Countdown at 100 Days

The countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympics is down to the last 100 days.

It is now time to climb Mt Everest with the torch, amazing.
There is still a lot of uncertainty around how the city will finally prepare for the games. We expect the odd/even license plate rule to limit private cars will go into effect sometime in July. Construction has not stopped yet, not sure when it will. The smoking ban in restaurants and bars was repealed before it even was implemented May 1st (smoking is too much a part of the CULTURE, hmm).

Calligraphy Lesson number 6

It is a sunny afternoon this last Saturday in April. These are the two doors that open into the classroom where we take lessons.


It is a long walk down the corridor. On the right hand side is a green metal fence. Behind it lies a rock hill with steps going up and through down the other side into the walkway that borders a long wall. On the other side of the wall is the Hall of Literary Brilliance, the Hall of Respect, and the Pavilion of Literary Profundity. It feels as though I am in a different world.

This is our classroom. It is a nice and airy space. Often soft traditional Chinese music plays in the background. Four people can fit in this room. Many times there is a young woman practicing the same calligraphy style as we are. She is studying for the entrance exam into graduate school. There is also a young man that has been painting with us several times. His work has strong lines. It is beautiful.


We had both visited a gallery where Teacher You had work on display. I had a picture of a work of calligraphy in my last entry. We were asking about other work that he has done at our last class.

This is a piece that he brought out of storage and unwrapped for us to see. I personally like this one better. Teacher thinks there is no comparison, the other is much richer in meaning and more beautiful.




Here I am with Teacher You. In the background is work by another student. The work is beautiful.

After practicing for a while. We took a walk to the peony garden to look at the flowers. My friend wanted some pictures to paint from when the time comes for her to paint art.

There were people posing in the garden with the flowers. We didn't see lots of ants as we would in the flowers at home.

Here, I stepped into the garden to hug the flowers. They smelled lovely.You can see that I am wearing a black shirt. The ink we use stains and I have a white shirt at home with little black dots on it from ink.

I like this shot. It has a sense of beauty along with reality. There is a nice juxtaposition here.





We were on our way back to our classroom. If you look closely you will see the doors of the gate. The building ahead I believe is the pavilion to enter through into the Hall of Literary Brilliance.

After the gate we encountered a wedding party getting into another costume for pictures. The bride is in red getting her hair fixed up and the groom is buttoning his Chinese style jacket.

The wedding party will likely take pictures with the rock hill in the background. This is the same rock hill that is outside of our classroom door. It is beautiful today with the sun shining and the wild yellow roses dressing it up so nicely.

Chinese Nationalism Going Too Far?

I apologize in advance and you can skip this entry if you are not interested in the political situation in China. It is something that is real for me here. It is a very different way of viewing things and cannot be taken lightly when you have to work with the Chinese government every day.

The Communist Party is starting to be concerned about the protesting and anti-west sentiment. The government has concerns that this could impact the Olympics as well as could get out of control and the protests turn to other issues in China. Here is a good Wall Street Jounral article that points out the issues concerning the Communist Party.

The Chinese government is moving to tamp down nationalistic anger over Western criticism of Beijing's policies in Tibet.
By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER and JULIET YE in Hong Kong, and LORETTA CHAO in BeijingApril 24, 2008; Page A6

In the latest sign, authorities informed participants in a major music festival that the event would likely be postponed to avoid providing a venue for new demonstrations of patriotic or anti-Western sentiment. Already, they have been cracking down on student protests and online videos of demonstrations have disappeared from Chinese Web sites.

It is a familiar pattern: Chinese nationalism rears up, sometimes with what seems to be tacit government backing, only to get reined in before it threatens to spin out of control -- in this case, before it can mar preparations for the summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

At Nanjing Normal University, researcher Guo Quan says counselors have been told to "manage student sentiment." On Monday, he says, universities around China were told by the central government to stop all protests.
Such fervor that has generated protests against French retailer Carrefour SA in nine cities and cyberattacks on American media.

"The Chinese government is trying to cool patriotic fervor now, because it believes that it has already achieved the desired goal: to tell the world that Chinese are protesting against the French," says Mr. Guo. "We're in a time when there are lots of other social problems such as a troublesome stock market, and rocketing commodity prices might drive people's anger to a larger scale."

The student crackdown appears to be particularly strong in the city of Hefei, in the eastern province of Anhui, where on Saturday, thousands protested outside a Carrefour store near the city's university district, waving red flags and chanting "love China, boycott Carrefour." On Sunday, universities there suspended classes and asked students to stay on campus, students say.

The Communist Youth League, a division of the Communist Party with a big presence on Chinese campuses, has been arranging meetings and distributing propaganda to calm nationalistic sentiment, say students. The Anhui branch of the Communist Youth League declined to answer questions.

"The atmosphere here on campus is a bit intense at this moment," said a Ph.D. student surnamed Shen from Hefei's China Technology and Science University. "Those who went out for the weekend protest were called for a talk in counselors' office this week," she said.
Some Chinese have reported difficulty sending text messages such as "boycott Carrefour" and "don't shop at Carrefour" on the cellular network run by China Mobile Ltd., the country's largest cellphone carrier. Rainie Lei, a spokeswoman for China Mobile, said the company wasn't blocking any such messages.

In Beijing, participants in the Midi Music Festival that had been scheduled to start May 1 were informed on Wednesday that the event likely will be postponed to October due to safety concerns. Zhang Fan, the festival's director, said he thinks the authorities are "afraid that the participating music fans and young people will conduct Tibetan or anti-West" demonstrations.
Last month, Icelandic singer Björk declared "Tibet! Tibet!" at a concert in Shanghai, embarrassing authorities.

"It's very regrettable," said Mr. Zhang, who noted that some foreign bands are already in China for the show. "Midi is a very good opportunity to show the world that Chinese society is happy, equal and free. Western media always says China suppresses people, but Midi shows that China's young people are so happy, so looking forward to welcoming the Olympics."

Kou Zhengyu, a guitarist who planned to play at the Midi festival, said while he felt "music has nothing to do with politics," he also "could understand the government decision. The government must worry about the safety issue."

After initially trying to play down coverage of Olympics torch-relay protests in London and Paris, the Chinese government went on a public relations offensive. Jin Jing, a wheelchair-bound torch bearer in Paris who was attacked by a protester, became a Chinese hero. An April 11 editorial by Xinhua, the state-run news agency, said "Chinese people are seriously disturbed and hurt" by the incident involving Ms. Jin. French President Nicolas Sarkozy later apologized to Ms. Jin personally over the matter.

Some Chinese started calling for a boycott on French products, and in particular Carrefour, which has a significant presence in China.

But late last Thursday, the government's rhetoric began to change, with a call from Xinhua for "patriotic zeal to concentrate on development."

A news editor at Phoenix Television, a Hong Kong-based Chinese news broadcaster with ties to Beijing, said news, pictures and video of the anti-Carrefour protests weren't allowed on air. Xinhua reports said the protests were targeted against "Tibet independence," not against foreigners. (News Corp., owner of The Wall Street Journal, owns a minority stake in Phoenix.)
China has periodically seen major student outbursts of patriotism. In 1999, after the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was bombed by a North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission, students across China engaged in occasionally violent protests against "American hegemony." (NATO contends the bombing was accidental.) After a few days, during which students vented their anger, the government told the students to stop protesting and go back to school.

This time, China can't afford to let the backlash continue too long without poisoning the atmosphere for the Beijing Olympics, which is just over 100 days away. The event is expected to bring throngs of visitors to China, including 25,000 foreign journalists.

Nationalism and sports have proven to be a volatile mix before in China. After a 2004 Asian Cup soccer final between China and Japan held at Beijing's Workers' Stadium, hundreds of Chinese fans rioted, throwing bottles and yelling at police. China had lost the game 3 to 1.

Another factor that separates the recent spate of nationalism from past student uprisings is the Internet, now a major cultural force in the lives of young Chinese people. According to official Chinese data, the country has more than 210 million Internet users, the majority of whom are under the age of 30.

The Internet developed into a significant platform for organizing protests and venting anger with foreign attitudes toward China. Users created countless patriotic videos detailing the crimes of the West against China. Millions of people using the MSN messaging program promoted their patriotism by adding a heart symbol and "China" next to their names.

There have been some efforts in recent days to curtail online displays of nationalism. Some videos of the Carrefour protests available earlier on sites such as Tudou.com are now gone. A Tudou spokesman declined to comment, but Chinese Internet-media companies routinely remove content that violates their antiviolence or antipornography-service agreements, or which they feel may be objectionable to the government.

Moreover, some Chinese hackers who had planned a significant attack on the Web site of Time Warner Inc.'s CNN, a major source of nationalistic resentment over its coverage of the recent unrest in Tibet, appear to have withdrawn. While CNN.com did experience an attack that affected users in Asia last Friday, hacker Web sites in China had promised much more.The posts by some organizers of the attack calling for disbandment have an edge of "fear" to them, says Scott Henderson, author of the book Dark Visitor, about Chinese hackers. One in particular "could not have added many more exclamation points in his announcement," he said. "It was a 'PLEASE DO NOT HACK!!!!!!!!!' sort of plea."

BF and Calligraphy

I want to share with you something that I am doing that is so very interesting to me (BF).

Today was my 4th calligraphy class. I take class with a girlfriend of mine. Our classroom is located in the park that houses the ancestral temple. It is at the south east corner of the Forbidden City (Imperial Palace). The school is for those sitting for entrance exams into Art School at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctorate levels. I have a card with the schools name on it and my own name Fei Pu Lan that lets me into the east side of the Palace grounds. It is beautiful and our door faces a rock mountain that has stairs to climb up high to see. How cool is that? Way cool.

We attend class once or twice a week and are learning the most recognised style of calligraphy, the Cai style. We copy the work of a master from a book. The book is of rubbings taken off steles. That is how work is immortalized.

Our teacher is a famous calligrapher, painter, and carver in his own right. He tells us that to be a good painter we must have the firm grounding of well done calligraphy. From this our own style will emerge and then we can move onto painting (or, writing a picture).
This is one of his works of calligraphy. He likened it to being in the perfect state of mind to create and this is the work that resulted. He could not duplicated the emotion and feeling of this work. He dips his brush only once in a while, unlike us, who want perfect characters.

He is the son of an artistic family. His mother created beautiful embroidery. She embroidered with silk on silk. She created birds with eyes that looked alive and beaks that looked as though in song. His father was a very skilled caligrapher.

He began practicing calligraphy in school at the age of 6. By the age of 10 he was a very popular choice with the people in his village to paint the new year greetings the are hung by the front door.

To be considered a master painter, one must write the picture, create a poem and have beautiful calligraphy to apply it to the painting, and to create and carve your own chop (the red stamp).

Our teacher was interested in learning how to carve chops when he was young. The stone is expensive so he would fashion a block suitable for carving from clay to practice on. He went on to study this form of art at university. He has won many awards for his chops. His chops are small works of art.

Here is a sample of my work. Our teacher is a very simple and humble man. He will circle the characters that are good and paint over the incorrect strokes.

I think his technique for teaching us is to start us on this style of writing and sit back and see what we do with it. He waits for questions from us.

We spend 4 hours each class painting. We stand to practice the calligraphy. We will be studying this same style painted by the same master when he was much older and more mature. We also hope to learn one other style.

I hope to supplement my painting with understanding of what the character means and how it fits into the poems we are copying. I understand from my friend that this is not the traditional way that she learned. This is a much nicer way. I will take her word for it. Our teacher has work displayed in this 300 page book. He graciously offered to sign a book to each of us. The inscription is read from right to left and top to bottom. The first line says to student Fei Pu Lan and some sort of courtesy. The second line is the date. The third line is the name of the school we attend. The last line is two characters and is our teachers name.

He has incorporated 5 chops onto the dedication. Two are his last name. One is an art piece. One is the town he is from and the last is his first name. They are really interesting.This is a piece that my teacher is helping me to learn. These four characters together mean family and all of the best things that family life brings. This is his writing. My task is to copy it, and learn it.

I am off to practice my calligraphy for today. I am asked to practice one to two hours a day. I like to do it when it is quiet.

Sudden Change in Chinese Public Perception

France was once considered one of the most admired western countries by the Chinese people. That has changed very quickly. Chinese citizens who were always very favorable to westerners here are starting to become vocal against the French. One recent example occurred at a foot massage establishment. The young girls were trying to communicate with us to inquire as to our views about France and Sarkozy. IT was an odd mixture of Mandarin, English and body communication. Regardless they were able to get there negative feelings across about the French. Here is the contents of a SMS that is spreading across China. Not only is Carrefour being boycotted but products like L'Oreal that are very popular here.

We hope you are able to boycott Carrefour at least on 1 May, to deliver, by the empty Carrefour that day, one message to the western world: Chinese shouldn’t be humiliated! Chinese people shouldn’t be insulted!
 The boycott against Carrefour is going to spreading all over the country, and we anticipate your presence! Thank you. The Olympic torch relay that just ended in Paris is not as peaceful as most of Chinese know about. Let’s see what French and its government have done when Chinese carried the torch, a symbol of peace and friendship into their territory.
1. Before the relay, a French TV station called on people to protest on street for the reason that they “don’t want Chinese flags flaunting all over”.
2. The torch was forced to extinguish for 4 times under the violent disruptions of Tibet separatists.
3. The French police in charge of security simply stood by to see the separatists snatching the torch, and striking the disabled torch carrier.
4. At where the torch went by, hordes of French waved the flag of separatists, clamoring “Free Tibet’, “Shame on China” to protest against China.
5. Groups of young men even scrambled the Chinese students’ Five-star flags and tore them up, two sides in conflict.
6. When the sacred fire passed by the City Hall of Paris, the banners and slogans of pro-Tibet independence were hung out and all the alderman put on the pro-separatism badges, a behavior that made the planned ceremony there cancelled.
7. The major media in France reviewed the torch relay with such headlines— Fiasco in Paris(Figaro) and A Slap on China.