News Is Life in Shenzhen and Guangzhou Really That Different from the West?

[Polly]

Just some pictures of ordinary folks in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, I hope they help to demystify and neutralise some of the glam and glist and hype, and therefore fear and suspicion of the area. We are just people, muddling along .
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20051009_2.htm

 

[franznietzsche]

On the Guangzhou Tianhe Village cargo transport rail, it was raining
and the maintenance work was suspended. Meanwhile, more than 300
people were out on the line trying to steal the steel rails.

Normal?

I'm confused. Then again, I guess that's nothing that extraordinary, I've seen worse in LA.

 

[Smurf]

Where is Guangzhou and Shenzhen?

 

[fourier jr]

seems like a lot of people dying or attempting suicide over there...

 

[neurocomp2003]

both in china...i believe south china by the china sea.

 

[Manchot]

Is this a joke? The majority of those pictures have something very abnormal going on.

 

[Polly]

hehe, I thought some of you might be shocked.

No, this is perfect normality for those of us living around the Mainland, just another day of the "crude accumulation of wealth" in China. Gotta remember that the Chinese are rising from abject poverty and just 30 years ago they were growing up with no pants. I do agree though that the contrast between the modern infrastructure and the quality/mentality of the people is very stark.

Here are some pictures of pick-pockets in Xinjiang:
http://www.6park.com/life2/messages/3305.html

 

[Polly]

I hope by now I have successfully persuaded you guys that there is plenty of freedom going around in China, as we have seen there is freedom to be amoral, lawless and quite greedy . So when Bush urged the Chinese not to be afraid of freedom, it really is quite unnecessary.

Look, we even have our "dreams" too .
http://www.6park.com/life2/messages/4089.html

Tomorrow, I promise, there will be something less shocking .

 

[Polly]

wow, 200 people have viewed this thread? :shy: Anyway here is a humourous account of the big cities in China by a Westerner. Readers are urged to keep previous pictures at the back of their minds.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reed/reed77.html

 

[Dayle Record]

Some of these images show clearly, that the Chinese are free to have bad comb-overs too.

 

[edward]

There is a Japanese Honda Accord factory in Shenzhen that produces a car that is identical to the Japanese Accords made in Marysville, Ohio.

Why does that sound odd to me??

 

[Smasherman]

Yup, looks like people are people wherever you go. I just hope that the Chinese will be nice, since I get to live with China as the center of the world*.

*My take on the future.

 

[Polly]

Some more pictures
1. Two street sweepers.
A student from the University of Science and Technology in Beijing helps his mom with her street sweeping job. She denies it to the reporter, presumably to protect him from the humiliation of her humble job.
2. Old Man with Placards.
One reads "Extra-marrital affairs, divorce, cohabitation, teenage pregnancy, and condoms provided by schools. Is this civilisation or atavism?"
The other reads "Anti-corruption is a special warfare. With numerous undistinguishable enemies in our own camp. We must overcome their animosity with virtue and punish them according to the law."
3. Man & Child
Crumpled paper reads "49 year old man seeking woman under 49 or companionship."
The picture was taken in 2001, 3 years later he was still seeking.
4. Card reads "Electricity Vendalizer"
A picture taken in the "special era".
5. Post-festival Royal Palace
6. Trendy Girls
Rappers without the blink-blink?
7. Police Notice
It reads "Prostitutes are known to frequent this section and lure men with cheap charges who are then led to motels where they are robbed. Horny men (sic) are advised to stay out of trouble and avoid the loss of property and the disappointment!"
8. Bystanders staring at a car used in a hijack.
9. Pilgrimmage
10. Zoo goers relishing their persimonies in the 80's

11. In 1982, unable to feed his family of 6 with the meagre income from tiling the field, this 53 year old man left his home town and started whetting knives all over Inner Mongolia. He ate left over food from his customers and RMB 10 (about USD1.2) would last him 10 days.
12. My wheelchair
13. A family of 8 (9?) staring at a poster that reads:
At the invitation of the local Census Office, Yubai Drama Company presents "Birth-Control Guerrilla Is In Town", featuring Li Dan and Qu Di on
20/6 at 8 pm.
Venue: ...Theatre
14 An old man who came to town centre to air grievence and lodge complain in the 80's.
15. Medal
16. Dumpling and Affection
17. "Blood and Sweat Money"
A peasant worker is owed RMB 2,536 (about USD300) by his contractor. 150 others owed a total of over RMB900,000 (USD111,000) gethered to collect the debt.
18. Lunch
19. Paupers in Tibet
20. A man who has donated RMB350,000 to the cause of education.
21. Mother
http://www.6park.com/life2/messages/5422.html

 

[Art]

Looking at your link a question struck me which has nothing to do with the OP but how many chinese characters are there in your language? There seems to be 1000s Do your computers use 20 metre long keyboards with all of these Chinese characters or do you use english style keyboards? Just curious.

 

[Polly]

There are more than 100,000 characters in the most comprehensive Chinese dictionary, but in ordinary life, for instance for the purpose of reading a newspaper, you need to master about 8,000. Yes Chinese could easily have been a dead letter language has not a Mr. [Zhu] from Taiwan devoted 30 years of his time to study the "genom" of Chinese character and devised a way to deconstruct them into combinations of 108 principal and subordinating radicals in 1976 as well as to incorporate the inputing system into CPUs.

I hear IBM and the US airforce have collaborated, with the help of around 1,000 Asian experts, to work out a similar product for about 10 years but to no avail.

We type Chinese with 1 to 5 strokes of the fingers on an ordinary keyboard and it is not any more difficult or time consuming than typing English.

 

[Polly]

It's me again.
Here is the national highway plan to be realized in the next 30 years. What is interesting is that it contains a highway crossing the Taiwan Strait. Chen's government has of course dismissed it as propaganda, but the fact is a few dozens experts have been meeting every year in the province across the strait since 1998 to discuss the project. Anyway, some pictures of the landscape, but may take a while to download.
http://www.6park.com/life2/messages/6272.html

 

[Art]

There are more than 100,000 characters in the most comprehensive Chinese dictionary, but in ordinary life, for instance for the purpose of reading a newspaper, you need to master about 8,000. Yes Chinese could easily have been a dead letter language has not a Mr. [Zhu] from Taiwan devoted 30 years of his time to study the "genom" of Chinese character and devised a way to deconstruct them into combinations of 108 principal and subordinating radicals in 1976 as well as to incorporate the inputing system into CPUs.
I hear IBM and the US airforce have collaborated, with the help of around 1,000 Asian experts, to work out a similar product for about 10 years but to no avail.
We type Chinese with 1 to 5 strokes of the fingers on an ordinary keyboard and it is not any more difficult or time consuming than typing English.

Thanks for that Polly but one more question does each character translate to one word? In English a vocabulary of 8,000 words is considered very high. Most people would know only a fraction of that. In fact I remember being told many years ago that most people get through a full day using a vocabulary of only a few hundred words. In fact for many of the tabloid newspapers a couple of dozen would suffice.

p.s. re. your pics. Are these roads not open yet? Where's the traffic?

 

[Polly]

I was told the Chinese language is a very nebulous language, better suited for poems and creative writing than any purpose requiring precision and exactitude. Indeed a character is sometimes capable of 7 or 8 meanings. As such it takes a combination of two words to pin down the meaning, for instance, tight/taut/close and tension/spread/open gives you nervousness, tight/taut/close and pressing/rapid/speedy/anxious/impatient gives you emergency, tight/taut/close and dense/thick/secret/close gives you intimate and tight/taut/close and shrink/withdraw/contract/recoil/huddle gives you retrench.
Again, 100,000 and 8,000 were the numbers we were told in primary school. I suspect there should not be a great deviation from reality becaue 1. it is not difficult to find out from any newspaper printer for the latter, 2. just to give you a flavour, the Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary (4th edition), intended for secondary and tertiary students, alone contains 57,100 entries, 99.99% of which I am sure you know.
Yeah the traffic is kind of slow.

 

[Art]

I suspect there should not be a great deviation from reality becaue 1. it is not difficult to find out from any newspaper printer for the latter.

Type setting in pre-computer days must have been a nightmare. The news would be a year out of date by the time the printer had his blocks sorted. I'd say there'd be mass suicides if the front page had to be changed at the last minute due to important breaking news.

 

[Polly]

The English version (trial) of the PRC government website opens today.

Look-->http://english.gov.cn/

 

[Polly]

Some more pictures for a bit of a laugh.
1. Criminals perpetrating bank robbery shall be
SHOT ON THE SPOT.
Kaixian Police Station
2. Security contracting
Contracting that works magic!
3. Confucian says: Compassion takes two men.
Unity is strength ()
4. Whoever takes issue with foreign investment, takes issues with the people of Jiaohe.
5. Poverty is shame.
6. Use China Mobile Phone Card
Make your call while tilling the field.
7. Congratulations to Comrade Yang Liwei, parent of one of our students, for being China's first astronaut.
8. China also has missile.
9. Dear thief,
One of my family has contracted SARS. Don't come stealing anything. You may lose your life. Advice from
the property owner
10. Keep a rabbit in your family and you will not be short of oil, salt and vinegar.
11. Business hours: 9:00 am - 8:00 pm
Do not park here please.
Tanks pass through 24 hours a day.
We will not be responsible for your car crushed flat.
12 Prepare for war.
13. Commendation
This is to commend Xu Zhiqiang (note:a man's name) for picking up a watch in the ladies' washroom and returning it to the owner!
Office of the Chinese Faculty
14. Have less kids and grow more tobacco leaves.
15. Couple hand in hand, 20% off
Cuddling for 20 seconds, 30% off
Kissing for 30 seconds, 40% off
16. Compensate for cattle hit by train, this is the law.
http://www.6park.com/life2/messages/11441.html

 

[Polly]

Lofty heights in terms of:
1. Trendy slippers,
2. Peeping,
3. An balancing act,
4. Desultoriness
5. Alteration,
6. Evolution of Dwarfs
(well to be honest and no offence or disrespect intended to TSA, the characters on the card reads "Japanese after 100 years of evolution". Judging from the name, it is a creation of a Chinese woman. It shows the kind of vitrolic contempt and hatred the Chinese have for the people.)
7. Slip,
8. Immitation,
9. Dictation of genes,
10. Make-do,
11. Competition, and
12. Over-load.
http://www.6park.com/life2/messages/10633.html

 

[Art]

There was a snippet on the news a couple of days ago about several pro-democracy protesters being shot dead in Guangdong province. Any idea what that was about?

 

[Polly]

There was a snippet on the news a couple of days ago about several pro-democracy protesters being shot dead in Guangdong province. Any idea what that was about?

Yeah, people protesting against official graft and corruption were shot at by the police. The no. of deaths
varies from report to report though, ranging from 2, at least 2, 4, 8, 10, 10-20, 2-20, at many as 20, 14-20, at least 30 to dozens. Here is a collection of report at ESWN. Incidentally if you look at the pictures, white outfits or scarves indicate death in the family.

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20051209_1.htm

 

[Mercator]

Yeah, people protesting against official graft and corruption were shot at by the police. The no. of deaths
varies from report to report though, ranging from 2, at least 2, 4, 8, 10, 10-20, 2-20, at many as 20, 14-20, at least 30 to dozens. Here is a collection of report at ESWN. Incidentally if you look at the pictures, white outfits or scarves indicate death in the family.
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20051209_1.htm

This latest case, like most, have not so much to do with pro-democracy protest, but are protests of people that did not get enough compensation for their land taken from them to construct yet another industrial zone. Other protests I have seen/heard of were because of massive lay-offs in privatized former state-owned companies etc... The news in China about these events is very scarse. Sometimes people send sms messages around to let the rest of the country know what's happening. The government will now introduce compulsory registration of all pre-paid sim cards sold, so they can trace everyone.

 

[Art]

This latest case, like most, have not so much to do with pro-democracy protest, but are protests of people that did not get enough compensation for their land taken from them to construct yet another industrial zone. Other protests I have seen/heard of were because of massive lay-offs in privatized former state-owned companies etc... The news in China about these events is very scarse. Sometimes people send sms messages around to let the rest of the country know what's happening. The government will now introduce compulsory registration of all pre-paid sim cards sold, so they can trace everyone.

Sounds like China is becoming more like Bush's America every day.

 

[Mercator]

Sounds like China is becoming more like Bush's America every day.

The situation is worst for the huge farmers population. In the (most advanced) cities life is not much different from the West and in some ways I feel even freer, because lots of regulations are still lacking. The mobile registration is one of them; in Belgium that rule exists already from the beginning of mobile phones.
The government has a huge task, they want to move the rural population into cities, thereby creating more space for the remaining peasants so they can introduce modern agricultural methods. But how can you convince a peasant with little or no education to go live in a city and give up a lifestyle they have known for ages?
Then there is the course set out by the central government and that what local officals make of it. These local officials are sometimes nothing else than the local bullies. The actual central government is reform minded, but the task is so huge that it will still take generations in my view before China is ready for democracy. If ever.