through money laundering and through family and peer connections found themselves sitting behind a desk instead of a factory and wouldn’t know a qualified worker if they bit them on their ass. That they would go ahead and succumb themselves to attractive ladies seems almost fatalistic.

An anecdote: Our receptionist (I’ll call her Sarah. Okay that’s her real English name, but let’s give her her anonymity, eh?) is a solid worker. You ask her to do something and she has it done five minutes later — and she always understands what’s being said to you. The western staff have again and again marvelled at her job performance and she really is the bright light at our school. Her workmates, however —mind you, her workmates who are paid at least twice as much and occupy a higher position — are staggering in their incompetence, some of whom don’t even have basic English ability despite that it’s a British International School. (Just last week I passed by one of my coworkers painstakingly pronouncing “Key! Key!” to the keymaster.) I particularly like Sarah because she doesn’t mind being spoken to in Chinese unlike most of the other workers (there’s a kind of unspoken nationalism associated a foreigner talking in Chinese, especially if that foreigner is seen as a boss).

Anyway, one day it was decided by our Enlightened Board that the receptionist had to be beautiful. I guess this was to match our new campus and improve our image. Well, Sarah isn’t gorgeous exactly, but she carries herself well and, hell I’ll say it, she has a nice tight ass and dresses quite attractively, bringing out her figure. Well she was demoted from receptionist to photocopy assistant and replaced with a chubby girl who wears a jean jacket and jeans nearly every day. At best she’s moderately attractive, but most days just nasty. Oh, and her English is atrocious.

Somehow I hardly think making a blanket law against anything would improve the situation. It’s far better to just take these perves to court on existing laws, which is happening and which the article goes further to point out. Not that I wouldn’t welcome it and sure it would be a positive development, but the problems Kahn’s writing about has more than just grey hues. There’s the sort of change needed that only comes with generational change.

When the era of the bosses who found their own jobs sans applications comes to an end, for example. In the meantime, we should expect at least some of this insanity.

Chinese labo(u)r laws I always love it when someone shows how Joseph Kahn was wrong. Stephen Frost shows how job discrimination is (at least in part) a written law in China. All hail progress.

Note: I’ve returned to China and am considering a return to blogging. We’ll see.

Snore. No modern US president has ever started out on the right foot with the PRC, and neither will Kerry. This is what he’s promising to do:
Kerry would use a combination of tight fiscal policies and tough enforcement to reduce a record $500 billion U.S. trade deficit that he called “not right.” He said he would institute a 120-day review of all trade pacts and use U.S. trade laws and the World Trade Organization to stop China and Japan from manipulating their currencies to gain a competitive advantage.
Pipe dream.
On China blogs. Brian Wagner conducted some interviews of China-based bloggers (myself included) and then put together a story for Columbia Political Reviews. Check it out.
Truly a dumbass. Via Richard I read that another China basher, this one by Paul M. Weyrich, has picked up his heavy jagged bat and started launching tirades. This is part of what he has to say:
Yahoo! willingly complied with the censorship demands of the Chinese Government. Try searching the terms “Chinese democracy” or “Taiwan independence” on the Chinese Internet and do not surprised if you draw blanks.
That’s odd. Why would China wanna block “Chinese democracy?” They do their own form of it, albeit behind an extremelly thick curtain and nothing like what the West (or anybody, really) would consider a “democracy” — but the keyword is used all the time in the local press (Chinese and English) when talking about the concoction Hu Jintao is coming up with to reform the Party. So curious I actually tried it. Being in China and all and being dared like that by a wingnut I couldn’t resist.

I hit pay dirt.

Screenshot of Yahoo search for “Chinese Democracy”.

Screenshot of Yahoo search for “Taiwan Independence”.

Not exactly the empty result the guy thought, eh?

If his fact checking is anything as atrocious as that book of his friend he promoted (from the sound of it yet another China bashing episode), then I think I know what to expect.


No, I’m not back from the extended hiatus. Just had three or four hours to kill today and found a few things that I couldn’t resist posting. I don’t plan on being back until I’ve found a purpose, a style, and voice worth coming back for, and I’m not really anywhere near there yet.

I’ve finally shouted out in contempt the phrase I hear once and a while at the British Int’l School where I work:

Bloody murder.

Imagine a president that chooses three times to not attack Abu Musab Zarqawi during a war on terrorism. All so that he can attack … Iraq.

I’ve been following the prison abuse scandal with horror, but this story just makes me wanna vomit.

An abbreviated PRC News China-based news digestis up at Winds of Change.
I couldn’t resist sharing this one with others:
Dear Editor,

I read your article in the Beijing Weekend paper March 26-28 edition on foreign teachers with great interest.

My mother works at Leeds University, often she comes across the problem of Chinese students with bad English. They all have the same problems: spelling and punctuation; they all spell wrongly and use wrong words. What my mother has found is the students with bad English, all had American English teachers in China. Americans do not speak English prperly, they have their own “dialect” of English, spelling their own way and using their own words.

My mother feels very sorry for these students. For years they have been learning English, but they are unable to communicate with many English people when they arrive in the UK. The problem is American English teachers. No American can speak English properly, it is not their fault it is the way it is in America.

If China wants to have good English in schools, they can employ English (oral) teachers who come from England. Having a degree is not that important for this position. American English teachers with numerous degrees, still speak and spell English wrongly.

Mr. D Carr

Undoubtedly, this is a purposeful attempt at getting a rise from people, concocted by some editor who then concealed himself as a reader (I guess they don’t have any of those) with both no sense of shame and no sense of grammar. You’d think they’d conceal the obvious. In that light, though, this is pure hilarity.
I’m pissing off to Korea. Er, actually, I’m already here. That phrase, though, is the chant I say on the plane on the way over because it’s one of my earliest memories of enjoying the country.

I had not yet visited The Hermit Kingdom (a horribly outdated nomiker) when South Koreans made their remarkable run in the World Cup. I took it upon myself to put on a small towel with the Korean flag as a hat and cheer on the Korean team as moral support (because I’ve always enjoyed rooting for underdogs, I’m from Philly afterall), and also as a display of support for my soon-to-be fiancee (whom I was plotting popping the question somehow). It was also a convenient way to make friends with my Korean classmates, where we studied the language together and honestly didn’t have much else in common. It was nice to have dinner there and scream at the satellite-provided TV with some mates of yours that you really can’t claim you know, because both parties have to communicate in a language that is not your own. Plus the free dishes and beer after South Korea won was a plus too, and I admit probably the overriding reason for brandishing a foreign flag on my head.

(After southern Chinese cuisine, Korean is the best of Asian food I’ve ever had. I go through withdrawal symptoms if I don’t have my slab of barbeque pork or kimchi dishes at least once a week.)

It was then that I learned the Korean version of the “U-S-A” chant. For an hour and a half during the entirety of a football match the Korean spectators (and, if I’m not mistaken, expats who have made Korea a home) sit there and clap and say a phrase that in Chinese sounds a lot like “Da Han Min Guo” (lit. “Great People’s Republic of Korea”). When they tire of that, which isn’t as quick as most ADD Americans might think, for they go on like for as long as a horrible Super Bowl Halftime show — yet they indeed do get tired of it — so they switch to another chant. This is the one that to Korean-ignorant ears (myself of which I am a proud member) sounds like they’re saying “I’m pissing on Korea.” The Korean goes something like “oh, paesang xx corea” where that xx is a word or words that I’ve never bothered to figure out, but all I know is that when you’ve got a maniac crowd chanting it, my expat friends and myself all thought it was some sort of anti-cheer. Phrases like “Oh go piss yourself, Korea!” come to mind, and even though I had been living in China for at least two years at this point and knew the folly usually made by the honest but misguided group of monolingual ’gners of making sweeping connections of our language to those of South-East Asian languages, the witty gut in myself couldn’t help but offer sarcastic comment. What’s with the anti-cheer? And thus on each plane ride over since (except maybe the first, I was pretty nervous about meeting my fiancee’s mother) I turn to lovely Yuri and — hell I even feel like shouting — “I’m pissing off to Korea!”

Long time readers know that I have a secret heart throb for one Korean model, I’m not sure I can spell her name correctly but I swear (swear!) that I can say her name correctly. It’s something like Jeun Ji-Hyun, or something like that. She made her claim to fame through a funny and clever movie called “My Sassy Girl” which I highly recommend to anybody with Korean fetishes international movie-making. Anyway she’s now being downgraded from “heart throb” to “sold out babe with a great back” because after two days I’ve seen her face (mostly just her face) in 1000 commercials and thrice the amount of billboards. It’s heartening to know that Korea like their stars, and yes Miss Jeun can make some pretty interesting faces with those puffy cheeks, but this is just overboard. It doesn’t seem to be limited to very sexy stars either, very unsexy ones blanket the airwaves. I’ve seen this one old fart who always seems to play the constant comedian on literally every soap opera I’ve seen playing in random restaurants. He’s honest looking and does some good yell scenes with various old women, but it’s just that he’s everwhere. Believe me, they ain’t the same soap operas, I can tell because they have different girls as supporting actresses (goddesses, I swear, goddesses, but you gotta wonder why they were hired, certainly not for their acting). I don’t know the name of the old fart or some of the other stars I’ve seen again and again but can’t quite place them, and I know Korea has a closet claustrophobia thing going for themselves, but viewers want choices. Even the best lose their luster when you see them every other turn of the head. Especially when they’re selling cell phones and get healthy products.

Alas, time in this PC bar is short and I have to return to the world of touring and (damn it to hell!) tasting more Korean food. In the meantime, I’m enjoying this break from blogging I’ve been taking lately. If I do return to blogging soon it’ll be as an occassional essayist along with some sound-biteish commentary in the Burbs section. Yet there are some personal issues to work out (nothing needing a psychiatrist, although Im ight need a lawyer), first and foremost that I want to get married in America to a Korean national and need to get something called a fiancee visa to get married in the first place. I knew nothing of this and when I called the Beijing embassy months and months ago to ask if there was anything I needed besides a tourist visa the response was “No” (another example of exemplory customer service)… so you can see I’m going to be busy with various interesting things… like researching Pennsylvania marriage laws. Yeah. Adios.



Legal and Referals
Copyright Adam Morris. Not for reprint in any form. Quote and refer away, but link appropriately.


10