10th anniversary of "2 systems, one country" - interesting present

A day of increased propaganda here in Beijing as Hong Kong marks its 10th year under a "two systems one country " arrangement.

While reading up on it the following line in an article written by my favorite British news service (ask Tas which one that would be) caught my eyes: It describes one of the presents, next to two baby pandas, offered to HK by Hu:

"[...] It is a waxworks statue of the late Deng Xiaoping, the leader who oversaw the transition of Hong Kong from British colony to Chinese territory.

His image now stands in a shopping mall. [...]"

Why did I have to, spontaneously, think of a raddish (red on the outside, white on the inside) in this context..? Interesting location, interesting symbolism! ^^

*****
PS: Nadja, Rohit, Joanna or anyone else currently in HK: if you happen to pass by that shopping mall and could snap a picture, that would be great!
China, pr, anecdote

Cosmic Dancer

"[...] we have all been summoned to become Cosmic Dancers who do not rest heavily on a single spot but lightly turn and leap from one position to another. As World Citizens, the Cosmic Dancer will be an authentic child of its parent culture, while closely related to all. The dancer's roots in family and community will be deep, but in those depths they will strike the water table of a common humanity. For is the dancer not also human? If only she might see what has interested others, might it not interest her as well? It is an exciting prospect. The softening of divisions will induce borrowings that sometimes produce hybrids, but for the most part simply enrich species and sustain their vigor"

Huston Smith's "The World's Religions", p.7

I love this passage (written in the context of a discussion on the consequences of an increasingly globalized world) not only because it is part of the introduction of a book on the world's religions but also because it expresses to a large extent what I feel and strive to be: A convinced "Bebbi" with roots he loves and the opportunity to dance and discover globally (here, I could write a eulogy on AIESEC that, I believe, made me appreciate "dancing" and provided me plenty of opportunities to do so, with inspiring people; but I do neither want to bore you with it nor add more to AIESEC's reputation as an AIESECT.. ;)). So let me end this simply with a quote taken from Michael Jackson's all time best: "I love you all!" ^^

aiesec, philosophy

Quoting a Chinese Governor

In the context of the slavery scandal of which the tip has emerged recently in Shanxi, where reportedly "more than 1,000 'slaves', including children and mentally retarded men were working for long hours with no pay in primitive brick-making kilns in hilly and remote counties [...]", let me quote part of the self-criticism (heard before..?) of Governor Yu:

Governor Yu admitted that the incident “has exposed the low political aptitude and awareness of cadres in the party, government and enterprises.” He added, “They have not established the concept of administration for the sake of the people.” (read more)

May sustained and sustainable deeds follow these words and may there be more actio and less, pompous, reactio so that a "harmonious society" can potentially come about.

development, China, media, pr

Beijing's Digital Scavenger Hunt.

Last Saturday, slightly more than one year after Exoweb's digital scavenger hunt, it was again "digital scavenger hunt" (click here for more info about what a digital scavenger hunt is all about) time in Beijing. This time Vinny, creative as hell and spicing up not only Beijing's impro theatre scene, and MCK called and a bunch of roughly 30 people responded. Among them:

"toodle pip"

.. meaning Tas, a BBC-phile Brits with a tendency to SPAM, even friends, who also talked us into our distinctly British name, Claire, a seemingly endlessly creative (aka nuts) Northern-Irish with a flair for, as I had to experience, (rhetorical) warfare, Chee Ming, a charming (he almost managed to convince an elderly Chinese lady in night dress to pose for our camera) refreshingly geeky Malaysian and a random Swiss.

Digital camera drewn we set out to hunt the following:

• Something from the country
• Something green
• Something brown
• Something scandalous
• Something unexpected

The result:

• Something from the country - actually the last pic we took: an Irish hick (of course with other qualities..) among watermelons from the country.. ok, passes. Done.
• Something green - Beijing is terribly urban and polluted. So how about assisting plants to claim what might be the symbol of urban development, a well frequented cross-roads? We kidnapped a plant, moved it (we could have watered this bloody plant with our sweat.. ;)) from the office to the intersection and started watering.. Some honking supported our cause: greenen Beijings crossroads! ^^ Done.
• Something brown - something brown (of course with other qualities as well) passed by a brown rubbish bin. Brown in brown? Great. Let's put Tas into one of Beijings public rubbish bins. Done.
• Something scandalous – Given this picture might cause some unwanted trouble for persons that do not deserve it, I won’t publish it here..
• Something unexpected – an ocean of mannequins in Beijing’s “Alien market”. Joining this somewhat unusual crowd, pretending to be one of them might have some customers passing by go “oh, this is unexpected” (or simply, aaaah get that… thing.. out of there.. ;)). Done.

After a jiving 4 hours of hunting and a quick shower we joined the whole hunter crowd in Dave’s factory, a breath taking private loft in Beijing’s bustling art district Dashanzi. We feasted on pizza and some good Italian wine and were excited to see what the other teams had hunted down. There were pictures from people in houhai (very “green” lake in Beijing), nipples pained in green, dog in left hand, beer in right and Chinese “cheerleader” in the back to Beijings police officers exhibiting “scandalous” behaviour.. A fun range of snaps!

Nice side effect: toodle pip won not only 2 “best of category picture”-, “best overall picture” - and “best group” awards but also 6 bottles of wine.. a nice end (well actually start, since the fullmoon party was to follow) of a, IMHO, rocking Saturday!

Toodle pip!* ^^

-----
* for all of you as ignorant as I was before Tas “enlightened” me: toodle pip means as much as “bye bye”, cheerio

beijing, fun, pictures, event

Wanna reserve tickets for Beijing Olympics 2008? 4 more days.

Just a reminder for all those of you that may potentially be interested in tickets for the Olympic Games, which are going to start here in Beijing on August 8th, 2008 at 8pm; 8 (bā 八) being an auspicious number according to Chinese culture because it sounds like the word 发/fā meaning "fortune", "prosper"..

Reserve before June 30th!
How to reserve? Turn here: http://www.tickets.beijing2008.cn/section

PS: Nasty: once can only reserve tickets if one has either a Visa card or a bank of China account (or then time and nerves to go queue up at a bank of China). As for me, Visa's straight forward behavious as a sponsor backfired: I'll stick to mastercard, now more than ever. grmpf.. ^^

beijing olympics, olympic games, tickets

If I had to sketch out my philosophy.. :

.. then the passage I just reread after coming home from another one of these legendary Poker evenings with the boys would definitely be part of it:

"When shall we come to recognize that health is as contagious as disease, virtue as contagious as vice, cheerfulness as contagious as moroseness" (in Huston Smith's "The World's Religions")

I guess Monty Python (and may be Aida) would simply crucify themselves, whistling along to the tune of "always look at the bright side of life" to drive the main part of this point home.. ^^

philosophy, quote, religion

Roaring Exoweb :

Exoweb, the dynamic and geeky company I have been working for during the last 1.5 years has been growing quite significantly - while I, fossil in the meantime, was still “ExoMate 25” when I joined, we will soon be welcoming our 54th colleague.

Rocking? Sure! One issue we had to tackle, however, was one that everyone shaping up faces: with increasing muscles even a shiny T-Shirt starts to tweak. Yep, our loft like office space needed some serious expansion, since, hey, reducing chillout space to cram in more people was simply no option.

What followed provided me with ample insight into what renovating in China can imply. Yes, speed is not a major problem (except if you wish to convince a neighbour that an office on the second floor instead of in our immediate zone of expansion is a great idea..^^) and yes, you can have and afford 30 workers to work in parallel on a space no larger than 400m2. But when it comes to orchestrating them, things can become very tricky and intensive, especially for relative rookies like myself. At the end, finding a toilet mounted, meaning cemented onto a pipe in a way that the toilet's opening does not 100% flush with the pipe below won't reeeally surprise you anymore.. We were immensely happy to have Holden and his great experience and insights aboard! ^^

Let there be no doubt about this: the office was a hostile zone for all living creatures during just about a month. Dust was thicker than Beijing smog, smells intoxicating and the noise at times louder than Mick Jagger and Angus Young could ever get, combined. While our branded headphones and masks reduced the suffering slightly, it was not quite enough. Yes, the few mates working at the office during this time suffered and Deyatech, our partners in crime, moved out for a bit. We are happy they are back and still consider us friends. ;)



But hey, IMHO, it was worth the suffering. The stinky toilet is history (eg. pic above), the relaxation area is extended, featuring Nintendo Wii, bigger library and (small) bar, whiteboards are everywhere (the ones in the toilets, meaning to brainstorm when you really have the time, are about to be put up), our new colour, “sweetpotato”, complements the others, Starbucks-like once nicely (IMHO.. I know some are not quite sure about it yet.. ^^) and we even got 3 BBQ equipments for our pimped up rooftop terrace.

Yes, some issues are still not quite in sync and need to be worked on to complete our journey from good to great, but what we have reached was definitely a valid pretext for a party..

Party! How? We thought: “hostilities” belong to history, armageddon-like dust has settled and we are in this strange mood to celebrate.. “Roaring” it had to be, Swingy.. A theme party, the "Roaring opening of the new ExoOffice”, the 1920s on May 25th 2007 in Beijing resulted.


Yep, I won’t lie: I love theme parties. I love to see people switching into roles they do not normally play. And this party was… well judge for yourself:




BBQ and swinging on our rooftop terrace profiting from a warm summer night, bluffing our way to the poker jackpot, sipping cocktails or whiskey, straight (I still have my doubts about that stuff.. ^^), enjoying homemade music by Tim and Greg – don’t shoot the pianist – Jakacki, singing (resp. trying to) playing the Wii or simply chatting the night away while looking gooood.. ;)



Mates, friends of mates and AIESEC gang: you rocked and were looking damn good! Let’s hope we Exoweb will continue growing, giving us more reasons to expand our office space and.. celebrate! ^^

****
PS: if you want to see more pics you can turn either here or here. If you are living in Mainland China, where Flickr services are currently "facing problems" you might want to use this.

roaring twenties, party, beijing, python, software, exoweb

How traditions can give "face" and goose bumps to a 老外 (lǎowài) :

Yu Bo aka Kelly, one of my colleagues, and her boyfriend Hong Yan got married!


Yep, another one of my teammates, most of them younger than me (Cindy, another workmate of mine put this on her BLOG in the following, lovely way: [...] 当时看到他的时候觉得想不到他只是比我大两岁[...] or as much as "When I saw him [me] he looked more than only two years [our actual age difference] older than me".. well, well, it must have been the jet lag.. ;)) got married, or as Yumna, an Indian friend of mine announcing her upcoming wedding (yes!) put it, "bit the dust" ^^
For me, Yu Bo and Hong Yan's wedding meant at least the following:

• People way younger than me can do it... I might wanna start thinking about it myself... start thinking, I said.. ;)
• I got to enjoy once more the opportunity to participate in a Chinese wedding and all the traditions that come along. I've written some more about these traditions and how I experienced them in previous post about the first Chinese wedding, Rena's, that I had the chance to attend.
  
• Gaining "face" at the cost of quite some goose bumps..

What do I mean with the latter? Well, in China there is this tradition saying that the father or mother as well as the manager of the bride, respectively the groom get to do a little speech. I also found out about this only a day before the wedding when Kelly called me up around 9pm to ask me if I, having been her direct manager, would do that on behalf of her. "Absolutely" I had already responded, when I thought: Wait, I guess that should be in Chinese then? "Yes", she responded, giggled and told me that "I would do great"..

A little nervous? Yep, my goose bumps bore a strange ressemblance with the Himalayas, but hey, this was a great complement to my usual, relatively very boring, Chinese studying, with books, flashcards and the like... Once back from a Friday night out I got my act together, gathered my thoughts and was super happy that Echo had the patience to have a serious go at them ^^

Well then, I stumbled, fumbled and had a little big helper (check out the size of my notes.. ;)). But hey, it was great to hear the happy cheering after the first 3 Chinese words the lǎowài (the semi endearing term often used by Chinese to refer to foreigners. The Chinese "gringo"..) had uttered and to be able to say right there, how much I appreciated to work with and be a friend of Kelly!


Disregarding the fact that I am not Chinese, Kelly made me gain quite a bit of "face" and I was happy and ready to down a glas of 'good' old Baijiu with Hong Yan ^^ Oh, one more thing: yes, the tradition of throwing the bouquet has become an integral part even of Chinese weddings. Kelly threw it and guess who caught it... Vivi, another work mate of mine... Do I hear another wedding coming up soon..? ;)

china, chinese wedding, culture, exoweb, beijing

Sexy Beijing

Sex and the city, now also in Beijing..

"Sexy Beijing" is a series of small clips (to be found on youtube) produced by the "local" Carrie Bradshaw, SunFei. It provides fun insights into some of the issues making our days here in Beijing.

Check out this one called "lost in translation". It's about how and what English names some Chinese choose for themselves.. Best one I've personally met so far, and have business card of, is called "Dying Duck", his first name.. ^^





sex and the city, video, beijing, china, fun

China to enforce niversal cell phone charger to reduce technical waste :

Just came accross the following news in EETimes:

China will start to enforce a compulsory universal cell
phone charger standard this month. All cell phones designed after June 14
must adopt the universal charger interface, based on USB, otherwise they will
not be approved for sale in China, according to the Ministry of Information
Industry, which is responsible for enforcing the rule.

The goal is to reduce the number of chargers that are thrown away each year
because of cell phone upgrades. Nearly 100 million cell phones are replaced
every year in China, according to MII.

Today, June 4th, 18 years ago - Remember

And what if Cao's proposal to impeach Li on the basis of a violation of Art.29 of the Chinese Constitution would have trumped?

The conditional sucks.

Remember.

china, politics