china

恭喜發財 — Gong Hey Fat Choi — Gōng Xĭ Fā Cái — Happy New Year!

I went over to Chinatown to see the lunar New Year celebration and parade for the Year of the Rat. There must have been a hundred thousand people there: along parts of the route, spectators were packed in like sardines three or four deep with two-way traffic trying to pass behind them between the crush of humanity and the storefronts. Also, it was chilly and raining (as usual). But those who braved it were rewarded with a spectacular event: dancers, marching bands, more dragons and lions than you could shake a stick at, and of course zillions of flags, banners, and streamers. Various politicians (and their staffs) were handing out the traditional red envelopes filled with chocolates: I collected some from the Honourable Gordon Campbell, premier of B.C. (whom I met briefly), His Worship Sam Sullivan, mayor of Vancouver, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, prime minister of Canada (who, I believe, wasn’t actually there, but his lackeys were), and Gregor Robertson, MLA for Vancouver-Fairview. Not a bad haul, as these things go, I guess.

See the gallery of photos from the celebration.

A couple of sources in the (Western) media are starting to pick up the story of Wei Wenhua, a blogger who was beaten to death in central China. Municipal inspectors—a sort of minor league city-level police force—were engaged in a confrontation with villagers over government waste-dumping in the vicinity. The confrontation turned violent, with inspectors beating villagers. Wei took out his mobile phone to use its camera to take pictures of the confrontation, whereupon fifty inspectors descended on him, beat him for five minutes, and rendered him unconscious. He was taken to hospital but pronounced dead on arrival.

CNN is reporting that twenty-four inspectors were detained and over a hundred others are under investigation, but it seems clear that even this swift response, obviously designed by the Chinese government to try to prevent civil unrest, is not having the desired effect. People around the world, but especially in Internet-restricted China, are using the Internet to express their outrage:

After the Web site sina.com published news of Wei’s beating, readers promptly expressed their outrage. In one day alone, more than 8,000 posted comments. Bloggers inside and outside China bluntly condemned the brutal killing.

“City inspectors are worse than the mafia,” wrote one Chinese blogger. “They are violent civil servants acting in the name of law enforcement.”

Another blogger asked, “Just who gave these city inspectors such absurd powers?”

It’s not exactly news that the Chinese government has an awful record when it comes to free speech on the internet, or an equally awful record on police and government treatment of its own citizens. The perspective article linked to above contains several examples of criticism from various ranks of people in China: from academics to bloggers to regular old folks, there seems to be a significant amount of resentment at this scandal. It won’t be a catalyst, and this event won’t be a significant trigger, for large-scale changes in governmental policy. But hopefully Wei Wenhua won’t be forgotten, and his cause will be taken up and championed by people both in China and in the rest of the world.

Language Log has a highly amusing post about some new examples of strange English translations on Chinese restaurant menus. This is, of course, not new (as has, of course, been widely documented), but this particular instance is quite amusing because of the way the word wikipedia shows up in there. Unfortunately I cannot read Chinese, so I’ll have to wait for LL’s official explanation—they’ve already got a pretty good hypothesis in a primitive form on the first linked post. But when you take into account the P.R.C.’s on-again off-again blocking of Wikipedia using the Great Firewall, I’m somewhat surprised that the word even occurred to someone (or some computer) as an acceptable translation at all. I would understand if it were Google, given the censorship issues that surrounded its creation and continued existence, but the ultimate permission being granted to remain after Google hopped in bed with the P.R.C. government. But Wikipedia?? That’s just weird.

Another thing that’s just weird: my spelling checker, which I never modify or anything because I can’t see the purpose or the relevance of trying to do so, recognises the words ‘Wikipedia’ and ‘Google’ without a second hesitation; even the word ‘wikipedia’ as in ‘barbecued congo eel with wikipedia and Fermented bean curd’ is recognised. But ‘href’ isn’t. Go figure.