Probably. If so, I wish anyone who exercizes the poor judgement to visit this site a sublime holiday, and while you're donning your party hats and clinking your champagne glasses, think of me, alone and miserable and wearing a ridiculous splint in a hospital in Bangkok. One more unique experience in this soup of experience we call life.

Thanks for all the kind emails and comments this week, and I'll certainly be back next year. And who knows, depending on how I feel in a couple of days, I may even put in a surprise appearance before it becomes 2004. I sure hope so.

The best chapter in Jasper Becker's book The Chinese is titled "The Rule of Law," in which he raises the rhetorical question of whether the phrase refers to laws that impose limits on government powers, or laws that are used to keep the citizens subservient to leaders who are, needless to say, totally above any laws at all. We all know the answer to the question.

Ever since the end of 1979, when Deng announced with great fanfare that China would live under "the rule of law," there's been an awful lot of noise about this catch-phrase, and it's interesting (if utterly unsurprising) to see how it works when put to the test. A fascinating, funny and scary article looks at The Rule of Law in action as it traces the arbitration case of a US firm trying to chase the China dream in Shanghai.

It's too long and complex a story for me to distill here, especially as I'm getting ready to pack for the hospital, but this gives you an idea of what the process of arbitration in China can be like:

In April, more than a year after the arbitrators heard the case, Origon's attorneys in China sent a letter to the arbitration commission alleging that officials from the Shanghai People's Court had "improperly interfered." The attorneys urged commission officials to "eradicate interference … to ensure an early impartial arbitration to this case."

Two months later, Origon got an answer: Go elsewhere to resolve this dispute.

Yuan, Origon's Beijing attorney, was furious. Not only had the arbitration panel refused to rule, but it also asked Origon to pay 95% of the arbitration fees, which could be tens of thousands of dollars.

"This is ridiculous," Yuan said. "The reason we applied for arbitration is we want a resolution…. The ruling means nothing."

Zhang Yue, an official at the arbitration center in Shanghai, said he couldn't comment on the specifics of the case or the accusation of judicial interference. But he insisted that the panel was impartial and that the "rule of arbitration will protect the rights of both parties."

It cannot be overemphasized: If you want to do business in China and you are expecting anything even faintly resembling traditional globally accepted business practices and standards you may be in for a serious shock. And don't think that membership in the WTO has made much of a difference. And don't think that that the much-touted Rule of Law b.s. will save your skin from unfairness, no matter how brazen or outrageous.

For now, as the article points out, you are at the mercy of mysterious forces (usually the Party or one of its officials), and if you try to control them or seek a fair resolution, you'll most likely end up frustrated. And poor.

I also love the article's ending, a rehash of the same old argument: The shell-shocked business owner says he has to be in China, it's simply too big a market to ignore. And considering the nature of his business, he probably will make a profit eventually. But oh, the surprises and landmines along the way to reaching the China Dream.

I am in a crowded Internet cafe and everyone is wondering why I am laughing like an idiot. Maybe it's just that I'm so depressed over what the rest of my week is going to be like, but when I saw these proposed covers for Sean Hannity's new book I just couldn't stop laughing. It was therapeutic; I needed to laugh today.

It's Christmas in Bangkok, and I'm pretty miserable. Yesterday I spent much of my time at Bangkok's snazzy Bumrungrad Hospital, getting an MRI of my shoulder and speaking with various specialists.

Today I returned to discuss the MRI results and was left pretty miserable by what they told me. I knew my day would be a bad one when the doctor started the discussion saying, "I had no idea from our earlier talk that the tear in your shoulder was anything like what the MRI is telling me."

I don't know much about anatomy, but I know enough to make me depressed. Two orthopedic surgeons went over all the MRI images with me to point out that the suprascapular (sp?) tendon is not simply damaged, it is absolutely gone, retracted into some cave where it's become totally atrophied. The biceps tendon also seems irreparable so they're just going to remove it.

That's the good part. The upsetting thing about the procedure is that in order to replace the suprascapular, they need to do a graft, slicing up generous portions of my back and leg to borrow muscles for the replacement. Once that's been done, I need to wear some special device for two months to keep the arm in a splint. It's hard to describe, but the bottom line is that for 8 weeks I'll appear to be holding up my right hand to take an oath. How I am going to survive like this for two months is beyond me. I won't be able to type, and my whole life is about writing.

Okay, sorry to bitch and moan so much. It's Christmas Day and I have 36 hours before I check into my new home so I'll try to look at the bright side of things. But this has been one hell of an ordeal, and it's far from over. Six months of therapy follow the removal of the splint. Can't wait.

Needless to say, come Saturday my blogging is going to come to a screeching halt. Shit.

Have a wonderful Holiday, and thanks for visiting.

When I was working as a reporter in DC I used to call the Heritage Foundation whenever I needed to balance my story with a quote from the conservative side. Extremely well heeled and to the right, the Heritage Foundation may be one of my least favorite think tanks. Yet its new position paper on the various rosy myths that have sprung up about the "new China" is certainly worth looking at. As the best funded and most vocal think tank in the country, you can bet a lot of Republicans in and around the beltway will be reading this.

It's a long piece, summed up in a single paragraph toward the end:

A dispassionate examination of how China has approached key foreign policy, trade, and national security issues over the past two years suggests that, far more often than not, China has opposed U.S. interests or, at the very least, has remained neutral or aloof. China has provided little support in the war on terrorism, did not simply "stand by" during the Iraq War, has hampered efforts to ease the reconstruction of Iraq, and has not helped to bring North Korea around to dismantling its nuclear weapons programs.

I always take the HF's reports with a big grain of sea salt, but the arguments here are pretty rational and well backed up. It is especially outspoken on Bush's recent betrayal of Taiwan and China's continuing to export WMDs to the DPRK, Iran, Pakistan, etc. It's definitely worth scanning whether you agree with its conclusions or not.

Tomorrow I go to Bumrungrad Hospital, supposedly Bangkok's best, for an MRI to see the status of my shoulder since the failed operation of last July. The next day I meet with a doctor to analyze the results, and hopefully they'll be able to operate right away. If so, I'll be here for at least another 8 or 9 days afterward, in bed. Luckily, it's the slowest time of the year for work and the best possible time to take care of this nightmare.

The weather in Bangkok is spectacular, sunny and breezy and warm, not hot. The Thai people never cease to amaze me, with their irrepressible enthusiasm and friendliness. Still, I'm not in the mood to be by myself. So I'm going to make practical use of this holiday week when my office is closed. If it goes to plan, I'll check into the hospital in 48 hours or so, have the operation done and get back to Singapore in the first week of January.

The misery of this is that I have to pay for it out of my own pocket. My company's pitiful health insurance won't help me, so it'll be just one more financial setback. What can you do?

Thanks to ceaseless procrastination, inertia and an inability to make up my mind about what to do for the Christmas holiday, I ended up going to Thailand even though it's not where I want to be. But I had to get out of Singapore. Everybody has to get out of Singapore on a regular basis or else go nuts.

I plan to go to Pattaya for a couple of days with an old friend to escape Bangkok's noise and pollution and vegetate on the beach

The only reason I went to Bangkok is that I had a pre-paid ticket and managed to get on a flight. But I didn't manage to get a return ticket. Everything is sold out. Hotels too. So I'm in a little "guest house" dive with no ticket back to Singapore, and I'm just not in the mood for Amazing Thailand. I'd rather be in a quiet little village with a beautiful pool or a lake, surrounded by mountains and Buddhist temples, so I could read and meditate and relax. I guess maybe next time.

I won't be able to post much, so once again my site traffic will plunge.
What can you do? In case I don't get back for a few days, Happy Holidays to all.

Yesterday, when I was commenting on the Asian Blog Awards procedures, I asked aloud why Popagandhi was lagging so far behind Mr. Brown?

Being new to Singapore, I was unaware of Mr. Brown's popularity, and after reading through it more carefully, I want to apologize if I sounded at all deprecatory. It's a sweet site that sort of reminds me of a Singapore version of Big White Guy. So again, sorry for speaking too soon.

(Popagandhi is still more my type of blog, but variety is the spice of life.)

This must be all over the Net by now, but I can't resist.

It is almost beyond belief: China is in its blossom and no sight could be more gorgeous. As you walk the streets of its capital, there is a wonderful mood of joy and optimism, even invincibility. The restaurants are crowded, and smiling, well-dressed people seem to be everywhere. Who would believe that not that many years ago this nation was suffering from seemingly insurmountable upheavals and crises, political, social and economic –all swept away by a focused, strong and determined leadership the likes of which the nation (and the world) had never seen before?

Yes, people who were here just 10 years ago and who are returning for the first time are calling it a miracle, and indeed it is. This is an engine that simply cannot be slowed, let alone stopped. And it all came about thanks to the vision of one man and one party that knew exactly where China should go and how it should get there. From an isolated and humiliated nation, China has emerged as a true superpower.

The transition hasn’t been easy nor has it always been gentle. The truth is, to keep the momentum going and achieve its high goals, the government has had to be strict. At times, protestors have been dealt with harshly, and many were imprisoned. But when you have an entire nation to watch over, it is simply impractical and impossible to allow dissent and criticism to get in the way. And the Chinese people agree. This is their day in the sun, and they have expressed a sincere love of their government, a love that is utterly without precedent. They have simply never known such success, such glory.

Some on the outside have complained about the persecution of “unfriendly” religious groups, and even acts of violence against them. That cannot be denied, but I’m sure it will improve. Many Chinese see these groups as dangeorus cults, and are only too happy to see them dealt with firmly and efficiently. But these are little things, far overshadowed by the greatness of the economy and all of the benefits it brings.

Some have also said that government spending is behind much of the prosperity. This is true to a certain extent, but other nations have dipped into the state coffers before, and as the economy grows the debts will be paid. The massive spending is worthwhile and will bear results.

As proof of just how high China’s star has soared, the country has been chosen to host the Olympics! Can you believe it, looking back at the relative chaos of 20 years ago? How fast and how explosive this growth has been! The Olympics – this gives China and its regime a patina of respectability and validation like nothing else could. It is a sign of international respect and has elevated national pride to new pinnacles.

Possibly the most extraordinary aspect of the new China is the sheer irrepressible optimism of the people. They are boisterous and proud. They can do anything, they can even help make China a master of the world! They know about the criticisms of the government, the charges of suppression, but it’s water off a duck’s back.

Now is a very, very good time to be Chinese, and they respect the rules. China is a country of laws. You understand and respect the need to not call for changes in the government or to stir up trouble. Yes, the government is everywhere and watches everything, but it’s a tiny price to pay for its pulling China up by its bootstraps. And as long as you mind your own affairs and leave the government free to do its vital busines, your prosperity will continue.

So let’s give China in the year 2003 all of the praise and recognition it deserves.

But wait a minute. There is one big lie in the tribute above: It is not about China and it has nothing to do with the year 2003.

It is all about Nazi Germany in the year 1936. Every word. Go back and see. Just substitute Germany for China and Germans for Chinese.

So what’s Richard’s point? Only to point out the irony of how something that seemed so picture-perfect in 1936 not long afterward was perceived as something very different. Some of us who are critical of right-wing regimes tend to allow the glare of China’s successes to blind us to the inequities and iniquities inherent to any police state. I was blinded about it myself for some years. I am not drawing any direct comparisons of the CCP to the Nazis, tempting though it may be. The CCP is at least showing dramatic signs of continuing reform. But there are still interesting historical parallels.

Meanwhile, I want to see China continue to grow and prosper, because I care a lot about the people there. Looking aqt all that prosperity and success, it is so easy to forget that it's a country still in the iron grip of tyranny. You wouldn't know that from the smiling faces and jubilant mood in Beijing and Shanghai. But it is.

UPDATED 6:14pm Singapore time

Citing China's record in human rights, threats aginst Taiwan and the mistreatment of AIDS victims, the EU Parliament dismissed the urgings of France and Germany to lift the EU's 14-year -old arms embargo against China. voting to keep the embargo in place.

The European Union assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution that rejected talk of lifting the embargo -- in place since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 -- as promoted by EU leaders and China itself.

"The human rights situation in the People's Republic of China has improved over the years but remains unsatisfactory," said the resolution, which was addressed to all 15 present member states and the 10 due to join in May.

"The crackdown on fundamental freedoms continues as well as torture, ill-treatment, mistreatment of HIV-AIDS sufferers, arbitrary detention, the high number of death sentences each year, and the lack of respect and protection of minority rights."

The parliament -- which traditionally takes a strong line on human rights -- also said that it believed "it is the wrong time, in view of Chinese threats against Taiwan, to open the way to a lifting of the European arms embargo".

I don't really know much about the history or the significance of this embargo, but it sounds as though it may be mainly for show. China has nevertheless been lobbying hard to get the ban lifted, according to the article.

And it's downright wacky. Funny, too, if unintentionally so. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

How strange. It's been removed from the left-hand blogroll. I hope this is nothing permanent.

It's an amazing story (found thanks to Brainysmurf). New York Times columnist and former foreign correspondent in Beijing Nicholas D. Kristof, is investigating labor unrest when he comes face to face with "the other side of China." And it's not pretty. In fact, it's scary as hell. And I know.

Kristof calls them "goons" -- the grim, scary government officials who throw him and his 9-year-old son out of town. He went to Liaoyang to interview labor leaders Yao Fuxin and Xiao Lunyiang (the latter brutally beaten by authorities), who were imprisoned in the wake of labor unrest. The goons, polite in a scary sort of why, prohibit the meeting and repeat the same maddening phrase to Kristof, no matter what he says: "China is a country of laws."

This is an intense and disturbing article and another one of those "wake-up calls" that remind us that as cheerful as life may appear in the thriving coastal cities, that's only a small snapshot of China. It's a reminder that for those who ask questions, a brutal police state apparatus is ready to spring into action.

Labor unrest is at the heart of the column, and Kristoff makes it clear that this is one of China's vulnerable spots, if not its achilles heel.

China is emerging as one of the world's great powers, a status that it has earned with shrewd management and increasingly mature diplomacy. But a great power cannot go around crushing peaceful protests and torturing labor leaders. It is disgraceful that "People's China" goes around locking up people like Xiao and beating his wife unconscious at his sentencing hearing - and holding family members of labor leaders incommunicado.

"This is not the China of the 1970's or the 1980's," I complained to the men who nabbed me. "China has reformed. It should be open enough now to allow foreigners to speak to family members of prisoners."

The curt answer: "China is a nation of laws."

Someday soon, I hope, it will be.

You have to read about what he goes through, dealing with these brutes.

As you probably haven't noticed, I only referred once to the Asia Blog Awards and refrained from urging readers to go vote for me (and I am still refraining).

Two reasons:

1.) I am listed under the Singapore Blog category, and since I'm only a Singapore blog in the strictest geographical sense, I can't (and probably shouldn't) win.

2.) With all due respsect to Phil, who has done an amazing job organizing this, I still have no faith in the validity of this sort of exercise.

This skepticism was greatly enhanced when I went to the Singapore Blogs category and visited the blogs of the top 2 players (xiaxue and mrbrown). Not bad, not offensive. But then compare them to Adri's sensational blog, and I'm sorry, they are night and day. She gets 33 votes, xiaxue gets nearly 200 votes!! (Mrbrown has only put up five posts in the past month.) Something is way, way off.

Which leads me to ask, what's the point? My personal suggestion for next time would be to have a panel of judges who are prominent within the blogging community -- not necessarily in Asia, but from around the world. Let the decision be made by them. We could also hold the vote with everybody, as we're doing now, just for fun. But take a hard look, and ask yourself if what's going on now is really a valid way to determine the best blogs in Asia?

Again, I thank Phil for all he's done. I think there's a good lesson we've all learned -- that there's got to be a better way.

A typically upbeat article in Xinhua tells us that Mao, the mass murderer who more than any other force helped initiate the brain death of China during his reign, is still revered by China's university students, who continue to treasure his teachings:

Chinese university students are caught up in the trappings of modern life - discussing the Hong Kong movie Infernal Affairs, idolizing Taiwan pop band F4 and flaunting their cellphones - but they still "swear by Chairman Mao."

In fact, the influences of the late Chinese leader, Mao Zedong, who was born on December 26, 1893, on modern youth are not limited to the language of discourse.

Cheng Haowen, a student of astronomy at Nanjing University in eastern Jiangsu Province, said Mao's realistic approach, characterized by testing and improving theories in the course of practice, distinguished him from many Chinese figureheads, who were satisfied with being sage and detached from social reality to show their superiority.

You have to wonder whether the reporter was actually keeping a straight face as he wrote that. Realistic approach? Testing and improving theories? Like, the Cultural Revolution was a tested improvement over the Great Leap Forward? (If Conrad were around he'd reply with something like, "Jesus H. Christ on a rubber pogo stick!")

A socialist whose inspirational sources can be traced back to Chinese classics such as the works of Sun Zi, an eminent ancient military strategist, Mao left a spiritual legacy of pragmatism, depending on the masses of people and solving problems without resorting to foreign forces, which have an impact on the attitudes of a new generation of university students, said Cheng.

What can one say? I've heard Mao accused of many things, but pragmatism isn't one of them. And "depending on the masses"? Mao screwed the masses monumentally, and more than a quarter of a century after his death they are still reeling from his certifiably insane policies that devastated the environment and robbed a generation of its critical faculties.

Although Mao erroneously initiated the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) in his later years, fostering cult-like admiration for himself, he and his spiritual legacy still deserve to be studied objectively, said Cheng, who was born in 1985.

"Erroneously initiated." How is that for bland language? It makes it sound like a frigging accounting error. And even though he left China a basket case, we still love his spiritual legacy and want to study it objectively quack quack quack.

I suppose I should resign myself to the fact that Mao worship isn't going away anytime soon. But I want to believe that most students today don't really believe there's anything worth studying in Mao's "spiritual legacy." Nearly all my friends in China told me that Mao is someone they simply ignore, and that all the government's BS about his greatness is recognized as a pointless show. I sure hope they're right.

A university student works lovingly on his statue of The Great Helmsman

UPDATE If you think this Xinhua article is nauseating in its swooning over Butcher Mao, try this.

Former Republican governor of New Jersey Thomas H. Keane says it was.

For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston

"This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right," said Thomas Kean.

"As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."

Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.

"There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed," Kean said.

This is just the beginning. Keane promised there will be public testimony next year that will include the nation's highest officials. It's not going to be pretty.

[Link via Drudge Report.]

Matt Drudge, certainly no friend to Hillary, challenges Bill O'Reilly's claims that his book's sales compete with the former First Lady's:

FOXNEWS's top-rated host Bill O'Reilly recently claimed that he is "running against Hillary for most copies of nonfiction books sold this year!"

But numbers obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT show a dramatically different sales scene for 2003 than O'Reilly's TODAY show comments.

NIELSEN's BOOKSCAN placed O'Reilly at #6 for the year on the nonfiction charts, trailing rival Al Franken by nearly 30%!

Hillary Clinton's Living History is #3. Drudge even puts up an elaborate chart showing just how dubious O'Reilly's claims are. Anyone surprised?

A commenter whom I have long respected alerted me to this absolutely horrifying story of corruption and the total disregard for human suffering that is still common in parts of China. No, not in Beijing or the cities you and I will visit on our vacations. In the more remote areas where the impoverished villagers have no say, and die at the whim of a corrupt official.

I can't verify that this story is true, but I know the integrity of the young woman who posted it. And, unfortunately, I know it's completely in keeping with other stories I've read about the utterly disenfranchised peasants -- some 700 million of them -- in China's remote countryside. So I believe it.

[I] read an article that is a letter written to the central government pleading for an investigation in a village in northern china. The article is posted on 2003-12-8 so I assumed it's written recently. Let me summarize what the letter is about.

A company in the village had poluted the only source of drinking water. Since 1998, the villagers had complained to the local government to make the company produce standard waste into the river so the water won't be poluted. The government never responded.

Earlier this year some villagers had been poisoned for drinking the water. The villagers could no longer stand the irresponsibility and protested against the government. Instead of getting something positive, the company's manager hired someone to drive a truck through the villager's work unit. four villagers were killed and six wounded. The villagers found out this because they captured the driver and questioned him.

Later the police department sent a team to investigate. despite of the outcries by the villagers, the police department concluded the killing as a simple traffic accident. it's clear then that the corruption was so deep rooted that there's very little the villagers could do to protect their lives and to seek justice for those who were killed. so a respresentative sent this letter to the central government hoping they will be some response. since the local government also tightly controlled the media (so no reports of the incident were on TV), the author also posted this article online and wish more can hear about what happened.

I tried to post the link on some mainlanders' bloggers' site so they can help deliver the message. But I found the chinese government had completely blocked chinalaborunion.org.

Check out the post and the comments to it. And the photos that she links to. She also has a link to the entire post in Chinese. Great work.

UPDATE: If you made it this far, it's important you check the related links that Adam offers.

Below is the interview I posted a few day's ago on Living in China. It tells of the evolution of a former flag-waving protestor in the 1989 demonstrations in Shanghai. If you've ever looked back at the Tiananmen Square days and wondered what those students are doing and thinking today, you may find this interesting.

David S., 34, is now a prominent executive with a multinational technology company here in Singapore, and I've been lucky enough to work with him on his company's public relations. When I hear that David played a part in Beijing's sister demonstrations in Shanghai, I asked if I could interview him about the role he played and how he looks back on those days nearly 15 years later.

What made this so interesting for me was seeing the evolution of a 1989 demonstrator, from flag-waving rebel to a proud supporter of China and its government. It is a remarkable story.

Some of David's viewpoints are quite different from my own, but that isn't relevant. At the end, I offer a few of my own thoughts, but I don't want to editorialize about which point of view is right or wrong.

Q. What brought you to the demonstrations in Shanghai - why did you go to demonstrate?

It's hard to understand this if you weren't there, but it would have been abnormal for me not to go to the demonstrations. We all went, it was just natural. My classmates and I were swept up, we simply had to go, it was the natural thing to do. Suddenly, we were all participating.

You have to be aware of the situation in China at that time. It was as though there were two parallel systems, one being the economic system, the other the political system. These systems were like two wheels that weren't on level ground, and along the way tension built up over a period of nearly 10 years, ever since Deng came back to power after the Cultural Revolution. That tension was tremendous, and no one could escape from it.

Chinese society consists of multiple layers - peasants, students, soldiers, factory workers. At that time, there was tension at every layer of the society. People were confused and frustrated. Earthquakes happen when different layers rub against each other at a different pace, and finally the earth can no longer contain the energy and it erupts. That's the type of tension that was behind the protests.

So much about the economy had improved and was changing, but politics - the government - remained status quo. In the 1970s, if you said anything disrespectful of Mao, you'd be executed. In 1989, if you said something negative about Deng in public you could still be in serious trouble.

It was the students who were most sensitive to this. Our parents all worked for the state, and there was still little or no private enterprise. They were not as concerned about ideology and change. They only had to worry about feeding their families. But as students we were more liberal, more free-spirited and more engaged in ideologies. We weren't concerned about raising a family. We were not necessarily practical; we were very idealistic.

Historically, most great movements in China were started by students. Even today, we celebrate China Youth Day on May 4th. That's because when the KMT [Kuomintang] were still in power and the Communists were outlawed, the students demonstrated for the Communists on May 4th. General Tuan Qi Rui was the warlord over Beijing at the time and he opened fire on them in the street. So after the Communists took power they dedicated that day to the nation's youth and it is still a holiday today.

Q. Where were you, and what was your own role?

I was studying medicine at the Shanghai Second Medical University, now a part of Fudan University. I was asked by my classmates to be the flag bearer because I'm quite tall, so my role was to hold up the flag and wave it in front of the demonstrators. Every day we would march from the university campus all the way to the People's Square, and I was in the front holding and waving the flag.

Q. Looking back, are you glad you did it? Do you have any regrets?

No, I don't have regrets and I don't think what we did was in vain. It was important for us to make our voice heard. For my generation, the crackdown had huge implications for our lives, probably like the JFK assassination had for Americans.

But I have to admit I am no longer interested in politics, especially now that China is undergoing a natural transition toward democracy, with the economy being the core and the catalyst for that change. And nothing can stop that change, no matter how much the Communists want to preserve their old values.

Q. We all know about the violent crackdown in Beijing. How was it handled in Shanghai?

There was nothing like the martial law that took place in Beijing. The Mayor of Shanghai at the time was extremely competent, and he made an appeal to the city on TV and he calmed everyone down. I'll never forget, he said something that was ambiguous and politically brilliant: "Down the road, truth will prevail". That could have meant he was sympathetic to the students or totally with the government. But it was very calming to hear him say it.

The mayor organized factory workers to clear the roads, not the army. These workers were the parents and uncles and aunts of the students. Some members of the student body tried to stir up these factory workers, and I think that was a very dangerous thing to do. Students demonstrating was one thing, but if it was factory workers - that would need to be stopped, and there would have been a riot. That's why Beijing was much more tense.

Bringing in the factory workers truly showed the leadership and tact and common sense of Shanghai's mayor - Zhu Rongji. Beijing is the political center, but Shanghai is the financial center, and it could absolutely not fall into chaos, no matter what. That's why you saw factory workers and not the army.

Q. How did you hear of the massacre, and what effect did the news have?

My father and I heard about it on the radio, on 'Voice of America'. That was the only source there was. Soon we all knew what had happened. We watched CCTV the next day. The reporters were wearing black and some of them were obviously in a deep state of grief, their eyes visibly red, as they announced that the anti-revolutionaries had been put down. I saw those reporters with my own eyes, and soon afterwards they were replaced.

At the moment the news broke of the crackdown, I was angry. How could it happen? All of the demonstrations were peaceful. How could they justify tanks and machine guns? I gave up all hope in my own government, and I felt ashamed to be Chinese. We were also disappointed in [then] President Bush - he was softer than we wanted. All that Bush did was impose sanctions, and that disappointed us. We were in a dilemma. We wanted the US and others to do something, but we also knew that would have hurt us.

That was part of being 20 years old in China when you haven't seen the world, no Hollywood movies, you've only read Stalin-style textbooks. I matured ten years overnight, and I also became a little cynical.

For so many years China had a stringently controlled educational system. From kindergarten to college, we all read the exact same books and took the exact same exams. We always believed everything that the government told us, and they told us it was an honor for 'the people without property' to shed their blood and sacrifice their lives for the cause of communism, fighting against the two great enemies, the Nationalists [KMT] and the Capitalists. We were brainwashed.

After Tiananmen Square, most of us believed that all government was evil. We saw that our government would kill us. I remember how my aunt told me she went to Tiananmen Square shortly after the crackdown and there was someone saying through a megaphone that there had never been any shooting even though she could see the bullet holes on the walls, which were soon cleaned up.

But now, that sense of shame is gone. When I look at it all objectively, I believe the government did the right thing. Maybe they didn't do it the right way. I still have reservations about the tanks and the machine guns. But at that time they couldn't afford to sit down and negotiate. The students wanted power, and in 1989 the social cohesion wasn't there to support that. It was only 10 years after the Gang of Four, and it wasn't like today. In retrospect, Deng at that time couldn't afford to show further weakness. He had to hold the country together. Yes, we paid the price in blood, but we are still one country, one nation.

You have to realize that Deng changed my life - everybody's life. He opened new doors for all of us. In 1982, my mother was among the first batch of scholars who were sent abroad to study, and she went to Harvard. She returned to become the director of a major Shanghai hospital. So we are grateful. And soon so many other changes happened.

I feel a great respect for our leaders. There are some, like Li Peng, who I still have no respect for. But Deng - soon we felt as though he had torn down the Berlin Wall. I wondered, if Deng had not handled the demonstrations the way he did would China be the country it is today? The whole nation is changing and people are more affluent, and I feel proud of being Chinese. People once looked down at us, and now they have respect for us.

Q. But what Deng achieved - could he not have done it within a more democratic system? Did there have to be the ruthlessness?

After going to the US for five or six years, I saw that the level of democracy there can only happen in a society with a certain level of education. What the people of China now need is leadership. China is one century behind the US, and you can't expect us to change that fast.

This is why many Asians resent it when Americans try to insist that the Chinese adopt their style of democracy. Shanghai may be ready, but if you go out to the surrounding areas, you'll see it just isn't possible, that it will take more time. I believe that one day, China will have Taiwan-style democracy, but it has to be built on a strong economy.

Q. I agree that Western-style democracy isn't right for China today. But can't there be a compromise? Can't the government be strong, without tolerating abuse of the poor by corrupt officials, without tolerating the marginalization of AIDS victims, without arresting kids who write about government reform on the Internet?

The way we view human rights is so different from the West's. We have 1.3 billion people and many of them go hungry. Putting food on the table and a roof over its people's heads is what our government has to worry about. AIDS, corruption, the Internet - that is all secondary to the leadership of 1.3 billion people. If I were running China today, I would not be able to hear all the different parties. I would have to have my own agenda and stick to that agenda. I believe that if a secret vote were held today most people in China would vote for the CCP.

For more than 150 years, starting with the Opium Wars, our national pride has been bullied by the Europeans, the Russians, then the Japanese. Now China is an economic and a military power. And it has no intentions of being aggressive. So I am not giving up my Chinese citizenship. Ten years ago I would have jumped to do that.

Looking back, I firmly believe the government did the right thing, though they could have handled it better. We paid a high price. Our leaders in 1989 could have shown greater human skills and greater negotiating skills. But let's live with Communism for now and change things one thing at a time. The Chinese now have a much better life than they did 100 years ago. Not so long ago, my house was the first in our hutong to have a television set. The whole neighborhood would come to our backyard and sit on the ground to watch. It was just a 9-inch TV, and we put a large magnifying glass in front of it so everyone could see - that is how inventive we Chinese had to be. And now, so many families have two color TVs. They enjoy a better life, they have pride, they just put a man into space. Over the next couple of decades, China will probably overtake Japan. The world now needs China as much as we need them.

Thank you, David.

This was definitely an eye-opening interview for me. Coming from my own background where the rights of the individual are sacred, I was intrigued to hear such a different point of view. As readers familiar with my writing know, I am not quite so easy on the CCP, and don't feel all can be forgiven under the mantra, Change must take place slowly. But I have the highest respect for David, and find the story of his transformation and his great personal success to be impressive and inspiring.

Your tax dollars at work in George W.'s Texas:

A Texas housewife is in big trouble with the law for selling a vibrator to a pair of undercover cops, and the Brisbane vibrator company she works for says Texas is an "antiquated place'' with more than its share of "prudes.''

Joanne Webb, a former fifth-grade teacher and mother of three, was in a county court in Cleburne, Texas, on Monday to answer obscenity charges for selling the vibrator to undercover narcotics officers posing as a dysfunctional married couple in search of a sex aid.

Webb, a saleswoman for Passion Parties of Brisbane, faces a year in jail and a $4,000 fine if convicted.

"What I did was not obscene,'' Webb said. ""What's obscene is that the government is taking action about what we do in our bedrooms.''

Once again, I can only wonder what the cops were thinking. This sort of thing only serves to make them look like buffoons. And now, sales for Passion Parties' vibrators are sure to skyrocket with all the free publicity.

Link via Daily Dish.

Continuing its crackdown on illegal religious activity, China has arrested Zhang Shengqi for posting Internet articles that support an unapproved Christian church.

Telephones rang unanswered at Hangzhou’s city government offices. A woman at the city’s police bureau who would only give her family name, Liu, said she had “never heard of this case,” while a man at the provincial jail said he was “unclear” about the matter. He refused to give his name.

Zhang’s arrest appeared to be related to police suspicions that he helped church historian Liu Fenggang post information on the Internet about the Hangzhou crackdown. Liu, a veteran pro-democracy campaigner, has also been detained in Hangzhou on state secrets charges.

Churches demolished, preachers detained

City authorities earlier this year demolished a number of unregistered churches and detained preachers in what activists said was a trial run for techniques to be used against unregistered religious groups elsewhere in China

I want to give the government every benefit of the doubt and acknowledge what they are doing right. But when they make a lot of noise about reforms yet continue and actually increase their anti-reform activities, I'm going to write about it.

Link via Radio Free China.

I mentioned earlier that I've become good friends with a senior State Department employee and his wife, and I was delighted and surprised when they called me up a couple of Sundays ago to have lunch with them. At lunch, they introduced me to a Western woman who is a prominent artist here, and we had so much to talk about (classical music is her specialty). It was great. She is older than I am, very worldy and very interesting.

So I was happy, albeit surpised, when a few days later she called and asked if I'd like to go to dinner with her. We met at a fancy fusion restaurant and, since I so rarely go to dinner with anyone but myself, I ordered a good bottle of wine. In retrospect, that was a mistake.

We were about halfway done with our over-priced dinner and wine, when she started to tell me why she finds me so attractive. Suddenly, I felt a sense of dread come over me, almost as if a rat had bitten me. I really panicked, although I kept my composure (I'm a PR man, calm in the face of horrific circumstances).

She kept talking, but at this point I couldn't make out anything she was saying. It hit me -- my State Department friends had set us up that morning. The whole things was an act of matchmaking on their part, and they thought they were doing both of us such a favor. Their intentions were totally good, but my God, what had they gotten me into?

I clasped my wine glass and swirled the wine around idiotically while I wondered, how the hell am I going to get out of this one? At this point, she was praising my necktie (or was it my cologne? I can't remember, I was so frantic, and all that 2000 Wolf Blass Shiraz didn't help me think more clearly). I looked up at her, sat up straight and gave her my most serious look. I think she was expecting me to propose.

"Listen," I said. "Before you go any further, there's something I have to tell you. To be honest, I thought you'd figured it out already. I'm....I'm...." I was hoping she would get it, so that I wouldn't have to fill in the ellipse. I paused and waited for her, hopefully. But no. She looked at me with this inquisitive and innocent look, and I knew I was going to have to complete the sentence myself. It wasn't easy, but I did.

Well, suffice it to say that it was all downhill from there. I really like and admire this woman and I want to be her good friend. But it was as though her balloon simply burst, and her facial expression just shouted out, "Oh shit." She looked crestfallen, and I felt as though I'd committed a crime.

Her next line -- "Oh, that's okay, I'm glad you feel you can trust me with that" -- was utterly unconvincing. All I did for the rest of the meal was apologize, and say, truthfully, that I had absolutely no idea she was thinking of us in a romantic light.

We got through it all, but I felt like sinking into the floor. I don't like to disappoint people, but what could I do? I had to tell her, but it was so obvious that she just wasn't ready. Afterwards, she didn't say a word about how handsome I am.

I felt so bad for her. She had a clear expectation of what the night would be, and I pulled the plug on it.

Oh well, just one more of my many unusual experiences here in Asia. It sounds funny now, but I promise, it was anything but funny as I was going through it. She never called me again, though I wish she would; she loves Brahms and Wagner.

Would you want this painting hanging on your living room wall?

Michael Jackson looks freaky enough just as he is. And yet, the images from this creepy art gallery manage to make him even scarier. And this stuff is for sale. Hurry, while supplies last. [via boingboing]

You'll find it over at Living in China. I'll post it on this site in a few days.

This was a very heartfelt project, and I think some of you will be surprised that I would write such a piece. Doing so has been a moving and valuable experience.

Check out this brief but telling post on how CCTV covered last night's big news. Some things never change.

Last night I was considering posting about the irony of the justified euphoria over Saddam's capture and Thomas Friedman's Sunday column (written pre-capture) on just how poorly we are running things in Iraq. Remember, Friedman was pro-invasion and an outspoken Saddam critic. Now he sounds downright grim.

Anyway, I was going to post about this, but I see that Long Bow has beaten me to the punch. So no need.

Yesterday, for an article I'm hoping to write for Living in China, I interviewed a Singapore executive about his role in the 1989 student demonstrations. It was absolutely intriguing. He was in Shanghai, not Beijing, and the differences between how the situation was handled in the two cities is extraordinary.

He didn't tell me anything earthshattering, but it did impress on me how fundamentally different the Western and Asian approach to human rights is. I have been aware of this, but I never actually discussed it face-to-face with a native Chinese. It's an interesting conversation, to discuss something as frightening as the Tiananmen Square massacre and agree on everything that took place, and yet arrive at such different conclusions.

I'm about three-quarters done with the article and it should be ready to go by Monday afternoon or Tuesday.

A NY Times article today asks just that question, citing a warning from Alan Greenspan that China's economy could (repeat, could) be at risk of overheating, especially in light of a recent CCP decision to reduce interest rates and incentivize banks to lend away.

While China's leaders portray themselves as farsighted engineers who can manage their country's economic growth better than a democratically elected government could, their recent economic policies show a strong inclination to let the good times roll for now and to worry later about any ensuing bust.

[....]

Prodding the money supply while resisting currency appreciation shows a reluctance to let economic growth falter at all, even as Western economists put China's expansion at an annual pace of 10 percent this fall. "If you're very preoccupied about social stability and you've got a weak banking system, do you really want to appreciate your currency?" said William Belchere, chief Asia economist at J. P. Morgan Chase.

The common denominator in many of China's economic problems is a dysfunctional banking system that still extends some loans based on the political connections of borrowers, especially state-owned enterprises. At the same time, the executives of state-owned enterprises have shown a strong herd instinct of rushing into whatever industry seems to be growing fastest. A result is that many provinces build the same kind of factories at the same time, as is now the case with steel, and bank officers approve loans for most or all of the factories.

What's most worrying, according to the article, is that there is no sober authority, like the Fed, to put the brakes on things. Those pulling the levers only want to rock and roll, but history proves such parties always come to an end. The harder you step on the gas, the worse the crash.

Or captured, at least. It seems pretty official -- Tony Blair has apparently confirmed that Saddam has indeed been captured in Tikrit, and the US will hold a press conference in 45 minutes.

I hope they make the trial a very public affair, and the punishment a painful one.

Let's face it, everyone: George W. Bush is going to win the 2004 election, and there's little we can do about it.

Has the entire Asian expat blogosphere shut its eyes and gone to sleep, succumbing to a region-wide dearth of inspiration, or is it just me? Things just seem so slooooow today. I'm definitely grappling with a bad case of writer's block, which is very unusual for me. So apologies to those who came here seeking my usual sharp wit and priceless insights. Perhaps tomorrow.

Last night was a bit of a surprise. My phone rang just as I was getting ready to leave work and the caller, the wife of one of the big shots at the US embassy here, invited me to a dinner party at the America Club. Forty-five minutes later, there I was.

Back in July I met them at the US Chamber of Commerce, and since then we've become good friends. This was his goodbye dinner to all his friends at the embassy; he's just been restationed to Mexico City (I could tell he wasn't too happy about this). It's a State Department tradition that before you depart you hold a dinner and offer guests the food of the country you're being sent to. So it was all Mexican food.

I got to meet the ambassador, who looks like he's in his mid-30s; really nice of course, but I thought ambassadors were supposed to have white hair. I sat next to him and the head of public affairs, and they both tried to talk me into taking the test for the Foreign Service. I'm seriously thinking about it, but wonder if I'm ready to swicth gears yet again and go off in a whole new direction.

As far as blogs go, these guys know nothing. I told them all about Living in China, my own little site and about a couple of others, too. They were quite surprised when I told them about some of the "China blogs" and how diverse our points of view can be.

Come to think about it, this is a remarkably dull post. I guess I wanted to capture the moment. It was quite cool, and I really enjoyed "teaching" these diplomats about what kind of bloggers there are out there....

It's funny how something can make an impression on you, but then you don't think of it again until years later.

Today, for no particular reason, I suddenly remembered an extraordinary full-page ad I saw in the Wall Street Journal back when dot-com fever was at its very zenith.

The ad was simply announcing the sale of a URL, which was to be put up for auction with an opening price so outrageous you wouldn't believe it, at least not now. But back then it didn't even raise an eyebrow. Back then, when people were getting rich trading shares of Dr. Koop and WebVan.

The ad was elegant and formal, as though it were offering for auction a masterpiece by Rembrandt or a case of rare French brandy. A $50,000 ad for a .com address that I'm sure some lucky bidder paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for.

So out of curiousity, four years later, I just went to see who the lucky buyer of that URL was. Would it be Estee Lauder? Perhaps Prada? Maybe a great fashion designer? Whatever it was, it had to be of the utmost grace and raffinement.

I was surprised to see what I was led to when I clicked on www.woman.com. But then again, I wasn't surprised at all. [Click only if you're over 18.]

Yet another cyber-dissident bites the dust as China's neandrathals lock him up for the most unpardonable of sins -- exposing the stinking corruption of government officials.

Chinese official who exposed government corruption on the Internet has been sentenced to eight years in prison after being convicted of subversion, a Hong Kong human rights group says. The sentence, handed down on Wednesday, was the latest in a string of jailings of dissidents and coincided with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to the United States and Canada.

The People's Intermediate Court in Dazhou city in the southwestern province of Sichuan convicted Li Zhi, a 33-year-old municipal financial official, the Information Centre for Human Rights & Democracy said in a statement on Friday.

Chinese officials were not immediately available for comment.

Li wrote essays revealing corruption involving Sichuan officials on Web sites and chatrooms earlier this year, the group said.

Living in an authoritarian country where information flow is a matter of national security, dissidents have been flocking to the Internet as the medium gains in popularity.

Online police have tightened their noose by monitoring Web chatrooms and filtering text deemed objectionable as they pass routers at international gateways.

Wen acknowledged during his visit to the United States that China's human rights situation was not perfect, but said it was among his government's top priorities.

Not perfect?? Among his "highest priorities"??? Well, here's a great opportunity to show you really mean it: Let the cyberdissidents go home and stop imprisoning new ones. That's all you have to do.

(Not really, but it would be a damned good start.)

If you go to Daytop's Top list right now you'll see that some obscure site has stolen the number one position by placing the exact same line and link on literally scores of web sites. It's a total sham, but by doing this the Site Traffic Thief got me to check it out. (All it is is a sign-up page for some service, in Spanish! The hottest site on the Internet? Yeah, right.)

But now thousands of the curious are clicking on that link and site traffic must be through the stratosphere.

I got really annoyed back in April when someone used my site for similar purposes. I put up a post saying what a good job sarswatch.org was doing in chronicling the disease, and I awoke the next morning to see tons of site traffic, all to this dinky post. It turned out Tim someone who I won't mention had five other sites along with sarswatch and posted on all of them about what a great post they'd find on pekingduck. IOW, he linked to my post about his post to direct the traffic to sarswatch.

So I was #1 on daypop! I was awash in site traffic, all of which was promptly directed away from my site to the the traffic thief's site. And it showed me just how easy it is to manipulate traffic and create gross misimpressions.

Not at all in the same category, but somewhat related in that it involves intentionally manipulating traffic our way, is the issue of using our blog headlines to suck in site traffic from google and the other search engines. Adam has put up a very funny and unashamed post on how he does it, and I find myself doing it, too.

This is a recent thing for me. It struck me that after putting up a post with a cliche in the headline -- specifically, "Defamation of Character" and "Pushing the Envelope" -- I drew zillions of hits, probably from students seeking the derivation of these phrases. So now I find myself almost automatically thinking of keyword-rich headlines. Once bitten by the site traffic bug, there's no turning back. You want to inhale it, more and more and more. There is never enough. The more you get the more you want.

But aren't we really fooling only ourselves? If the searchers just come to your site for a split-second and then see your post is irrelevant to their search and flee, is it anything to boast about? Not really, and yet it does soothe the ego to see those rising numbers....

Adam in the aforementioned (and linked!) post says this more poetically and concisely than I do:

Yum, munch! Daypop oughta love this. Snap, crackle! Link whoring is fun… It’s posted and updated and there’s comments to read and I haven’t checked Sitemeter in almost three minutes. Crack, pop! There goes my neck. Hit, smack! My girlfriend is impatient… I found a new site but I’m not on his blogroll, a trackback ping just might do the trick. Boink, splat! Masturbating in cyberspace. Slip, slide! My hand’s spollen from wankin’… There is no judge for my writing skills /’xept the egregious number on the technorati. Gawd, damn! I got more than he. Hut, hike! Don’t know which sport I’m playin’… I joined a group blog but I contribute only a pic so that I might rank higher on obscure searches. Clink, klang! My most hits are from google. Sling, slang! It’s all in the keywords… I shoot on over to a reference site where it told me how to manipulate searches. Woosh, wham! My name in lights. Suck, splat! Everyone’s doin’ it…

(I think somebody put too much MSG in his jiaozi.)

Site traffic. The blogger's raison d'etre, the single tangible entity to which we can point to validate our grubby blogger existence. Mine's bigger than yours. "Ha-ha," as Nelson would say.

Oh, and did I mention my site traffic is WAY UP lately?

The f-word is taken to new extremes in this funny, depressing article:

WASHINGTON—According to the results of an intensive two-year study, Americans living below the poverty line are "pretty much fucked," Center for Social and Economic Research executive director Jameson Park announced Monday.

"Although poor people have never had it particularly sweet, America has long been considered the land of opportunity, where upward class mobility is hard work's reward," Park said. "However, our study shows that limited access to quality education and a shortage of employment opportunities in depressed areas all but ensure that, once fucked, an individual tends to stay fucked."

According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, 34.6 million Americans were living below the poverty line in 2002.

"Not only are the down-and-out fucked, but the number of down-and-out fucks is growing," Park said. "Conditions of disadvantage are often passed from one generation to the next, making it especially difficult for young people to emerge from the cycle of poverty."

Being away from America for three years, I have to assume none of this is true. Right?

Check out the shocking illustrations from Apple Dailyas the flesh eaters go at it. It's quite incomprehensible, and such a pecuiar way to spend your free time....

This morning some a-hole littered my site with comments leading to some penis enlargement service. They're mainly on older posts, and I don't have time today to remove them. Apologies.

(Anybody know a way to prevent such mischief?)

My friend Ben wrote a comment to my post on the new biography of Chou Enlai, and I wanted to display it a little more prominently. It tells me something of just how much the Chinese idolize him (something I never doubted) and how they will continue to do so no matter what is said of him, proven or not. This is they type of thing that gives me vast insight into the Chinese psyche, and though I may often disagree with posts like this, I believe thay are vital for us on the outside to see and understand.

A new comment has been posted on your blog The Peking Duck, on entry
#807
(Zhou Enlai, Saint or Sinner?).
http://pekingduck.org/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=807

Deification or Humanization?

Chinese always intend to deify national leaders. In ancient China, we
looked at the kings or emperors as gods or saints to prostrate before.
After the PRC was founded, we still sang for our great leader Mao and
wish him can live for 10 thousands years. Such deification finally let
Mao feel so inflated and made big mistakes in his last years.

Premier Zhou is another kind of deification, because he was such a
kind, selfless, and busy premier who was full of wisdom. He is one of my
idols till now, but I appreciate him more on his style and wisdom of
diplomacy. From my primary education on, this people's good premier
constantly appeared in our textbook as if he was still living near us. Zhou
Enlai is perfect however you look from every aspect: he was so sinless,
he even had no descendants and impossible to leave anything to them; he
worked extremely hard for our state; he was so beloved by the whole
country. Such a person, can you find any flecks from him? The "sinless
officer complex" which formed in 3 thousand years of feudal society would
let modern Chinese people love this great premier so much. But, do you
think Zhou looks like a natural man, I think he looks more like a
saint, even he was so close to his people. The same saints will include Lei
Feng and Jiao Yulu, although they were not in such a high position as
Zhou.

Actually, I had awared some negative reports about my idol from some
Taiwan and Western media. If the reports are really facts, I will not be
mad at them, at least, we should hold an objective attitude to
criticize a person. Even the reports are truth, I think it will make my idol
look like a real man who I can close to, and I do not like a man who I
can only look up to. Why should we be so hard on our national leaders?
Yes, because he was our premier and on behalf of our country, but he was
also a human being, he could make mistakes, he would has his private
life, so what? We should accept these things as well as accept his
excellence, no one in the world is absolutely perfect! I know it was so
difficult for Zhou to be in stead of himself at Chinese political stage. As
one of Chinese sayings said, "It is impossible for two king tigers to
exist in a mountain at the same time." I think this saying probably
suits the whole world. Especially in China, power-centralization tradition
is so outstanding, even Zhou could not be out of its control and had to
be defined as assistant position sometimes.

Anyway, I hope to return nature, to see real human. Though the media
will always be partial, let us accept people's excellences and
shortcomings whether s/he is a great leader or a common person.

Bloomberg reporter William Pesek has a great column in BusinessTimes warning of the dangers of getting sucked into the euphoria over China's booming economy. His comparison with the Internet bubble is perfect:

There's no denying China's potential - an economy growing by 8 per cent and powered by 1.3 billion people hungry for capitalism. Multinational companies are seeing dollar signs when looking at maps of China, and big ones at that. So are Asian governments as economies ship more and more goods there.

The emphasis in all of this has to be on the word 'potential'. Though China could indeed be the biggest economic success story in modern history, much could go wrong with its move from socialism to capitalism, not least of which are tens of millions of job losses as the economy is opened. There's no guarantee.

Investors should keep that in mind. So should US President George Bush, who this week meets Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Washington. While China is an important economy, its true influence is far more about tomorrow than today.

China is the economic equivalent of Internet companies during the late 1990s. Investors and corporate executives have no time to discuss the risks. Such a 'China.com' is run by geniuses and it's all good. It's Asia's New Economy and anyone who doesn't see that is a fool.

Do you remember when we were told by the analysts on CNBC that there was a "new economy," an age of perpetual low inflation and near-zero unemployment, when stocks would always be high and kids in t-shirts would chart the couse as venture capitalists dumped staggering amounts of cash down the toilet?

Then think about China. There is a perception of a booming China that will provide the world's engine of growth for generation after generation. It is unstoppable. It is a juggernaut. It's The Next Big Thing. It's the sure bet, just like eToys was.

It really is booming, at least relatively, but for now, so much is about the future. So much of it is investment money being spent by companies that want to be there when the floodgates open. And I really hope they do; I want the people there whom I love to succeed and be happy.

But when I see all of the businesses rushing in as though it's a sure thing, when I see people speculating, people neglecting to do research into the fate of most foreign traders who've tried throughout history to tap The World's Biggest Market -- when I see the irrational exuberance, I can't help but wonder about the foundation on which all these hopes are based. Just like the dot-coms.

We're all smart people, we know what profits are and basic business plans. Yet a lot of us got sucked in. And a lot of us are getting sucked in again, failing to consider that China just might not be quite the miracle it appears.

I wrote about this topic on Living in China [note: I think the link may be dead - sorry] a few weeks ago and will soon do a follow-up. I want to believe otherwise, but this just may be a story of mass hypnosis on an almost unimaginable scale -- just like the dot-coms. Like tulips in Amsterdam. We humans are certainly capable of falling for this sort of thing, and it almost inevitably disappoints us.

With his usual diplomatic tact, signature gentility and elegant diction, Conrad sweetly calls Wen Jiabao to task for his claims that Taiwan is "abusing democracy."

As always, Conrad's writing is instilled with a tender subtlety, a soft-spoken sense of caring, infinite patience and a scholar's grasp of the Westerner's need to look at China today within the context of its glorious 5,000-year history.

Oh, and it's the funniest fucking thing I ever read.

I don't necessarily agree with all he says (it is kind of extreme) but he sure makes his point.

This is not just a story about bicycles, but of Shanghai's dramatic evolution in recent years.

Succumbing at last to the worldwide love affair with the car, China - of all places - is officially turning up its nose at the humble bicycle. Its biggest city, Shanghai, plans to ban bikes from all major roads next year to ease congestion, state-run newspapers said on Tuesday.

It's not just the weather Shanghai cyclists now have to contend with. Police will also raise fines tenfold for such cycling infractions as running red lights, Shanghai Daily reported.

Once hailed as the perfect form of proletarian transport, the bicycle used to reign supreme in China as undisputed king of the road.

One of the interviewed cyclists predicts the ban will simply be ignored, and they'll just ride on the sidewalks if they need to.

Go see Orcinus' great post about an idiot's call for violence against anti-war liberals. Orcinus draws a brilliant parallel between this sort of hate rhetoric with that which America heard voiced against the Japanese during World War II.

As usual, his post is rich with examples, as well as a truly scary photograph. (Go there for the photo alone; you won't forget it.)

These are the Beijing Bloggers themselves, plus a good friend of mine. (God, I look so serious!) To find out who's who, you'll have to go here, from whence I stole the photo.

Be sure to check out Adri's hot new blog design. It's definitely getting there....

This fascinating book review by the WaPo's John Pomfret looks at the banned-in-China biography, Zhou Enlai's Later Years, by Gao Wenqian, a former CCP researcher for more than a decade prior to emigrating to the US.

He depicts Zhou as a tragic backroom schemer, a puppet of his master Mao, and a man who was so imbued with a Confucian sense of duty that he did almost everything Mao asked him -- including signing the arrest orders for his own brother and a goddaughter.

The book challenges the view that Zhou tried his best to save hundreds of purged officials during the Cultural Revolution, portraying him instead as an eager participant in the ultra-leftist campaign during which hundreds of thousands of people were dispatched to the Chinese gulag.

"Party documents show that Zhou only protected people after first checking with Mao, his wife Jiang Qing, Mao's no. 2 Lin Biao and others," Gao wrote. "If Zhou sensed any opposition to protecting someone, he would drop his protection."

Even though Zhou died 27 years ago, criticism of him is taboo in China because, officially, he never made a mistake. "In a society troubled with corruption and facing a moral vacuum, Zhou is the last good Communist," said Gao. "This book takes him off his pedestal. I criticized what should never be criticized."

I have to admit, for years even I got sucked into the myth of Zhou as the pearl among the swine, and I'm sad to see the destruction of the romanticized image of the kind-hearted friend of the people who subtly tried to influence Mao to be a bit less awful.

But reading about China's history over the past year, I knew this was sugar coating; Zhou was an enthusiastic supporter of the Great Leap Forward, and while he may have saved the Forbidden City from destruction during the Cultural Revolution (another myth?), he was not divorced from all that was going on around him.

According to Pomfret, who obviously gives the book a good deal of credence, Gao shatters one myth after another:

Gao also challenges a long-held belief that it was Zhou who brought Deng back into the Chinese leadership in 1973. Deng later rose to become China's paramount leader in the late 1970s, and held onto his position until his death in 1997. Deng's official biographers have used what they have called his special relationship with Zhou as a way to bolster his prestige.

Gao wrote that Mao actually brought Deng back from official oblivion as part of a plot to ensure that Zhou did not become too powerful. Gao cites as proof Deng's participation in several sessions organized by Mao to criticize Zhou.

"I wanted to write a book about a personality that had been distorted by the Communist system," Gao said. "Zhou was such a man."

I remember watching film clips of all the weeping Chinese people as Zhou Enlai's funeral cortege passed by. It was as though a part of them had died with Zhou. They believed so deeply in him, that he was saintly, that he loved them and fought for them. Was it just one more of history's cruel jokes? How sad.

Unfortunately, the book is currently available only in Chinese. I'll be the first buyer when the English version is out.

This exhaustive article tracks Time's 1996 Man of the Year Dr. David Ho as he fights to convince the Chinese government to acknowledge and respond to its festering AIDS crisis.

The article focuses on Ho's efforts in Yunnan, where he's initiating trials of an AIDS vaccine for those most likely to become infected, mainly injection drug users and sex workers. Every step of the way, Ho has to struggle with the government and the effects of its stigmatization of AIDS:

"They desperately want help," he [Ho] says of the doctors he met in Wenlou. "They obviously have the data on AIDS patients but are afraid to show us."

That fear is well founded. Adding to the stigma surrounding AIDS in these villages is the role that local leaders played in the blood-buying program. "Many government officials made a lot of money," says the patient advocate who calls himself Ke'Er. To protect themselves, they wrapped their villages in the cloak of state secrecy, effectively sealing off AIDS patients from foreign aid groups as well as health officials from other provinces. AIDS-care centers still won't put the word AIDS on their doors, opting instead for such intentionally obscure labels as "home garden."

To their credit, the authors also note how helpful some of the health officials are being to Dr. Ho, as their alarm at the magnitude of the crisis grows.

The article includes the usual horror stories of China's AIDS victims and their children (200,000 of whom are now parentless in Henan Province), and the maddening attempts to move officials to action. It also gives us reason to hope as it chronicles Dr. Ho's successes in pushing the boulder up the mountain.

More than anything, the article is a tribute to Dr. Ho, whose patience, perseverance and dedication make him one of the greatest heroes of our time. How ironic, that he is forced to play a David-and-Goliath scenario when he is trying desperately to save Goliath from death and destruction.

Related post: The indescribable tragedy of AIDS in China

I just read one of the strangest and most outspoken posts yet on the current debate about Taiwan and cultural "misunderstandings" and the Falun Gong now floating around our regional blogosphere. I mean, this is really strong stuff.

In regard to "Understanding China":

What do you think is so special about your so-called culture (5000 years) that makes it impossible for a white-faced, big-nosed, hairy barbarian to understand? Plenty of foreigners understand China, you just mistake their complaints for misunderstandings. I think a lot of Chinese behaviour is stupid, racist, ignorant, and backward. I understand it, but I don’t like it. When I say the concept of face is dumb, and you say, “You just don’t understand Chinese culture,” you’re actually saying that you don’t understand the words coming out of my mouth. I didn’t say, “I don’t understand this interesting, ancient, exotic, inscrutible concept of face, could you please educate me?” The underlying assumption seems to be that if the rest of the world could just understand China, we would all see that they’ve been right all along. Like green tea against cancer, an understanding of China could break down all barriers to world peace.

Can you tell us how you really feel, Brad?

I don't agree by any means with all that Brad says, especially how it is impossible to change anyone's mind on anything related to China. (Hell, my own mind got changed, and fairly quickly, after witnessing the CCP's sins during the SARS debacle.) But he has an excellent point when it comes to those who would argue the onus is always on the Westerner to "understand" the Chinese, and that the Chinese are absolved of any responsibility to meet us half-way, let alone to understand us.

So I repeat, I don't agree with all that Brad says. But I'm glad I read it. He definitely got me thinking, and from a purely stylistic perspective, I am impressed.

I'm afraid it'll be a silent night. Flying home from Beijing on the red-eye and arriving home at 7 am is bad enough. When it's on China Airlines, it's pure torture (uncomfortable seats, non-stop noise, inedible food, etc.). I had to go straight to work with no sleep and no dinner or breakfast, so I'm in no mood to sit and write this evening. I should be back in top form by the morning.

I had such a great time in China last week. Too bad news like this forces me to remember there is still trouble in paradise:

CHINESE Internet dissident Yan Jun, 32, has been sentenced to two years in prison on a subversion charge for posting essays online calling for change, including a free press and free expression, his family said today.

The Xi'an Intermediate People's Court sentenced him this morning on a charge of "inciting subversion", his mother Dai Yuzhen told AFP.

"The court took no more 20 minutes," Dai said by telephone from Xi'an in Shaanxi province.

Family members and Yan could not understand the court's decision, Dai said.

"I can't accept this verdict. Just because he wrote a few essays, he's going to jail? I can't make sense of it," Dai said.

What a shame. Such a robust country, such an ambitious people, still reigned in by good old-fashioned totalitarian terror.

UPDATE: The families of four cyber-dissidents sentenced to unbelievably harsh sentences have now appealed to Laura Bush for help. This is another must-read for those who think things are getting better in terms of self-expression. These guys range from 28 to 32, and their prison sentences range from 8 to 10 years. Those are very, very long sentences.

Well, 6 of the 11 who had expressed interest showed up for yesterday's lunch, including Jeremy , Brendan, Emile, Brian, Adam and myself (of course), plus my friend Ben. It was fascinating, discovering the faces and the voices behind the electronic ink, and the Peking duck was fantastic (not me, the food). Thanks to everybody who showed up, and Adam should be posting the group picture once he gets back on his feet.

As for the six no-shows, all I can say is Be careful. Beijing is a small city, and we will find you.

Even though online polls are not an exact science (what an understatement), I hope you can get over to Whizbang's Weblog Awards and cast a vote for me in the Best Foreign Blog category. Up against such big players as Tim Blair and Gweilo Diaires I'm obviouisly not going to win, but what the heck....

Inspired by Whizbang, Phil of Flying Chair notoriety is holding the first-ever Asia Weblog Awards. If you have nothing better to do, you can vote for me in the Best Singapore Blog and Best Essayist categories. Thanks.

Rushed post: Reporters without Borders (RSF) is taking a much more pro-active stance against the Western firms behind the Great Firewall of China. Especially Cisco.

The RSF sent letters to the CEOs of Cisco, Microsoft, Intel, Thomson, Nortel, HP, Logitech, Oracle, NEC, Samsung, Sun, IBM, Yahoo!, and Alcatel. The letters expressed the fact that the government of China has continued to crack down on Internet users it considers to be political dissidents, and that these companies have aided the Chinese Communist Party in that endeavor. Specifically, the group mentioned that Cisco Systems supplies the government with special online spying systems, and Yahoo!, in 2002, agreed to assist in the filtering and censoring of Internet content via its search and portal services in exchange for more access to Chinese markets

It's great that they are doing this, though how much difference it makes remains to be seen.

I tried to post all day but apparently Hosting Matters was down much of the day.

I don't have much time now, but I just want to tell the world that this has been the most beautiful trip. Beijing looks happier, cleaner, nicer and more humane. Could it just be me and my own mood, or can the city really have changed so much in seven moinths?

In visiting old friends, I was offered two jobs, one in Beijing and one Shanghai. Unfortunately, my loyalties lie elsewhere, namely in Phoenix. But I would be lying if I didn't say I was damned tempted. (And still am.)

Tomorrow, the bloggers of Greater Beijing congregate in my hotel lobby and we all head off to eat (what else?) Peking duck. Some of us see the world very differently, so let's hope we all get along. It's going to be strange, since I have such preconceived notions of what these guys (and at least one girl, I think) are like. It will be fascinating to see what they are really like.

Okay, I'll try to post more tomorrow, if my site's host remains stable. It's just so nice here. Beijing looks so beautiful....

UPDATE: Looking back a day later at this post, I see that it reeks of sentimentality. Sincerest apologies. Maybe I should delete it.

I am so proud of this.

I think it gets kind of tiresome to always refer to anything and everything about North Korea as "surreal"....but what the heck? This is an utterly surreal (and very funny, in a surreal sort of way) article about taking your vacation in the world's most surreal place:

In the surreal world of North Korean tourism, you can feast on local delicacies served by glamorous lady comrades, watch an acrobatics show infused with Stalinist humor and climb a storied mountain covered with plaques and monuments celebrating the totalitarian Kim clan. But be back indoors by the midnight curfew -- or face fines, questioning by authorities or, well, worse.

This is Mount Kumgang, the fortified tourist compound where the Hermit Kingdom meets the Magic Kingdom, right down to Disneyesque guys in fuzzy bear suits greeting visitors. A window into hermetically sealed North Korea since foreign visitors were granted limited access five years ago, it lies an hour's drive north of the minefields and missile batteries lining the most heavily militarized border in the world.

Actually, nothing in this article is especially new. We all know by now that life in North Korea is one long David Lynch movie, but I'm still amazed every time I read about it. I mean, it can't be real, can it? It's all a joke, Kim Jong Il is one day going to smile and tell us it was a big hoax to see how gullible we dumb Westerners can really be -- right? There's no other explanation for such looniness:

The son [Kim Jong Il] is said to have entered this world on a mountaintop, his birth heralded by lightning bolts and a double rainbow. Recently named "Guardian of Our Planet" by the North Koreans, Kim Jong Il rules through a cult of personality that is alive and well in Mount Kumgang.

No act of the Kims is too small to be noted on these ancient rocks, now coated with more than 4,000 monuments, etchings and other commemorative inscriptions to the clan. A spot where Kim Il Sung is said to have especially appreciated the view is dutifully marked with a six-foot-tall stone tablet. Elsewhere a young guard stood by an etching commemorating the exact location where Kim Jong Sook, mother of the younger Kim, once rested her weary bones.

Check out the article. It's long and rich with additional evidence that whatever else you can say about North Korea, there is certainly no other place on earth even remotely like it.

I swore last winter that if I ever did return to Beijing, it would never, ever be in the winter.

So guess where I'm going tonight?

I hear it is absolutely brutally cold at the moment. Before I left Beijing, I gave away all my heavy clothing -- scarves, sweaters, coats, gloves -- to poor people there, knowing I would never need them again. After all, I was going to Singapore, and I live in Phoenix, and the thought of returning in December would have been absurd. Now I wish I had kept at least a couple of those things.

Blogging should dwindle to a trickle over the next 24 hours, but I suspect I'll be back in true form by Friday, after Beijing has once more inspired, delighted, terrified, mystified and utterly overwhelmed me. So hang on.

Another former friend and colleague of my dear late friend Roy has commented.

Along with the comments, I've received four separate emails over the past year from people who knew him, mainly college friends from Princeton. It's so wonderful, how we can keep his memory alive....

And would it be her dream come true?

In a provocative post, The Almost Daily Grind takes on The Big Man Himself, King-for-Life "Senior Minister" Lee Kuan Yew, and in so doing manages to make a total laughing stock of the once mighty city-state.

I was told when I started blogging about Singapore that I could pretty much say what I wanted -- as long as I didn't criticize LKY. Popagandhi seems to think she is above the law.

She starts by citing today's newspaper headline, "Lee tells forum he didn’t realise importance of those who think outside the box when he was building Singapore," and a quote from Lee, “I didn’t know this when I started, I know this now - you need both.”

Hurrah! Now, in order to allow us to “think outside the box”, they will tell us where the perimeters of the box are and where and what exactly to think when we’re outside it. I daresay this will be achieved through “creativity workshops” our schools will send us to (funded by the Teach Our Children To Think Holdings, part of Singapore Inc., also a Government Linked Company, but don’t tell anybody that because they’re really a private firm).

Also, doesn’t “when he was building Singapore” make it all sound like a game of Lego? I can’t say that is too far from the truth, even though I desperately wish I could.

(sidenote: “He challenged his audience to find another South-east Asian country where visitors could fly in, be out of the airport in 10 minutes, arrive in the city in another 15 minutes, attend a conference and fly out the same evening.” - the marvels of being small, I guess, and that’s about it.)

Wow, can she write or what?

In a few slicing syllables she manages to capture the very essence of Singapore, the do-as-your-government-tells-you-to-do mentality, the inability of Lee & Co. to keep its fingers out of absolutely everything, the way it is scraping rather pathetically to instill an "entrepreneurial spirit" after brainwashing its citizens for nearly half a century that stupid is better.

(Popagandhi, I am presuming if you get away with this I can, too. I'm not going to get in any trouble, will I?)

Thanks for giving me my only laugh in a long hard day. (Once she takes over for Conrad, will we ever want him to come back?) (I misunderstood; the winner was Hemlock.)

Food for thought:

Visiting German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in Beijing on Monday his country backed Beijing's ''one-China'' policy.

''Germany has experience of what it means when a country is separated,'' Schroeder said.

Interesting.

If he had been told back in the 1970s that the East Germans wanted West Germany to join them as a single country with the East German government still in power would he have leapt at the opportunity? Somehow I suspect he might have thought that separation was indeed better -- much better -- than sleeping with the devil.

This is a bit of a bombshell and perhaps the harshest and most pointed criticism I have ever seen of China in the mainstream media.

Robert L. Bernstein, founding chairman of Human Rights Watch and former chairman of Random House, is speaking today to the World Press Freedom Committee, and the Washington Post has published the speech in advance.

Bernstein assails the media for continuously sugar-coating news about China, turning the "China is changing" line into a cliche, and failing to report the rising number of Chinese citizens killed by the police.

This guy holds no punches.

China, the last big totalitarian government, is brutalizing its own people. It limits and distorts information, keeping them ignorant on many critical subjects, and gives harsh prison terms to those who publish information the government would rather have suppressed.

[....]

Xu Wenli has been out of prison since Dec. 23, 2002. He served 16 years, four of them in solitary confinement, for writing down his thoughts on the need for a more open China. News of these types of convictions and harsh sentences reach Human Rights in China every week. The press and the public need to be reminded that there are many others still in prison for the peaceful expression of their views. Human Rights in China has provided information on well over 2,000 cases -- people currently imprisoned for their ideas or beliefs.

And here's a subject that the press simply has not covered, despite reliable information that is available: Outside every major Chinese city is a virtual "slave" camp. About 2 million to 3 million Chinese citizens live in some 800 of these so-called custody and repatriation camps. Can you imagine a story like this going unreported if such a camp existed outside a major Western city? People are put there for not having proper residence permits, and they are worked hard from early morning until nighttime.

I have taken Human Rights in China's report on these camps to top editors of numerous publications with no results. Many reporters say they can't do the story because they can't get into the camps. But now is the time to insist on access.

I remember how at lunch one day my colleague in Beijing told me about the slave labor camps, and I found it impossible to believe since I never saw it in writing. Now I believe it.

Bernstein compares the media silence in China to a similar phenomenon in Iraq under Saddam, and says that in both cases there is no excuse, that it goes smack against what journalism is supposed to do.

Just about every word Bernstein say is worth citing, in bold, but for economy's sake here are two more money quotes:

My experience as co-chair of the organization known as Human Rights in China has taught me that the international press in Beijing also has been "managed." Tyrants throughout history have understood that information is power, and denying information to its own people or disseminating propaganda to the rest of the world have been China's trademarks for years.

[...]

It has become almost a cliche to talk about the fact that China is changing rapidly, and therefore doesn't require the kind of pressure that was needed with the Soviet Union. But to the thousands who are locked up in prisons and in mental institutions for their beliefs, that is cold comfort.

Sounds like me talking.

[Updated, 18.50 Singapore time]

Another Update: Conrad chimes in as well, and you think I'm outspoken.... (And I should have patented the phrase "Evil Empire," which he shamelessly lifts from an earlier post of mine.)

Just one more thing to worry about.

I can scarcely believe what I'm reading over at the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web column nowadays. Its writer, James Taranto is a vicious satirist, and while he is way smarter than Limbaugh he can be much nastier. And because he's writing for a respectable entity, he can be much more dangerous.

Every day it's the same theme: the Dems are naive clowns and the Repubs are true leaders. That's okay; we can all have our opinions. But when you have to express it through truly nasty insults, there's cause for alarm. After all, this is the Wall Street Journal he is representing, and his column has become a veritable smear machine.

Today he refers to Jimmy Carter as "the disgraced former president." Disgraced? What merits this? Then he refers to John Kerry as "the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat," the same descriptor he used yesterday, equally repellent each time. Over the past six days I've seen him refer to Paul Krugman three separate times as "Former Enron advisor Paul Krugman." (How loud would he shriek if the media always referred to Bush as "former drunk driver George Bush"? And besides, it's a gross misrepresentation of who Krugman is.)

This is taking us beyond punditry into a much uglier area. And somehow Taranto and the like have managed to pass it off as legitimate journalism. We all know the WSJ has one of the nastiest editorial pages in the country, but at least it used to have manners. All Taranto does is taunt, like a spoiled little bad boy, delighting in his ability to smear and insult, and even get paid for it.

This is the media talking. Smears have been known to stick, even if utterly untrue. They are dangerous. This guy should be reeled in or fired, but I suspect no one is more titillated by Taranto's vilifications and slander than the WSJ's editorial department.

Note: This was written in lunch-hour haste and in my hurrying I typed "Jim Carrey" instead of "John Kerry." Funny how the human mind works (and doesn't). The error has been corrected, but not before I was punished for it in the Comments. Enough!

A commenter pointed me to an article by Xiang Dong, senior producer with BBC World Service. It's an important story because right now it seems to many that China has finally wised up about AIDS and is being open and responsible on the issue. But is it true?

I had hoped that China had learned some lessons after the outbreak of Sars, but reporting on or talking about HIV and Aids in China remains both difficult and dangerous. The situation is still very sensitive and journalists - whether foreign or local - asking questions are routinely prevented from reaching the areas where people are dying.

Even the outspoken Aids activist Dr Gao Yaojie was concerned. When I telephoned her in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, where hundreds of thousands of people contracted HIV through selling their blood, she told me that her telephone was bugged and that she was being watched to try to stop her revealing the true picture of the HIV/Aids epidemic. I know that many other journalists have been harassed, detained and even expelled from the province.

So much for the new transparency on AIDS.

The article focuses on Xiang's attempt to interview AIDS victims in a village in Henan province. The level of government harassment against any "outsider" who tries to reach these people is intense, and the locals who assist them are arrested. But the saddest part of the story is how the victims are still treated as second-class citizens, and how any attempt to improve their lives is challenged by local officials:

The following evening we began the 11-hour train journey to Henan. On board, my guide introduced me to two other volunteers and explained that he was setting up an orphanage for children whose parents had died from Aids. He told me of the difficulties he faces in dealing with the local authorities. Local schools won't accept any of the children so he has been forced to set up the orphanage in a local mosque.

In the wake of World AIDS Day and all the noise China has made regarding its new openness on AIDS, it's time to see the hype translated into action. Most of the efforts to stop AIDS must ocur at the local level. If this example is systemic, then we're still pretty close to square one.

Related post: The indescribable tragedy of AIDS in China

Hailey Xie has a great post on World AIDS day and what it meant for her. It begins:

I have a red silk ribbon. I carefully put it at the place where I could see it every day. It's red. It's made from silk, and it's a ribbon. But it's RED SILK RIBBON, which stands for love, stands for our genuine love to all the unfortunate AIDS victims and HIV carriers, stands for our passion to bring fairness to them, stands for our hearts, stands for the determination that we are going to conquer the war against AIDS.

Read the whole thing; it will give you some hope.

[Note: This is one of those "personal" diary-like posts. Please do not read it.]

48 hours. No, not the movie. That's how long I've got before I arrive in Beijing after leaving more than half a year ago.

I described in my most heartfelt post ever how it was at a concert in the Forbidden City Concert Hall that my experience in China reached an emotional level that nearly pushed me to the breaking point.

And I am returning to China because the chorus in which I sang that night is singing again, at the same concert hall, to sing Handel's Messiah. And once again, I will be going with my friend Ben, the kindest and gentlest creature in the universe. Once again, just like 6 months ago, my former employer and her husband will be there. But this time, instead of hiding Ben from them, I am going to walk over and introduce him.

I'm nervous about this trip. It was a sudden decision to go, as soon as I heard about the concert I felt I had no choice. I left in April in such a state of anguish, not because Beijing made me miserable but because SARS was then at its very peak, and I had to deal with the city's insanity and leaving my job and handling my relationships and moving and with feelings that were so conflicting I could scarcely make any sense of them.

Singing in that chorus in April may have been was the most emotional experience of my very emotional life. I told my boss that if the concert had been months earlier, if I'd had the opportunity to start practicing with the choir in January instead of April, I would almost certainly have stayed in Beijing. I would be living there right now.

For a long time I had so little sense of purpose in Beijing. I felt unsuited to my job, and I had few if any friends until Ben. I had this blog. If you look at it pre-Beijing, you will see how it evolved, almost overnight, from a passing hobby into the very focal point of my existence.

All of a sudden, in January, I had a sudden sense of inspiration and wrote a post that was totally out of keeping with what I'd written before. It got picked up by a super-blogger and that redefined the course of my stay in China. I would exist to tell the story of the amazing things I experienced there. And that's what happened.

I had my blog. I had the friendship of the selfless Ben. And then I had the concert, the tape of which is playing this instant in my living room. The very next night, my friend of more than a decade was to fly over from America. And I was to leave, leave my adored friend, my beautiful city of Beijing, which I loved and hated, the city which for all its challenges managed to drive me to levels of inspiration I never before knew at any other time or in any other city.

I'll never forget that night, walking onto the stage with the other singers, and feeling that some greater power had touched me, a sense of destiny, of a great inflection point, and of danger. The most haunting and mystical of the pieces we sang was The Cantique of Jean Racine by Gabriel Faure.

Just now, as if by magic, as I typed those words, the Cantique began to play on my little stereo, and as always I just fight back the tears as best I can, but it never works; the music always wins. This music is so sublime, so gently stirring that I always have to succumb.

It is a prayer, and it is infused with a religious longing, a gentle but fervent song to God. It begins with one of the simplest yet exquisite melodies ever conceived, sung only by the basses. I stood next to this wonderful young lady, an alto, and during our rehearsal she told me how thrilling it was to stand there and hear me sing the bass line because I was so in touch with the music. But on this night, the night of the concert, it was all too much. I couldn't deal with it, and the aching beauty of the music caused me to choke; instead of singing, I just started to weep, and I had to fight back the tears, and instead of hearing the beautiful bass line she heard me choking, and afterward she asked me if I was alright. Yes, I'm alright, I told her, I am just going through such an emotional time, and the music brought it all to a head, all I could do was cry.

Beijing. It wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I had a few shocks and several frustrations, even a few moments when I wondered if I would emerge alive. But I wouldn't give it up for anything, and nearly every day I feel an acute regret that I left. There, I've said it: I wish I had never left Beijing, and if I could go back to that night at the concert hall and change my destiny, I would do it. I would be there today. And now it's too late.

No one knows what I went through. It was not a matter of culture shock or adapting or spicy food or language barriers. I can't go into it here; all I can say is that it was as if my heart, my soul, was put into an electric blender.

I need to go to sleep. If you can, get yourself a copy of Faure's Cantique de Jean Racine and listen to the opening notes, the lush string section and harp, and the entrance as if by magic of the bass voices, so gentle yet so passionate, so full of faith and love, and maybe you will know why even now, six months later, I still cry when I hear it, and why I feel that I left part of me in Beijing. Listen to it, and tell me if you do not, as if by magic, know what God and man is.

Somebody earlier today posted about how the Chinese government is introducing receipts with "little scratching games" in a move to pressure restaurants to give customers their fa piao (and pay their taxes). I can't find the post and I wanted to write it up. (Can't remember if it was on Living in China or a blog.) If you are the writer, or if someone you know is the writer and you can point me to him/her, please let me know. Thanks.

Just imagine: A coal miner's daughter, Lu Yan, the family's "ugly duckling," is walking down a street in Beijing when she's spotted by a model agency talent scout. Within weeks, she is strutting across the catwalks of Paris, China's most in-demand supermodel, perhaps poised to change the very nature of the country's modelling industry.

This is an amazing article that looks at how modelling has become a mega-industry in China, and how Lu Yan is redefining it.

I took one look at her, and I knew she could be a world-class supermodel," said Li Dongtian, one of China's first celebrity hairstylists, who runs a chain of studios and a makeup school. "I was so excited. It was 1999, the turn of the century. The media was asking me who should be the new beauty of the next millennium. I would point without a doubt at Lu Yan."

Lu was stunned. "He was the first Chinese person to ever tell me I was pretty," she recalled.

According to Li and fashion photographer Feng Hai, who was the first to splash her image across Chinese magazines, Lu's look and personality make an ideal combination for representing the 21st century Chinese woman. "Before, Chinese people were only interested in big eyes and feminine sweetness. They didn't know anything about the cool factor and personality," Li said. "So many Chinese girls are beautiful, but you see her and forget her. With Lu Yan, she is so striking, you take one look at her, and you never forget her."

She is apparently setting a new standard for beauty around the world, though in China she remains quite controversial.

"By Chinese standards, she is definitely not pretty," said Gao Xiaofei, 20, a modeling student at the Beijing Fashion Institute. "Just look at our class — almost everyone has big eyes. But I like her a lot. The more I look at her, the more I think she's beautiful."