China Shops, Amidst Falling Stocks
Tourists tour a commercial street during the National Day Holiday last week in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)
While purse strings around the world have been tied tight as a result of the economic crisis, consumerism in China has increased in recent weeks, due mainly to the week-long National Day holiday.
Consumer spending is up, so says the Ministry of Commerce in a China Daily article today. The Ministry said spending during the National Day Holiday week grew 21 percent over last year to 420 billion yuan, or $61 billion.
But stock markets in China also took a major hit today, in the first day of trading after a week off for the holiday. The Shanghai Composite dropped 5.2% to 2,173.74, and the Shenzhen All Share index slid 3.8% to 590.91, reports China Daily and MarketWatch. Read more...
China: A Year Away from the Big 6-0
Workers in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, clean a statue of Mao Zedong in September in preparation for China's National Day celebrations that start October 1. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)
Events include many public and televised shows including concerts and fireworks, as well as tributes to China's past leaders. Check out this YouTube video of historical footage of National Day celebrations from 1949-1959. Even though it's in Chinese, the video footage is pretty fascinating.
Because so many workers have the time off, tourists are advised to pick another time to travel to China as prices and crowds increase substantially. For more info check out About.com's China Travel Guide.
In recent years, there's been a movement among Chinese politicians to shorten the holiday. When it was originally made a week long in 1999, the aim was to promote consumer spending. But it has actually shown to have adversely affected the economy since so many government offices are closed and trade comes to a practical standstill for a full week.
Last year the government announced a new holiday plan that would shorten both National Day and the May 1 holiday and add three traditional festivals as official holidays including Tomb-Sweeping Day, the Dragon-boat Festival, and the Mid-Autumn Festival. There's some indication that this new plan would start in 2009, where National Day will only last two days.
My advice to the Chinese workers this week: Party like it's 2008.
The Shenzhou Has Landed
China's Shenzhou VII spacecraft returns to earth on Sunday in Inner Mongolia after astronauts made the the country's first spacewalk. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)
While the United States Congress continued to hash out a solution to the U.S. financial crisis this weekend, China watched three of its astronauts perform the country's first-ever spacewalk on Sunday.
The mission marks China entry into the elite space club that was formerly dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia.
In a live broadcast, astronaut Zhai Zhigang, 41, walked out of the Shengzhou VII spacecraft which was orbiting the earth, then waved and greeted the "Chinese people and the people of the world." Astronaut Liu Boming also poked his head and part of his body out of the spacecraft. The two became the first and second Chinese astronauts to ever enter space. The astronauts then left a small satellite behind.
The mission was China's third human space expedition in five years and is part of a larger ramp-up of China's space program that aims to build a space station by 2020, and eventually go to the moon.
While the spacewalk was received positively in China, it would seem that just like the U.S. Space Program has come under fire for its extraordinary budget, it has also attracted critics. Check out Asia Times' writer Kent Ewing's commentary here. Ewing is also a teacher at the Hong Kong International School.
China in the Presidential Debate
Presidential hopefuls Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama square off in the first of three debates before the November U.S. presidential election. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
John McCain and Barack Obama squared off face to face for the first time last night in the first of three presidential debates. With the topic of foreign policy, it's no surprise that China was mentioned several times.
Both candidates have put out position papers on China with McCain taking a slightly harder stance on human rights. I also blogged about how Chinese view the candidates a month ago when I was in Beijing.
Here is a rundown and brief analysis of what the candidates had to say about China during last night's debate. For a summary of the debate, visit About.com's U.S. Foreign Policy site. CNN also has a full transcript.
ON THE FINANCIAL CRISIS:
Obama: Well, there are a range of things that are probably going to have to be delayed. We don't yet know what our tax revenues are going to be. The economy is slowing down, so it's hard to anticipate right now what the budget is going to look like next year... We have to fix our health care system, which is putting an enormous burden on families... The third thing we have to do is we've got to make sure that we're competing in education. We've got to invest in science and technology. China had a space launch and a space walk. We've got to make sure that our children are keeping pace in math and in science.
McCain: We can't I think adjust spending around to take care of the very much needed programs, including taking care of our veterans but I also want to say again a healthy economy with low taxes would not raising anyone's taxes is probably the best recipe for eventually having our economy recover. And spending restraint has got to be a vital part of that. And the reason, one of the major reasons why we're in the difficulties we are in today is because spending got out of control. We owe China $500 billion. And spending, I know, can be brought under control because I have fought against excessive spending my entire career. And I got plans to reduce and eliminate unnecessary and wasteful spending and if there's anybody here who thinks there aren't agencies of government where spending can be cut and their budgets slashed they have not spent a lot of time in Washington.
Analysis: Obama's reference to China seems representative of growing concerns about Chinese technological advancement and development. Referencing China as a source of competition may resonate with middle America which has seen increasing downsizing of industry due to cheaper resources and labor abroad, especially in China. McCain's reference to China's $500 billion loan to the United States also underscores such fears, this time economically. Read more...
Traditional Chinese Rap?
A typical Beijing scene: Residents of a traditional Chinese alleyway (hutong) play chess. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)
I've only just learned about Zhang Bohong, a young musician and CEO of a Shanghai online game company. He's got this great sound that mixes traditional Chinese folk music with R&B influences.
A native of Beijing, who has lived abroad in Los Angeles, Zhang wrote the song "Beijing Natives" or 北京土著 (Beijing Tu zhu) that describes some basic scenes of the city, like the hollers (holla!) of street vendors, the smell of tea in a traditional courtyard home, Chinese comedy routines and children playing in the street.
Check out his music video here. Someone also took the time to make a cartoon animation to this song, which is hilarious. I particularly liked the irony of what the bird does to one foreign visitor and not another. Read more...
A Mid-Autumn State of Mind
An actress performs during a Mid-Autumn Festival in Chengdu, China. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)
Last Sunday's full moon was more than just scenery from the regular lunar orbit around the earth. For Chinese around the world, it was the moon of the Mid-Autumn Festival or 中秋节 (Zhong Qiu Jie). And though I am three days late, to not write about the festival seems a bigger mistake.
True to my roots, on Sunday I ate nian gao or glutenous rice cakes (not sweet), and nibbled on a yue bing or mooncake (sweet) with my family. But I'm actually not a big fan of either food. I much prefer the dishes of other Chinese holidays like the sizzling pot stickers at New Year or the flavorful zhong zi eaten during the Dragon Boat Festival.
A tray of mooncakes at a factory in Nanjing awaits packaging. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)
Many Chinese people will admit that they don't like mooncake either, but like the fruitcake at Christmastime, giving the gift of bean paste or lotus-seed paste packed inside a crusty layer with maybe a salted duck egg inside seems to be a case of tradition beating out taste.
The holiday is all about tradition. And like so many festivals, it begins with a fable. The story has many, many versions, but the one I was taught as a child at Lexington Chinese School goes like this: Read more...
The Death of Lucian Pye And "Political Culture"?
China scholar Lucian W. Pye died on Sept. 5, 2008. (Photo courtesy Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Prominent China scholar Lucian Pye died of pneumonia on Sept. 5 in Boston. He was 86 years old. Obituaries can be found at the New York Times and the MIT website.
Pye was a longtime professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is best known for his work that theorized that cultural and psychological characteristics of a nation are what leads countries to develop in such different ways.
Like his mentor, Gabriel Almond, Pye forwarded the concept of "political culture" which believes that there are cultural and psychological beliefs that a specific people share about how politics should be carried out. This differs from having a political ideology. Almond and Pye believed that people could disagree on ideology, but still share the same political culture.
Much of this research was aimed at finding a counter to the spread of Marxist beliefs around the world. According to the New York Times obituary, Pye's research in Malaysia found that communism's appeal there came from insecurity over the pace of change. He also concluded of Burma that psychology was more important than economics in explaining development. Read more...
Please Understand Your Chinese Tattoos
A swimmer shows an Olympic rings tattoo just before the 2008 Games in Beijing. (Photo by Paul Gilham/Getty Images)
1. I'm not proficient enough in Chinese to accurately pinpoint the most poetic phrasing for tattoos. 2. I don't want to be responsible for someone's unhappiness at a botched tatt. 3. (and most importantly) I just don't think people who want a Chinese tattoo really think about what they're doing.
A woman with tattoos makes a call during the 2007 Midi Music Festival in Beijing. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for self-expression and I have found many Asian-inspired tattoos very beautiful, but I really wish people who don't understand a language they are about to have permanently inked underneath their skin would think twice. And then I wish they would find a Chinese person and ask them what they think of the idea. Read more...
The Chinese Man Who Discovered America (not)
A statue Chinese navigator Zheng He at a park in Nanjing, China. (GOH CHAI HIN/AFP/Getty Images)
Legendary Ming Dynasty navigator Zheng He is the subject of a current National Geographic Society exhibit in Washington D.C. until Sept. 7. The exhibit includes objects from the National Museum in China including a bronze bell Zheng He commissioned, copies of maps he created, and a 10-foot-long replica of a treasure ship -- one of the types of ships in He's fleet.
Admiral Zheng He became quite popular in the last few years due to a book by wannabe historian Gavin Menzies who wrote: 1421: The Year China Discovered America. In the book, Menzies claimed that Zheng He commanded the largest fleet the world had ever seen to explore the world. The fleet supposedly circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan and even made it as far as America, 70 years before Christopher Columbus.
After it was published, Menzies was soundly criticized by many historians who have characterized his book as pure bunk and junk history. A group of professors even created an anti-1421 website. There was also a great expose on Menzies by Four Corners, an investigative journalism program by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Incidentally, Menzies just came out with his second book that claims in 1434 a Chinese fleet sailed to Italy and ignited the Renaissance. No word yet on the anti-1434 Web Site.
What is true about the voyager Zheng He is that he commanded a huge Chinese armada that sailed seven epic voyages from China to Malacca, Sri Lanka, the coast of India, the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa. Check out a great National Geographic multimedia presentation on Zheng He here.
So Long, and Thanks for all the Dumplings
As you read this, I'll be headed back to the U.S.A. after a wonderful month here in Beijing. China has changed a great deal since I was last here five years ago. Aside from the billions spent on improvements in infrastructure, transportation, and Olympic projects, there is a noticeable sense of confidence in the Chinese people I met that I had not seen before.
A man practices his Chinese calligraphy in a Beijing park.
Many have argued that this heightened sense of nationalism is something to be feared, as it only reinforces governmental policies that may not benefit the Chinese people. But then, one can argue that for any country, including my own, which will soon elect a new president.
Despite my departure, this blog and page will continue to be updated, so check back often for more information on Chinese culture and affairs. Read more...