You know, what scares me is that everything you've described above is 100% applicable to daily life in Russia. The behavior in queues here is precisely the same, with perhaps the only difference that people might occasionally mutter bitterly (but quietly) if they see someone pushing through the line. But I've yet to see anyone trying to actually do anything. In China's case, I think there's a lot of good in letting it go. I'm sure the Chinese themselves could simultaneously criticize the problems in efficiency that it causes and its connection to corruption, and also defend it as having served them well enough for a couple thousand years and being a deeply ingrained part of the Chinese psyche that shouldn't be naively meddled with. In Russia, I honestly have no idea. I had a couple Russian friends before going to China who used to confuse the hell out of me by seeming to have contradictory political opinions and snapping at times that I couldn't predict, but having since seen some of the ways in which China is misunderstood and misrepresented, I would now perhaps be more openminded.
Without getting into a big discussion about the philosophy of government, I just want to point out that China has a long cultural history of obedience to authority. My understanding is that the common perception is that there is nothing to be done about government, so the best thing to do is to either bend it to your needs (via bribe, etc) or just accept it as an immoveable constraint. That is true. You can sense this in other ways in China too - not just in relation to governance. For example, if someone butts in front of everyone in line, you generally see very little (usually none at all) reaction or discontent from the people behind. If you call out the injustice of the person butting ahead, people look at you like you're crazy and your friend, confused and embarrassed, tries to calm you down. Once you've lived there for a while, these relatively minor transgressions slip your mind because there's no benefit to doing anything about them. No one will look at you like a hero for making a fuss, and people prefer it that you don't. Once you get used to it (if you have a normal disposition that is -- some people are just wired up to be uptight), it doesn't bother you either. You get by just fine. Calling out injustice is primarily about the ethics of helping other people rather than saving yourself. This is something that is difficult to understand until you have lived in circumstances where it is pulled out from under you.
This is from my experience living in China before. After living there for over a year, I could walk around all day amongst throngs of people and have nothing affect my nerves even the slightest tinge. I think it is a related phenomenon. Not to sound too selfish -- but if nothing is bothering you, and nothing is bothering your friends and family, then nothing is wrong.
I agree completely. Since living in China for some time, I have been constantly sickened by how Americans perceive the rest of the world. It is false righteousness veiling extreme ignorance and self-interest at every convenience.
Think of this another way. Every time a story about Canada comes up, someone always lets out a "Blame Canada". Every time a story about China comes up, someone starts talking about human rights and cold war throwbacks. People come back to the same convenient references because there is no breadth or depth to their familiarity. It's mechanical and pathetic.
I always did find "innocent before proven guilty" to be rather ineffective. Why not just calculate the average of criminal activity among the whole population, and incarcerate each person for the amount of time found in the result? Think of the money that could be saved when the courts are closed down.
Concerning hiragana... To delve into learning a writing system where nearly the entire written vocabulary is foreign isn't an attractive option for most travellers. If you don't know the language, you'll usually read it and think to yourself "Great.. I've learned nothing", and probably learn not to bother reading it most of the time because it's usually a disappointment. To make matters worse, it's more frequently interspersed with unintelligible kanji. It's kind of a no-brainer to say "Trouble getting around Japan? Learn Japanese!". Much different than handing out a PDA. It is perhaps of interest to people that Japanese does in fact have a set of phonetic characters for their own words though, since many people aren't aware of it.
So... I still like katakana as a hack to prevent you from feeling completely lost. Within a couple hours, you pick up the system and can suddenly read (AND understand) 80+% of the words written with it. It's also a unique surprise in the Japanese language which I felt was worth pointing out to people:)
To do a little more of the same that you're complaining about, although somewhat qualifying your argument in the process...
Here are things I heard from people living there... (just passing it along)
In Japan (Osaka and Tokyo in particular), I came into contact with some people who had lived there over a year and admitted with some embarrassment that they knew practically none of the language. This made up most of the foreigners who I met. These were mostly guys, some of whom pointed out that they found that speaking purely English was a better way to pick up girls, since the girls preferred to practice their English anyway... and that with persistence, the young girls knew quite a bit of English, but were shy with it at first because they hadn't talked to foreigners before. This was also written in (free) club magazines for foreigners. Go figure.
I also talked to someone who had been there for three years, studying Japanese and Japanese history intensively (in Japanese), but still couldn't read certain things and considered that 10 years of serious studying would perhaps be the right amount of effort to have acheived some mastery (qualifying that even this would be insufficient, and that for a non-native to come in and master it is pretty much unheard of at this point). Three years was however enough for this person to have acheived proficiency at singing some songs in a karaoke club.
What does this all mean? I have no idea.
Perhaps most importantly, specific brand or location names are very often shown in katakana. This makes it so you have recognizable landmarks everywhere you go... and can make the difference between seeing jibberish and an arrow, or seeing a sign pointing to "Namco Land" (or whatever) and thinking it would be cool to check out what it is.
It's also fun to try to work out what the phonetic words actually come out to in English. It's not always obvious. How was I supposed to know that the fast food chain "Faasto Kitchen" meant "First Kitchen", as opposed to "Fast Kitchen":)
A guide to katakana (Japanese phonetic characters for foreign words) would be nice.. Or perhaps a little education campaign about it.
Many of the most important signs are written in katakana, which in essence means they are written in English. There are only 46-or-so basic characters to learn, which you can get a decent handle on by the time you step off the plane. This is more than enough to find hotels (hoteru), order food and drinks off most menus, find restaurants (resutoran), etc.
I knew katakana in Japan and only a few Japanese words. I'm not kidding about how handy it was.
You don't want to work for a company that would choose to employ this search, correct? You don't want to be in a relationship with someone who would pay someone to conduct this search on you, correct?
Some prospective employees will benefit from these scans. Though they may never know it, a scan may be what saved them from working for the wrong employer. Of course you're not likely to apply to SCO (unless you're intending to bring them down from the inside), but for those other cases, there's now another means of selection which can take place in blissful ignorance rather than calculation. At the least, it's a little way to take some personal control of the situation. Help spare your conscience in a relatively easy way -- Destroy your reputation;)
In seriousness.. If you have the maturity to make your decisions one case at a time, doing this may take some important opportunities out of your hands. I mainly wanted to draw attention to the fact that though you may never know who contracted an intrusive scan on you, you do have the opportunity to craft a special message for them alone.
Yeah, I suppose that's true.. but it's inconvenient and more difficult to browse recent headlines. I used to go to BBC News all the time and pick and choose from the stories. Since I haven't learned what to do yet, I use CNN for now (ugh).
I figured you must have known Google News was working, given that you posted the link. People outside of China can only understand in a second-hand manner though (ie. my reply), and mod it 'informative' in the meantime:)
Which gets me thinking... Is there a portal anywhere that specifically exists to show what is and isn't accessible from within China? Could be useful for some people.
BBC and Reuters are reporting that China is
blocking access to the Web site Google News according to media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. The organisation also accused Google of being complicit by filtering its Chinese-language site.
"They" said blocked, and also filtered. (Who is "they" anyway?)
Of the links in the original post, BBC News and Reporters Without Borders don't work here (China). Reuters works fine.
I think it's a little strange that this entire thread is about Google News being blocked in China.. yet your link to stories readable from within China is ON GOOGLE NEWS (which really is working). Kind of absurd.
I'm in China. Google News is working fine at the moment. I had never tried it from here before, so I can't verify whether or not it was ever blocked.
BBC NEWS is, as always, blocked. BBC World News however, does work.
Slashdot Mirror
Lin Yutang is awesome. After reading "My Country and My People" he became the only favorite author I've ever had.
This is from my experience living in China before. After living there for over a year, I could walk around all day amongst throngs of people and have nothing affect my nerves even the slightest tinge. I think it is a related phenomenon. Not to sound too selfish -- but if nothing is bothering you, and nothing is bothering your friends and family, then nothing is wrong.
Slashdot is too immature and uninformed to deal with China. I cringe every time China is mentioned here.
I agree completely. Since living in China for some time, I have been constantly sickened by how Americans perceive the rest of the world. It is false righteousness veiling extreme ignorance and self-interest at every convenience.
Think of this another way. Every time a story about Canada comes up, someone always lets out a "Blame Canada". Every time a story about China comes up, someone starts talking about human rights and cold war throwbacks. People come back to the same convenient references because there is no breadth or depth to their familiarity. It's mechanical and pathetic.
Modded as flamebait? This is a top-level post and doesn't criticize anyone. I might actually agree with this guy.
I always did find "innocent before proven guilty" to be rather ineffective. Why not just calculate the average of criminal activity among the whole population, and incarcerate each person for the amount of time found in the result? Think of the money that could be saved when the courts are closed down.
Concerning hiragana... To delve into learning a writing system where nearly the entire written vocabulary is foreign isn't an attractive option for most travellers. If you don't know the language, you'll usually read it and think to yourself "Great.. I've learned nothing", and probably learn not to bother reading it most of the time because it's usually a disappointment. To make matters worse, it's more frequently interspersed with unintelligible kanji. It's kind of a no-brainer to say "Trouble getting around Japan? Learn Japanese!". Much different than handing out a PDA. It is perhaps of interest to people that Japanese does in fact have a set of phonetic characters for their own words though, since many people aren't aware of it.
:)
So... I still like katakana as a hack to prevent you from feeling completely lost. Within a couple hours, you pick up the system and can suddenly read (AND understand) 80+% of the words written with it. It's also a unique surprise in the Japanese language which I felt was worth pointing out to people
To do a little more of the same that you're complaining about, although somewhat qualifying your argument in the process... Here are things I heard from people living there... (just passing it along) In Japan (Osaka and Tokyo in particular), I came into contact with some people who had lived there over a year and admitted with some embarrassment that they knew practically none of the language. This made up most of the foreigners who I met. These were mostly guys, some of whom pointed out that they found that speaking purely English was a better way to pick up girls, since the girls preferred to practice their English anyway... and that with persistence, the young girls knew quite a bit of English, but were shy with it at first because they hadn't talked to foreigners before. This was also written in (free) club magazines for foreigners. Go figure. I also talked to someone who had been there for three years, studying Japanese and Japanese history intensively (in Japanese), but still couldn't read certain things and considered that 10 years of serious studying would perhaps be the right amount of effort to have acheived some mastery (qualifying that even this would be insufficient, and that for a non-native to come in and master it is pretty much unheard of at this point). Three years was however enough for this person to have acheived proficiency at singing some songs in a karaoke club. What does this all mean? I have no idea.
Perhaps most importantly, specific brand or location names are very often shown in katakana. This makes it so you have recognizable landmarks everywhere you go... and can make the difference between seeing jibberish and an arrow, or seeing a sign pointing to "Namco Land" (or whatever) and thinking it would be cool to check out what it is. It's also fun to try to work out what the phonetic words actually come out to in English. It's not always obvious. How was I supposed to know that the fast food chain "Faasto Kitchen" meant "First Kitchen", as opposed to "Fast Kitchen" :)
A guide to katakana (Japanese phonetic characters for foreign words) would be nice.. Or perhaps a little education campaign about it.
Many of the most important signs are written in katakana, which in essence means they are written in English. There are only 46-or-so basic characters to learn, which you can get a decent handle on by the time you step off the plane. This is more than enough to find hotels (hoteru), order food and drinks off most menus, find restaurants (resutoran), etc.
I knew katakana in Japan and only a few Japanese words. I'm not kidding about how handy it was.
You don't want to work for a company that would choose to employ this search, correct? You don't want to be in a relationship with someone who would pay someone to conduct this search on you, correct?
;)
Some prospective employees will benefit from these scans. Though they may never know it, a scan may be what saved them from working for the wrong employer. Of course you're not likely to apply to SCO (unless you're intending to bring them down from the inside), but for those other cases, there's now another means of selection which can take place in blissful ignorance rather than calculation. At the least, it's a little way to take some personal control of the situation. Help spare your conscience in a relatively easy way -- Destroy your reputation
In seriousness.. If you have the maturity to make your decisions one case at a time, doing this may take some important opportunities out of your hands. I mainly wanted to draw attention to the fact that though you may never know who contracted an intrusive scan on you, you do have the opportunity to craft a special message for them alone.
Yeah, I suppose that's true.. but it's inconvenient and more difficult to browse recent headlines. I used to go to BBC News all the time and pick and choose from the stories. Since I haven't learned what to do yet, I use CNN for now (ugh).
I figured you must have known Google News was working, given that you posted the link. People outside of China can only understand in a second-hand manner though (ie. my reply), and mod it 'informative' in the meantime :)
Which gets me thinking... Is there a portal anywhere that specifically exists to show what is and isn't accessible from within China? Could be useful for some people.
Of the links in the original post, BBC News and Reporters Without Borders don't work here (China). Reuters works fine. I think it's a little strange that this entire thread is about Google News being blocked in China.. yet your link to stories readable from within China is ON GOOGLE NEWS (which really is working). Kind of absurd.
I'm in China. Google News is working fine at the moment. I had never tried it from here before, so I can't verify whether or not it was ever blocked. BBC NEWS is, as always, blocked. BBC World News however, does work.