ponderings of the pococurante

Blogger Hu Xingdou calls for a boycott of the Jackie Chan’s May 1st Beijing concert in light of Chan’s controversial comments about Chinese people and their need to be regulated or controlled. In some way i am sympathetic to Chan, because an intellectual he’s not and he really doesn’t have either the brains or the position to speak his real mind about things, and yet he was stupid enough to open his big mouth anyway. Oh well. Here are the last two paragraphs of this blogger’s criticism, which I liked and have translated for your edification.

成龙公然为剥夺人民群众的话语权、知情权、上访权、参与权撑腰。他在香港、台湾受到狗仔队的追踪，不胜其扰，由此他当然十分感激在大陆作为“中国电影家协会副主席”享受的副部级待遇与特别保护，“慢慢觉得”很有必要“管”一下举报腐败、维权上访、追求国家正义与自由的“添乱之人”，认为只有这样国家才很“和谐”。但是我要问的是：如果成龙的亲人遭遇冤屈无法伸张，如果成龙受到打击伤害无处讲理，如果成龙家的房子土地被人强征而没有什么补偿，如果成龙是弱势群体，不能享有经济权利、社会权利、文化权利、政治权利，举报腐败会被迫害，网络揭露地方乱象会被千里抓捕，上访会被送进精神病院，他还会这样嚣张与猖狂吗？当然，这些仅仅是假设，他成龙事实上是强势群体，是权贵，是既得利益者，他在大陆以爱国主义、民族主义的歌曲作伪装，日进斗金，实际上是在歌唱强者对弱者的蹂躏。
一位缺乏最起码公民意识的影星居然成为成千上万民众崇拜的偶像、成为中国人的“代表”，一位奴才的丑陋表演竟然赢得台下工商领袖们的热烈掌声，大陆中国人该反省一下了，该加入到抵制成龙的行列中去了——为了捍卫大陆的自由、香港的自由、台湾的自由。

[Jackie Chan has openly joined the forces of those that would deprive the people of their right to speak, to know (i.e. to have information), and to petition. Since he's always getting hounded by the papparazzi in Hong Kong, he must really enjoy the special treatment that he receives as vice chairman of the CHina Film Association, and thus gradually has come to believe that it must be better to control all the troublemakers that report corruption, defend their rights through petitioning, or attempt to achieve some kind of justice, because only then can society be "harmonious". But there's something I'd like to ask: if it was his family that were wronged or the victims of injustice, and if it was them who had nowhere to seek redress, and if it was him that had his home and property forcibly taken away without any recompense, and if he was a member of a disadvantaged group, that didn't have much by way of economic, social, cultural, or political power, and was attacked for reporting corruption or arrested for exposing the crimes of local governments, or taken into an insane asylum because he went to petition, would he still be this arrogant? Of course, these are just assumptions, because in reality Jackie Chan is one of the privileged few, a member of the social elite, the establishment and its vested interests--and he comes to mainland China, singing songs of nationalism and pride, making money hand over fist--but what he's really singing are songs that celebrate the triumph of the strong over the weak.

That a celebrity who lacks a basic understanding of civil society and the rights of citizens could become the idol of millions, and “represent” China, that a slave’s shoddy performances could so delight and entertain the captains of industry and business leaders ought to give pause to all the Chinese people and make them reflect on whether they should join the ranks of those who will boycott Jackie Chan–for the sake protecting the freedoms of the PRC, the freedoms of Hong Kong, and the freedoms of Taiwan.

Though not quite as famous as Jackie Chan, Ren Zhiqiang has also been making some controversial remarks at the BO AO forum. The remarks that got people riled up are as follows

“房价到底涨了多少？1978年，我们的GDP大概3000多亿，现在是30多万亿，增加了100多倍。第二，我们1978年月工资全国平均28.6元，到现在也增加了100倍。1978年我们大白菜2分钱一颗，现在2块钱，也增加了100倍。我们房价只增加了16.6倍，和工资收入相比，相差太远了。和工资收入比30年来房子等于没涨价。”

[how much have real estate prices really risen? IN 1978 the GDP was just 300 billion, and now its 30 trillion, a 100 fold increase. Secondly, in 1978 we had an average income of 28.67 yuan, and now there's a hundred fold increase in that. In 1978, bokchoi was 2 cents per, and now its 2 yuan, so that's a hundred fold increase. Our real estate prices have only risen by 16.6 RMB, so compared to the rise in income, that's nothing. If you compare it to the rise in income, you could say that real estate prices haven't risen at all.]

Naturally, a lot of people got pissed off about this because it seems to be shoddy economics and, more insultingly, seems to make light of the difficulty that people in the new market economy have in buying houses, which of course is vastly different if not utterly incomparable to the housing situation during the more strictly socialist era.

On another note, Ren Zhiqiang also made the claim that 70% of the profit for real estate goes to the government.

任志强：政府分得7成房价份额

全国工商联房地产商会的数据还显示，从单个城市来分析，上海的开发项目总销售收入中流向政府的份额最高，为61.84%，企业剩余所占份额最小，只有4.15%；而北京市流向政府的份额为42.42%，企业剩余部分只有11.87%。

关于税费，全国工商联房地产商会在报告中说，以北京为例，开发企业在房地产开发过程中需要与20多个政府部门打交道，需要缴纳的各种费用多达20多种；广州的开发企业在开发过程中需要与30多个政府部门打交道，缴纳20多种收费。

任志强表示，房价构成中，并没有核算政府收取的各种税费，如规费、证费、市政基础设施费等。同时，也未计算上下游产业中的税费，这些也是政府的所得，如施工单位上缴的各种税费、建筑材料生产与购买环节的税费、设备生产与交易中的税费等等。

“若将上述因素都考虑在内，政府从房价中分得的份额，要远远超过70%的比重”任志强说，而除住房之外的任何商品，都不可能为政府提供如此大比重的收益。

The official figures for shanghai are 61.84%, which is the highest among Chinese cities, but Ren ZHiqiang claims that the actual number may be above 70% because of the other sundry fees and taxes that are not calculated into the former figure.

Well, that’s nothing new. That’s how the CCP makes their fortunes, individual and collective: from real estate.

（4）中国想真正成为超级强国，首要的条件是不是军事的强大？造航母是不是我们成为强国的一种指标？
Is being a military power a necessary condition to China becoming a superpower? And would be making aircrafit carriers be a benchmark of that?

　　那不是首要条件，但肯定是不可缺少的一环。一个超级强国，经济上要很强大，话说过来，经济上不强大军事上也强大不起来。科技上也要非常先进，这个世界上应该是科技创新层出不穷的，但我们确实就差得很远。在文化上面也要有影响力，这点美国就有这个架子，不管好莱坞大片水平高低，全世界人民都在看，我们就需要这样的东西。但我认为，文化的东西可以放在后面一点，但经济科技军事肯定是少不了的。

No, that isn’t a sufficient condition, but it is definitely necessary. A superpower has to have economic strength, and you could say that without economic strength you could never develop economic strength. You also need to advanced in scientific research, although there are scientific and technological innovations in the world, in this regard we still lag behind. In terms of culture, we also need to have influence, and America has this trick down, no matter how good or bad Hollywood’s films are, people around the world will still watch them; we need something akin to that. However, I believe that we can put these cultural things on the backburner a bit, but economic and military strength are things we simply cannot do without.
　　
造航母不够成为强国的指标。泰国都有航母，印尼马上要造，应该说我们不造是比较可笑的。联合国常任理事国里面就我们没有，像英法，现在都不敢说自己是世界强国了，尽管都有航母呢。但说回来这个东西不是一个世界强国的指标，但如果没有这个东西，那肯定就不是世界强国。
That said, having an aircraft carrier is not a sufficient benchmark for military strength. Thailand has them, Indonesia is going to build some soon, you might say that it would be a joke if we didn’t have our own. Out of all the countries in the Security Council, we are the only country without any. England, France, they might not be superpowers anymore, but they still have carriers. Again, they are not sufficient conditions for saying a country is a superpower, but are necessary—you could not imagine a superpower that didn’t have them.

　　（5）金融危机给中国带来的警示意义是什么？未来中国进行坚定不移的产业升级是不是有效抵御经济动荡的最有效手段？
What kind of warning has the current financial crisis sounded for China. Will China’s commitment to increased productivity be enough to counter the current instabilities?

　　最大的警示意义，就是“搞金融是最高级的”这个观念是错误的，中国这次之所以受到的冲击比较小，就是因为金融方面比较落后，落后反而占了便宜。这次金融危机告诉我们制造业永远是最重要的，郎咸平所谓的“中国实体经济受到的冲击会更大，美国只是被冲击了一个金融”屁话，你看看通用汽车现在啥样了？当时跟工商银行差不多的花旗银行，现在市值是工商银行的二十分之一。还有，到华尔街抄什么底？要抄也要去底特律去西雅图，我们要工程师而不是那些所谓的金融人才。美国赌场现在出了大问题，以后赌场肯定就没有啦，他们做的那些特殊金融产品，等金融恢复了之后肯定不再有了，美国人也在反省，他们会取消掉这些特殊金融产品，那些金融人才都是废物，中国人干嘛要去招聘这些废物加骗子回来？

The greatest warning to us is that “doing finance is a higher form of economic activity” isn’t necessarily true. This time around, the impact on China has been relatively small, and that’s precisely because we, in terms of financial markets, behind the rest of the world. And that has redounded to our benefit. The crisis has demonstrated that manufacturing is still the most important, and Larry Lang’s argument that “China’s manufacturing and product industries will get hit hard, while only the financial industry will suffer in America” is clearly bullshit—have you seen what kind of shape GM is in? Citibank, which used to have market valuation close to that of the Commerce and Industry bank, is now only worth 1/20th of that. Also, why are we going to Wall Street to find people? If we are going to find some talented people we might as well go to Detroit or Seattle, what we need are engineers and not these so called financial wizards. The American “casino” has encountered some major problems, and in the future, they might just eliminate many of the financial products and instruments from this casino, so that when the financial system recovers, all these financial wizards are going to be useless, and if that’s the case, what would China want with them?

　　不能说单指望这一项，经济问题很复杂，但是对于中国最重要的，显然是产业升级。
You can’t simply hope for one aspect to improve, economic questions are quite complex, but what is most important for China is to improve its manufacturing capabilities.

　　（6）“解放军跟着中国核心利益走”，索马里护航是不是就是体现了这样一种主张？
The PLA will always follow China’s vital interests—does the protection of Chinese ships in Somalia prove this point?

　　这是很小的一个体现。虽然很多人批评索马里护航这件事，但起码有象征意义，起码对这三艘船是个锻炼，不经过实践，你的问题是不知道的。像宋晓军说的，你的钢板是不是适合远洋的需要，那得开出去试试才能知道。
This is only a small example of that. Even though many have criticized the Somali naval protection incident, it at least has some kind of symbolic value, and at least was some kind of training for those three ships, because without that kind of experience and training, you will never know where the real problems lie. It’s like Song Xiaojun said, you won’t know if your ships are fit for distant seas until you take it out and test it.

　　（7）绵延数十年的逆向种族主义将会对一个国家的精神品质造成什么样的伤害？我们应该如何阻止其滋长和蔓延？
What kind of impact does ten plus years of reverse racism have on the intellectual or cultural life of a nation? And what can we do to stop it?

　　伤害特别大。从国家来说，是国民不团结，愿意为外国人效忠。从个人说，到了外国之后，觉得自己不是个人。比如说女孩子，相信外国人特别好，嫁出去倒了大霉。这样的例子何止成千上万。
The damage is quite serious. From a national perspective, you see that the people are not united and are also willing to be loyal to foreigners. From an individual perspective, once you leave and live in another country, you feel like a second-class citizen. For example, some girls think that foreigners are really nice and marry them, only to find out it wasn’t so great after all. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands of such cases.

　　最近还有个例子，就是绿洲乐队演出取消。本来我对这件事情不是特别认真，只是支持下环球时报而已，事实上我都不知道绿洲乐队这些事。我没想到有这么多绿洲乐队的粉丝跳出来骂，我才觉得这个真的是个问题。就有这么些人，说他一定要去国外，然后加入国外的军队打中国。如果真的中国要跟外敌打仗的话，你说会有什么样的结果。就算是他们的音乐再好，哪有怎么了？不听能死啊？就能被外国乐队的那么几位迷成这样，就能驱使着中国歌迷这么抽风，我都怀疑绿洲乐队在英国美国这样的地方有没有这么疯狂的歌迷。

Recently, there’s been another example, which is when the Oasis concert was cancelled. Before, I didn’t really care too much about this, I was just supportive of the Global Times and didn’t really know much about the Oasis situation. However, I didn’t expect so many Oasis fans to come out and start arguing, and it seems to be a real problem. These are the types of people that would to to another countrym join their army, and attack China! If China were really to fight a war with a foreign country, can you just imagine what would happen? Even if their music was super, still, so what? Are you going to die if you don’t listen to it? I can’t understand how a foreign band can have such an effect on people and make their chinese fans go into convulsions, and I somehow doubt that Oasis fans in the UK or the US are as rabid as the ones here in China.
　　这很可怕，这肯定是跟中国这么多年逆向种族主义大环境是有关系的。这些搞逆向种族主义的知识分子，虽然没有直接介入这件事，但是绝对跟他们这么多年的教育有关系的，凭什么说我听周杰伦就是个下贱的事，听英国人的歌就是高贵的事？这帮人能听得懂那些英语歌词我都画上问号。那帮歌迷挺可怜的，他们自己本身肯定没有什么可以炫耀的，他们把这个作为自己唯一的价值所在，现在一旦受到打击便受不了。其实能听得懂又算是什么啊，又能怎么样，但是却被中国高级知识分子说成听得懂很高级，听不懂就是土鳖。我就喜欢二人转怎么了？绿洲乐队在英国皇室眼里，也就是个二人转的地位吧，为什么英国的二人转就高水平？中国的二人转就低水平？这就是这个大环境造成的。
It’s a scary thing, but it has much to do with the reverse-racism that has been going on for years. These reverse-racist intellectuals might not have been directly involved in this matter, but it has everything to do with their education and influence—why should listening to Jay Chou not be seen as somehow lower than listening to an English band? I doubt that these intellectuals can even understand the lyrics in the first place. And these poor fans, well, they probably don’t have much to be proud of themselves, so they link their self-esteem to this band, and when things like this happen, they feel slighted and injured. And so what if you can understand these lyrics, does that somehow make you better than the rest of us, who are just bumpkins? And what if I just like errenzhuan (type of dongbei/Northeastern folk performance)? TO the royal family, Oasis isn’t much more than errenzhuan, so what’s so good about them? Just the fact that they are English, which makes them good, while Chinese ones are no good? This kind of thinking is endemic to our environment.

　　至于政府为什么取消音乐会，我不知道我也不想知道。可是为了这个小事你们就抽风，就说拿枪拿炮打我们，这事值得重视。

As far as why the government decided to cancel the concert, I don’t know and I don’t particular want to know. However, if something as little as this is going to put you in convulsions to the point that you say you’re going use guns or cannons to attack us, then this is something that deserves serious attention.
　　我以前常常把文化的事情给低估了，但是看你们这么疯狂地来了，取消这件事就是对的，我现在觉得文化这件事真的很重要，我理科出身常常重视硬的科技的东西，现在看文化真的很重要。
I’ve often underestimated the importance of culture, but seeing how crazy these fans are, I think it was good to cancel the show, and now I understand that culture is important, and people like me that come out of the sciences tend to have that bias, but now I see that culture really is important.

　　传播我们的书，就是制止他们蔓延的重要一步，我为此奋斗了20多年了。我们过去没有机会出这种书，当然我们希望以后能在电视上辩论，传播效果更大，但是现在我们还没有掌握电视报纸话语权的时候，像南方报业集团，肯定不会让我们说话，这个时候，这本书起码还能代替我们传达。

Promoting this book is part of the efforts that I’ve put in over the last twenty yaars to stop people like that. In the past we didn’t have the opportunity to put out books like this, and we also hope that in future we’ll get the chance to take the debate onto television and thereby reach a wider audience, but we have yet to really develop a strong presence and voice in TV or print media, such as the Southern Newspaper group, they definitely would not let us speak our minds, so at this time, so for the time being we will just have to speak through this book.

Normally I prefer to write a straight up review, but in light of an unusual experience in watching film, I thought I’d make this a meta-review of sorts:

I went to watch this film at Zhongshan park in Shanghai last Tuesday. When the lights dimmed, a “documentary” about Tibet came on. As you know, this is the sensitive year for anniversaries in China, and is, in particular, the 50th anniversary of the uprising in Tibet that led to the exile of the Dalai Lama.The documentary was called, quite pointedly, “China’s Tibet, Past and Future”. If you’ve followed this issue at all, none of the information presented in this film are surprising:

*Tibet has always been part of China and the Tibetan rulers have acknowledged Chinese suzerainty since ancient times. Here are pictures and images of various historical documents that prove this point.
*WHy bother decrying the vetting of Tibetan religious leaders by China’s central government? Emperors used to do this, including with the latest Dalai Lama, so what’s the big deal if the CCP inherits this role.
*Tibet was a despotic, feudal system before the Chinese liberated it. It was a cruel theocracy of vast socio-economic inequality. The lamas and their families–the upper strata of the ancien regime–owned everything, including virtually all the arable land and other resources of production. Regular people had next to nothing.
*China liberated Tibet and gave it a good dose of progressive socialist ideology–and things improved greatly.
*Tibetan heritage is fluorishng and the standard of living has steadily improved.

It was clearly and unambiguously agitprop, but 21st. century China style, wrapping the historical narrative of Tibet up in and interweaving it with that of modern China as a whole, including the successful Beijing Olympics and the upcoming World Expo. At fifteen minutes, it was long and tendentious, and made me a bit impatient, since even after it finished, there was yet another long preview (of a regular movie), so that the film we came to watch didn’t start until a good twenty or twenty five minutes after the time stated on the ticket.

*24 City (24城記）*

Jia Zhangke has said, over the years, that he wants to alternate making docs and fiction films, and in this case he has melded the two.There are real people mixed with actors doing recreations–Joan Chen, Lv Liping, Zhao Tao, among others–but while these actors put on some decent performances these interviewees, the film doesn’t end up being more than a series of vignettes. I doubt that Jia intended to put together some systematic history of the place, but there is an unfinished, work-in-progress feel to this movie that tends to work towards its detriment. However, many of the interviews with the real people are better, because you know they are real–so here, again,is a meta-level question–how does the fact that you are watching Joan Chen change your perception of what’s being shown? It’s obvious that no matter how good Chen’s acting chops are, what she is doing is a performance. Most of the time, of course, we accept this–because that’s what makes fictional films possible in the first place–however, in this case, while Chen and the others are fine, they are still a bit actorly–and you wouldn’t really notice that fact unless you had all these more “real” performances to compare them with.

Jia is probably too intelligent not to notice this himself, but it still took me aback when he confronted this head on during the Joan Chen segment, where she says in her youth, at the prime of her beauty, her coworkers at the factory compared her to the actress Joan Chen. A little pomo joke? Maybe, but it made me a bit skittish. I suppose I still relish the suspension of disbelief,and don’t like the feeling of being taken for a ride, even if the ride, for the most part, is an enjoyable one.

That said, there are some moving moments, both from the actors and the real interviewees–enough to remind you that Jia Zhangke is one of the only Chinese filmmakers out there that can convey the gravity of China’s changing. That pathos, that uniquely Chinese pathos that glossier magazines and Western media don’t–or rather, *can’t* pick up on–are captured by Jia’s lens. One can almost forgive the lack of polish for that very reason–Jia, more than other filmmakers is continually creating audiovisual artifacts for us, the rest of the world, Chinese and non-Chinese alike–that will, I believe, stand the test of time,not only for their aesthetic excellence but because they are excellent chronicles of China. They are chronicles of physical reality, of its metamorphosis–but more than that,they are chronicles of the spirit, of what Chinese people call *jingshen*, which can mean anything mental, intellectual, spiritual–and in Jia’s case, it’s the emotional undertow, the things that are not said, that are glossed over and ignored by ideological or mainstream rhetorics that finally, as it were, get their say.

It is this kind of pathos that you don’t normally see among the audiovisual artifacts being produced today: and that’s what makes the contrast with the Tibetan propaganda film so striking. Jia was once an unofficial or underground filmmaker–and he no longer is, and he is, as well as know, no longer a skint and scrappy indie guy. He makes money. He’s got connections. But there’s still something very real, and very heartfelt at the core, and in a world of cinematic
phoniness, there’s something to be said for that stick to your guns type mentality.

To bring it back to Tibet: it is a strange juxtaposition, watching these two films together–we’re so used to seeing just previews before the movie that to see this stylish bit of agitprop is a bit startling: it hearkens back to newsreels of old, a time when the news was delivered on big screens, or when the political just had to intrude everywhere
because the world was in the throes of war or what have you. I feel obliged to mention that when we went, on Tuesday afternoon, even with the half off discount the theater was nearly empty.I highly doubt that Jia is going to make much money off this film, at least on the domestic market. Likewise, watching propaganda in the afternoon with a handful of other people didn’t quite jibe with I am sure that they play the Tibet film before the other, popular movies, so that before you settle down to watching “Transporter 3″ you get a good dose of “historical” education about the Tibet issue. Just in case things get hairy and out of control in Tibetan areas this March, or throughout the rest of this sensitive year.

China changes, or China never changes. Same ideological posture, except now in IMAX. However, Jia’s world, everything changes–and the only thing that lasts, the only thing that binds us are memories.Children are lost to their parents. Migrations, emotional rows, generation gaps all tear families asunder. The ligature of memory is strained as people get older–it seems strong when they are recalling it in front of us–but of course, we know that simply recalling something and saying it verbally doesn’t really do justice to the “strength” or “saturation” of that memory among the many memories that are stored in your brain or the salient memories constitutive of the sense of self and identity. Therefore, you get the uneasy sense that you are watching something that was unearthed quite by accident, and could very well have been lost. Maybe these “little people”, these “laobaixing” don’t mean much in the large scale of things: you read media articles with Chinese government planners, bureaucrats and energy scientists that are talking about the year 2100 like it’s tomorrow. Just about all of us who are alive now will be dead by that time, and our secrets and wounds, the maybes and could have beens–both individual and collective–will be just as gone. I’ve always been afraid that the official Chinese meta-narrative would swamp and subsume everything else–which is why it’s that much more incumbent on artists, in whatever medium, to keep recording the micro-sadnesses, vicissitudes, twists and turns, warp and woof of the individual life and consciousness. Lest it be completely be forgotten by History.

Normally I prefer to write a straight up review, but in light of an unusual experience in watching film, I thought I’d make this a meta-review of sorts:

I went to watch this film at Zhongshan park in Shanghai last Tuesday. When the lights dimmed, a “documentary” about Tibet came on. As you know, this is the sensitive year for anniversaries in China, and is, in particular, the 50th anniversary of the uprising in Tibet that led to the exile of the Dalai Lama.The documentary was called, quite pointedly, “China’s Tibet, Past and Future”. If you’ve followed this issue at all, none of the information presented in this film are surprising:

*Tibet has always been part of China and the Tibetan rulers have acknowledged Chinese suzerainty since ancient times. Here are pictures and images of various historical documents that prove this point.
*WHy bother decrying the vetting of Tibetan religious leaders by China’s central government? Emperors used to do this, including with the latest Dalai Lama, so what’s the big deal if the CCP inherits this role.
*Tibet was a despotic, feudal system before the Chinese liberated it. It was a cruel theocracy of vast socio-economic inequality. The lamas and their families–the upper strata of the ancien regime–owned everything, including virtually all the arable land and other resources of production. Regular people had next to nothing.
*China liberated Tibet and gave it a good dose of progressive socialist ideology–and things improved greatly.
*Tibetan heritage is fluorishng and the standard of living has steadily improved.

It was clearly and unambiguously agitprop, but 21st. century China style, wrapping the historical narrative of Tibet up in and interweaving it with that of modern China as a whole, including the successful Beijing Olympics and the upcoming World Expo. At fifteen minutes, it was long and tendentious, and made me a bit impatient, since even after it finished, there was yet another long preview (of a regular movie), so that the film we came to watch didn’t start until a good twenty or twenty five minutes after the time stated on the ticket.

*24 City (24城記）*

Jia Zhangke has said, over the years, that he wants to alternate making docs and fiction films, and in this case he has melded the two.There are real people mixed with actors doing recreations–Joan Chen, Lv Liping, Zhao Tao, among others–but while these actors put on some decent performances these interviewees, the film doesn’t end up being more than a series of vignettes. I doubt that Jia intended to put together some systematic history of the place, but there is an unfinished, work-in-progress feel to this movie that tends to work towards its detriment. However, many of the interviews with the real people are better, because you know they are real–so here, again,is a meta-level question–how does the fact that you are watching Joan Chen change your perception of what’s being shown? It’s obvious that no matter how good Chen’s acting chops are, what she is doing is a performance. Most of the time, of course, we accept this–because that’s what makes fictional films possible in the first place–however, in this case, while Chen and the others are fine, they are still a bit actorly–and you wouldn’t really notice that fact unless you had all these more “real” performances to compare them with.

Jia is probably too intelligent not to notice this himself, but it still took me aback when he confronted this head on during the Joan Chen segment, where she says in her youth, at the prime of her beauty, her coworkers at the factory compared her to the actress Joan Chen. A little pomo joke? Maybe, but it made me a bit skittish. I suppose I still relish the suspension of disbelief,and don’t like the feeling of being taken for a ride, even if the ride, for the most part, is an enjoyable one.

That said, there are some moving moments, both from the actors and the real interviewees–enough to remind you that Jia Zhangke is one of the only Chinese filmmakers out there that can convey the gravity of China’s changing. That pathos, that uniquely Chinese pathos that glossier magazines and Western media don’t–or rather, *can’t* pick up on–are captured by Jia’s lens. One can almost forgive the lack of polish for that very reason–Jia, more than other filmmakers is continually creating audiovisual artifacts for us, the rest of the world, Chinese and non-Chinese alike–that will, I believe, stand the test of time,not only for their aesthetic excellence but because they are excellent chronicles of China. They are chronicles of physical reality, of its metamorphosis–but more than that,they are chronicles of the spirit, of what Chinese people call *jingshen*, which can mean anything mental, intellectual, spiritual–and in Jia’s case, it’s the emotional undertow, the things that are not said, that are glossed over and ignored by ideological or mainstream rhetorics that finally, as it were, get their say.

It is this kind of pathos that you don’t normally see among the audiovisual artifacts being produced today: and that’s what makes the contrast with the Tibetan propaganda film so striking. Jia was once an unofficial or underground filmmaker–and he no longer is, and he is, as well as know, no longer a skint and scrappy indie guy. He makes money. He’s got connections. But there’s still something very real, and very heartfelt at the core, and in a world of cinematic
phoniness, there’s something to be said for that stick to your guns type mentality.

To bring it back to Tibet: it is a strange juxtaposition, watching these two films together–we’re so used to seeing just previews before the movie that to see this stylish bit of agitprop is a bit startling: it hearkens back to newsreels of old, a time when the news was delivered on big screens, or when the political just had to intrude everywhere
because the world was in the throes of war or what have you. I feel obliged to mention that when we went, on Tuesday afternoon, even with the half off discount the theater was nearly empty.I highly doubt that Jia is going to make much money off this film, at least on the domestic market. Likewise, watching propaganda in the afternoon with a handful of other people didn’t quite jibe with I am sure that they play the Tibet film before the other, popular movies, so that before you settle down to watching “Transporter 3″ you get a good dose of “historical” education about the Tibet issue. Just in case things get hairy and out of control in Tibetan areas this March, or throughout the rest of this sensitive year.

China changes, or China never changes. Same ideological posture, except now in IMAX. However, Jia’s world, everything changes–and the only thing that lasts, the only thing that binds us are memories.Children are lost to their parents. Migrations, emotional rows, generation gaps all tear families asunder. The ligature of memory is strained as people get older–it seems strong when they are recalling it in front of us–but of course, we know that simply recalling something and saying it verbally doesn’t really do justice to the “strength” or “saturation” of that memory among the many memories that are stored in your brain or the salient memories constitutive of the sense of self and identity. Therefore, you get the uneasy sense that you are watching something that was unearthed quite by accident, and could very well have been lost. Maybe these “little people”, these “laobaixing” don’t mean much in the large scale of things: you read media articles with Chinese government planners, bureaucrats and energy scientists that are talking about the year 2100 like it’s tomorrow. Just about all of us who are alive now will be dead by that time, and our secrets and wounds, the maybes and could have beens–both individual and collective–will be just as gone. I’ve always been afraid that the official Chinese meta-narrative would swamp and subsume everything else–which is why it’s that much more incumbent on artists, in whatever medium, to keep recording the micro-sadnesses, vicissitudes, twists and turns, warp and woof of the individual life and consciousness. Lest it be completely be forgotten by History.

These are not my observations, just some points culled from various essays that i found on shanzhaixiehui.cn (China Imitated Association)

Since there’s a growing interest among non-CHinese people about the phenomenon, these points might help clarify the issue somewhat:

1. Shanzhai is a reaction against various forms of monopoly, both economic and cultural.
Example: CCTV has a monopoly on the spring festival galas. One of reasons why there was going to be a shanzhai version (it was canceled) was to challenge that monopoly, to create an alternative choice for the viewer.

HEre is what the director of the failed shanzhai gala said

山寨春晚”的总导演老孟接受采访时说：“这台节目的本意是靠平民的智慧和力量展现草根文化的精华。”由此可见，中国人如何看山寨文化。

“山寨”是中国改革开放30年来“吸引外国技术和中国政府的默认”所带来的“另类现象”。最近还与中华民族主义相结合，成为了一种中国特有的文化现象 。

Two points in there: one is that shanzhai is closer to being grassroots (cao gen) and therefore closer to what the people want. And secondly, that the shanzhai movement or culture has widespread support, and is one of the first non-mainstream type movements or concepts to gain that kind of traction in China since the beginning of the reform period.

2. Shanzhai is the eye of the beholder:

QQ、肯德基、百事都是山寨企业发家的——有好的模式干嘛不学?

So all these competitors were once “shanzhai” versions of something else. QQ to msoft, KFC to mcdonalds, and Pepsi to Coke. Baidu is also mentioned as being shanzhai to Google. What’s the point here: the scrappy competitor learns from the successful business model, tries to emulate it, and will somehow mature into its own, come out of the mountain village and down to the city, where it becomes somehow normalized, a bona fide and respectable business with the kind of scope and clout that the originals had. Therefore, in this meaning of the word, shanzhai is transitional, a temporary state.

3. Why does shanzhai work?
山寨启示一：觉察、填补市场空白

a. because it fills in certain blanks in the market–it caters to certain niches that are overlooked by the major players.

　山寨企业启示二：争夺、开拓市场空间

b. because it creates and expands the market.

　山寨企业启示三：企业不一定一开始就做第一

c. because you don’t have to be #1 from the start: start out shanzhai, and build your capital and market share, and then, when the time comes, worry about elevating brand image and influence.

4. When a celebrity attending the political conferences being held now in Beijing called for a banning of shanzhai, it caused bit an uproar on the internet. This is no doubt because not everyone seems to be clear on the difference between piracy and shanzhai. Shanzhai doesn’t infringe on IPR. It means imitating something closely enough so that it looks like the real thing but you can’t get sued for it . If you look at this shanzhai netbook you will find that sure, it looks like any other 10″ netbook from ASUS, or Acer, or HP, but its shanzhai, and therefore has no brand name, and probably yes, cuts a lot of corners that the biggies dont. On the other hand, their production cycles are quite different than the biggies, which allows them to make and put their products on the market much faster. This is an aspect of shanzhai electronics that doesn’t get talked about much.

Or take the following two cars:

The top car is from Sichuan CEO brand and the bottom one is from BMW. The former is less than half the price of the cheapest model of the latter.

And that, of course, is the bottom line when it comes to the popularity or at least persistence of the shanzhai phenomenon.

And just for fun, here’s the shanzhai Jackie Chan

From what i’ve heard, it seems that the sentiments being expressed have 1. desire to break the monopoly and create more choices for the consumers, by offering them something more grassroots, something less controlled (ie not under govt control or supervision), and mostly, offering this thing to them at a price point suited to the average Chinese consumer. Why buy an iPhone in CHina for 4600 rmb when you can get a HIphone for 2600, and which has a nice UI (maybe not nice as Apples) and has many of the same functions? I mean if you can’t afford the extra 2000, like me, what does it matter if its really Apple or not? If it uses Windows Mobile, that’s ok with me, so long as all the functions work and don’t have any major bugs or flaws in them.

By doing so, they are tapping into a market that the biggies don’t tap in–and that means that they have a positive effect on the economy as well. With the financial crisis, everyone is talking about layoffs and social stability as well as the mounting pressures faced by young people, especially uni grads fresh off their studies–well, shanzhai industries and enterprises just might be able to contribute something in these difficult economic times.

And that’s why it’s become so popular around China. There’s a slightly nationalistic tenor to all of this. Nothing bad in the anti-French or Japanese type way–just a pride in homegrown products, in the sense of achievement you get in reverse engineering something and building it again, maybe a bit different, maybe even a bit better. Even as the financial system reels, shanzhai is still a celebration of capitalism and competition.

Glamour Bar is a lovely place, but when it’s packed and you can’t get your overpriced drink unless you want to wait like by the bar for half an hour like you’re waiting for food rationing, it’s not really my cuppatea. I can’t hear people talk. I can’t get drunk enough to lose inhibitions and dance. I don’t want to talk to the women, even the attractive ones, because i can’t hear anything and in that kind of situation, conversation becomes strained. Since that’s about my only forte, if you can call it that, having that nullified by the loud club music means game over for me.

I had street food again at the corner of Changde and Kangding. Same meal–the chow mein and some chicken kebabs. There’s something satisfying about this cheap and dirty type meal. It appeals to the cheapskate in me–and makes me believe, to a certain degree, that this quasi-bohemian lifestyle is tenable. That you don’t have to make a ton of money and be part of the rat race to enjoy the essentials of life.

As I walked home with some grapefruit juice and coffee, I thought, this isn’t half bad. Simple and cheap pleasures–if I could somehow do this more often, life my life in this mode, then perhaps I would be happy. The grass would be greenest on my side of this fence. THen I think, that perhaps in order to do this I need to withdraw more from the activities of this world. That i am not in a place that’s conducive to this way of life–of course, I could firewall my mind so that I don’t get unduly influenced by what other people in this town are doing. But there are so many friends and they like this kind of thing, and that makes this kind of thing inescapable, doesn’t it.

My thoughts turned to Hangzhou, to moving somewhere where I could have nice living quarters and somehow be far from the madding crowd. But would it be too lonely, without the comfort of friends? Without my cats? With less “temptation” would I be able to live my life more purely? Would I be able to concentrate on studying mathematics, what with a study and ample table space for books and calculations, the likes of which i lack in my apartment here?

Would I be more able to live more impulsively and spontaneously, what with less costs and with less temptation to stay here in Shanghai?

So everyone knows there are a bunch of twitter clones out there in CHina, such as fanfou, jiwai, etc. There were ways, rather circuitous ones that is–of syncing updates, which involved using fanfou and RSS’s…for the most part, most people i know here tend to just update twitter by going online with their mobile phones. A lot of these people have iphones and have twitter apps. They can either get online where there’s wifi or else just pay for the data by getting online via GPRS or whatever its called.

However, i just learned (and please let me know if this is really old news) that you can update your twitter with your mobile phone by just sending SMS’s. I know that you can do this with twitter, but there are not local #’s–as i recall there were just three numbers for the entire world, one in the US, one in the UK, and one somewhere else. However, with zuosa.com you can make updating a whole lot easier.

Sign up for zuosa.com. Then go to the settings section (设置）. then on the right there’s a link for syncing with twitter (同步 twitter) and then enter your twitter information.

Then the last step is to get your phone set up. Go to the part where it says 绑定手机 and then send a confirmation SMS to the zuosa mobile # indicated. You will get a confirmation reply SMS. From then on, you can just send your updates to zuosa via that mobile #, and your zuosa, and hence your twitter, will get updated for the price of an SMS. It’s probably more convenient, and probably cheaper over the long run, then getting a data plan, though perhaps with the iphone and the twitter apps its not that much of a hassle anyway.

My sense, however, is that its cheaper and a bit easier just to use SMS.

Just got this courtesy of a fanfou feed: the Chinese government is sending “stability” teams to local governments to help maintain social stability. Of course, as this fanfou person pointed out, this year marks several sensitive anniversaries: uprising in Lhasa, 20th anniversary of June 4th, etc. The news reports even mention how impt this year is, in particular: 今年维护国家安全和社会稳定工作面临的任务繁重而艰巨.

Just got this courtesy of a fanfou feed: the Chinese government is sending “stability” teams to local governments to help maintain social stability. Of course, as this fanfou person pointed out, this year marks several sensitive anniversaries: uprising in Lhasa, 20th anniversary of June 4th, etc. The news reports even mention how impt this year is, in particular: 今年维护国家安全和社会稳定工作面临的任务繁重而艰巨.