Content Preview: rss
144 days ago
Recent riots in Urumqi have been attributed by the Chinese government to the instigation of Rebiya Kadeer and her World Uyghur Congress. This may distract from a potential public debate on ethnic policies that badly need reform. Years ago, in a high school politics class, I heard our teacher told us a story about a Han soldier in Tibet. When this solider saw broken pieces of human body being exposed at mountaintop and pecked at by birds of prey, not knowing this is a part of the Tibeten “sky burial”, he chased the birds away to “protect” the body parts. This immediately led to tension between local Tibetans and the Chinese army. In the end, the army gave this solider the death sentence. This anecdote is an illustration, no longer an extreme one given what happened on the Urumqi streets, of the ugly sides of China’s “minority policies”. Some may think that the Hans are bullying the minorities, which are largely misleading, or misled in the first place. On the contrary, in many ...
248 days ago
Recently a friend asked for help with the etymoloty of the word 危险。 She’s writing her thesis on the edge that artists have when they skillfully play with “danger.” Her whole thesis revolves around the concept of Danger in art and all her professors keep telling her that 危险 has a different connotation in Chinese than danger does in English. So she needs someone to help her to figure out what 危险originally means in Chinese. I am no etymologist in either language, and I am pretty sure that Chinese dictionaries like 《辞海》or 《辞源》can help. Unfortunately I do not have either here. So I could just search online for usage in the past and here is what I find from Baidu’s encyclopedia: 1. 亦作”危嶮 ”。艰危险恶，不安全。谓有可能导致灾难或失败。《韩非子•有度》：“外使诸侯，内耗其国，伺其危险之陂以恐其主。”险，一本作“ 嶮 ”。 汉 匡衡 《奏徙南北郊》：“劳所保之民，行危险之地，难以奉神灵而祈福祐。”《醒世恒言•隋炀帝逸游召谴》：“欲泛 孟津 ，又虑危险。” 曹禺 《北京人》第三幕：“把自己的快乐完全放在一个人的身上是危险的。” It is pretty obvious that whenever the word 危险 appears, it does not differ with the word “danger”. It translates ...
260 days ago
NPR once broadcasted an interview talking about why Asian students are better at math (if I can be excused) . The speaker explained that in these mostly agricultural societies, the mindset is you reap how much you plant, hence their greater commitment. In America, there is more emphasis on “working smart” than “working hard”. Translated into educational jargon, he is saying that time on task still makes a difference. I recently also found that there might be some linguistic explanation too. The other day, my daughter (2nd grade) surprised her class by providing an answer for 7 times 8. She said she spoke in Chinese, and her teacher asked her to translate that into English and that turned out to be the correct answer. That surprised her class, though this was actually no big deal. It is supposed to be in your operating knowledge, period. Back to the linguistic aspect of elementary math, I find it is much easier to recite and recall multiplication tables in Chinese then in English. ...
261 days ago
This may start like a bar story, but it may end as a rant: one day, a Canadian colleague, an American colleague and I (Chinese) were having lunch, and we were talking about the health care problems each face in our countries. In Canada, you pay high tax, but health care is free. In America, you pay relatively low tax (according to the Canadian), but healthcare is ridiculously expensive. China’s medical system is so diverse and constantly changing that I don’t know where to start. Generally, for the civil servants, most have medical coverage for a relatively low cost. The cost goes up for those working for businesses, which are required by the Labor Law to provide for medical coverage. Some, though, cover common treatments, but treatment for serious illnesses such as cancer are covered only to a point, beyond which you have to purchase other types of commercial insurance. Then there are those farmers and laid-off workers who have little, if any coverage. They are out there basically ...
556 days ago
