Posts by Chris Waugh
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Islander,
Beautifully said. And more fuel for my theory that poetry is prophecy - not that facile predicting the future nonsense, but true prophecy - speaking eternal truths to people who so quickly, or are so quick to forget.
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The one and only reason I ever considered moving back to New Zealand is my daughter, and primarily her education (although things like healthcare and environment, and having Christmas in the summer like it's bloody supposed to be, are among other factors in that calculation). My wife doesn't want her dragged through the Chinese system, which is our other easy option. I've worked in the Chinese education system, at just about every level, for over 12 years now and I don't like the thought of my daughter going through that, either. But this whole fiasco just leaves me depressed.
This government keeps making me think of Bob Marley: We've got to chase those crazy baldheads out of the Beehive.
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Tom Semmens,
We have occasional public order problems because in this country we don’t live under the repressive weight of Confucianist social control and a harsh totalitarian dictatorship that cares nothing for due process or human rights.
There are too many things wrong with your comment, too many ways this could go way off topic. Let's just start with replacing 'Confucianist' with 'Legalist', as in Han Feizi's philosophy. The public order problems we have here in China are about corruption and harsh or abusive rule by local officials, and are generally not fuelled by excess consumption of alcohol in a conformist culture that teaches men to be 'hard' or whatever. The lack of drunken aggro on the streets of China has nothing to do with repression or totalitarianism or the CCP's lack of respect for human rights, the rule of law or due process and everything to do with traditional Chinese culture.
Speaking of totalitarian dictatorships and contempt for due process and human rights, yesterday saw me waiting for 20-odd minutes outside the Foreign Experts Bureau while my boss got some paperwork done. That happens to be right next door to the Letters and Visits Bureau, where people suffering some injustice or another in their far-flung hometowns can complain to the central government. That's a few hundred metres west of Xiannongtan on the north side of the South 2nd Ring Road, if anybody wants to see. There were many police and judiciary vehicles with licence plates from Shandong, Liaoning, Jilin, Jiangsu, many other provinces - one favourite tactic of local officials is to try and intercept the 'trouble makers' and ship them back home before they can get into the Letters and Visits Bureau. There were crowds of people lining the footpaths on either side of the road looking unhappy, chatting, discussing the situation. There was a poem somebody had composed about their complaint posted on a powerpole - I was tempted to take a photo, but of all the places one would expect a plainclothes cop or even secret policeman to be concerned about the activities of a foreigner, this was one. I did not see any sign of violence or repression beyond the presence of those police and judiciary vehicles and the fact that those people had something to complain about. Just saying, cos there are still quite a few people who talk as if the Chinese government is all about tanks and machine guns mowing down protestors. This place has problems, sure, and they can explode into spectacular violence, but everday reality is surprisingly mundane.
But anyway, I think the whole drunk town thing is more cultural and societal than governmental or legal.
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Rob S,
What really got to me was the availability especially after the super markets got in on the act
And again, here's an example of how it's really a cultural or social issue and not about law or availability. All this time in China I don't think I've ever lived more than a two minute walk from somewhere selling at least beer, if not baijiu and possibly other forms of alcohol (but beer and baijiu are the two most popular), and that's been true of every Chinese city I've lived in or visited. And these places selling booze are the equivalent of dairies, or, in the case of my current dealer, a bike shed whose manager realised that some of us gather in the garden on summer afternoons for a couple of quiet brews and decided to profit from that. Apart from the occasional group of middle-aged men getting a bit rowdy in a restaurant (and their rowdiness is generally good-natured and always kept within the group, so much as one can restrain noise), I don't see any drunk and disorderly behaviour, let alone drunken aggro. Why? Because I generally avoid the more "Westernised" areas like the aforementioned Sanlitun. Traditional Chinese drinking, and most people here still drink traditionally, as Chris reminded us, is done with friends, family or colleagues over a meal and when the meal ends, the drinking ends, and there's no 'acting out', it's just having a good time.
And one thing I haven't read in Chinese newspapers is the kind of stories about society going to the dogs and drunken yoofs vomiting all over the streets. I have read about drunk driving, which is a problem. And as Chris pointed out there is domestic violence. There is binge drinking here, but it's the aggro that seems to be lacking.
So I'm saying we need to stop fiddling with the law and start taking a good, hard look at the cultural and societal factors behind NZ's drinking problems.
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to chris,
I feel it is a little too easy to ignore the ever pervasive “家丑不可外扬”: “home ugliness can not be scattered"- “what happens in the home stays in the home” mentality.
Absolutely no argument from me there. Just saying the lack of public drunken aggro is nice. But yes, I've heard stories from the Chinese half of my family I'd prefer not to be true.
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Hard News: Media7 will soon be Media3, in reply to Ben Austin,
I can’t say I’ve had any cause to try in TV3’s case for some years but I guess I do now
Dunno how it is for you, but TV3 is the only NZ tv channel I can actually watch here. Can't figure out why, but it seems to be a technical issue. TVNZ loads so slowly and unreliably to make it not worth the wait. Maori TV loads reliably, but so slowly as to render it useless for anything not essential. TV3 I can stream with only the occasional, short-lived glitch. But only good for news and current affairs.
I have been thinking lately that it would be nice for some reasonably big-ish TV channel to tell the rest of its industry which lake to jump into and go all online all the time with no geoblocking and no licencing to other channels. That strikes me as being far more 21st century than what they're all doing now.
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
What I learnt is this; it is ridiculously easy to get a licence, and very difficult for the authorities to take it away from you.
Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Very difficult to get and very easy to lose?
Well, yes, that logic seems to work on the face of it, and I wouldn't oppose such a system, but count me with those who point to cultural, social, and perhaps personal problems being the real cause. Why? Because China is also a binge drinking culture, and the only similar problems with violence I see are in more "Western" booze districts like Sanlitun. In more "traditionally Chinese" areas - i.e. most of the country - I can watch people get absolutely hammered and, although sometimes I might not be entirely comfortable knowing some possible results of the mix of ethanol and men, I won't be worried. Why? Because it is extremely rare for people to get violent towards strangers here, and on those extremely rare occasions the others step in to stop that one dickhead from doing anything stupid. *Gross generalisation*, but here people drink to actually enjoy themselves and have a good time with friends and family.
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Capture: Going Walkabout in Sydney, in reply to Nora Leggs,
Clean clouds Chris : )
Rare, and definitely to be treasured around these parts.
My first thought on seeing your cormorants was "antarctic!" Unfortunately, such a chilly picture isn't doing much about the heat up here.
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Capture: Going Walkabout in Sydney, in reply to Nora Leggs,
trying out this new stuff
I like ’em Sofie – what a good way to use the three pics per post. Sky-no-ramas? : )
Agreed. These sky-no-ramas are cool.
And in celebration of the relatively good weather and air quality we've had here of late, here's one example of what I've been seeing lately. Celebration, or perhaps mourning, because it's now 38 degrees or thereabouts outside, the grey murk is creeping back, and I just cleaned last summer's air pollution off my fan, which is about to become an essential survival tool.
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Hard News: Media7 will soon be Media3, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Actually, 99% of the time I was just looking for highlights, but denied about half of that time. Then there was the final, which found me reading out the NZ Herald's live 'coverage' and the usually more up-to-date Chinese-language informal updates on Sina Weibo to my mum, and it was a bit galling to have to tell my mum, "Hey, somebody on Sina Weibo said five minutes ago that we scored, but the Herald hasn't gotten around to the scrum seven minutes before that yet."
And, y'know, I was mostly pretty happy about spending the RWC in China because I was insulated from all the extra bollocks, but it would've been nice to see a bit of the action without having to head down to some skody expat bar.
