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Imgur has blocked anon image uploading from China. My pic threads  Oh hey new Sinica just dropped.
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Apr 6, 2012 11:57
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Throatwarbler posted:Imgur has blocked anon image uploading from China. My pic threads
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Apr 6, 2012 12:31
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french lies posted:Is Imgur giving any indication as to why? My first guess would be bandwidth costs but I wouldn't put government interference out of question, especially considering the timing. Spam, probably. There's a couple of other websites (blogs with active comment sections) unrelated to China that require a captcha if you connect from a Chinese IP.
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Apr 6, 2012 12:48
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Throatwarbler posted:Spam, probably. There's a couple of other websites (blogs with active comment sections) unrelated to China that require a captcha if you connect from a Chinese IP. Btw, if you want some fascinating reading you should check out Blocked on Weibo. The guy who runs it updates frequently with lists and individual posts of blocked terms on Weibo. Some of it is within what you would expect (dissidents, 8964, FLG et.c.), but other things seem completely inexplicable. For example, "verification number" in traditional characters is blocked, but the same word in simplified characters is not. The English word "evolution" is blocked; e.g. tons of weird little quirks like these. Great stuff, really recommended.
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Apr 6, 2012 13:19
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french lies posted:Btw, if you want some fascinating reading you should check out Blocked on Weibo. The guy who runs it updates frequently with lists and individual posts of blocked terms on Weibo. Some of it is within what you would expect (dissidents, 8964, FLG et.c.), but other things seem completely inexplicable. For example, "verification number" in traditional characters is blocked, but the same word in simplified characters is not. The English word "evolution" is blocked; e.g. tons of weird little quirks like these. Great stuff, really recommended.
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Apr 6, 2012 13:59
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At this point this thread seems to have devolved into me just posting links, but I really felt I had to share this after seeing it. It's a long (three hours!) and excellent Frontline documentary about the Tian'anmen protests made in the late nineties. I thought it captured perfectly that moment in history, the arrogance of both sides and the pure but often naive idealism of the protesters. You really feel how things turn to poo poo as they fight among themselves and eventually get helplessly crushed by the machinery of the state. The entire thing was an extremely moving experience for me, not the least because I personally know people who participated in the protests. Whatever the protesters may or may not have achieved, there's still this powerful sense of higher aspiration to what they did that I feel China is missing completely these days. When I'm in Mainland China I sometimes question whether it's still there, bubbling beneath the surface, or if people have really thrown up their hands and decided to grab whatever resources they can in the current corrupt sham of a system. Anyway, this is a pro-click and you should all take the time to watch it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVvwA_34WB8 Note: I personally watched the Chinese version, which has the full three hours. To the best of my efforts, I couldn't find an equivalent English version so I'm sorry about that. french lies fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Apr 6, 2012 |
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Apr 6, 2012 20:25
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french lies posted:At this point this thread seems to have devolved into me just posting links, but I really felt I had to share this after seeing it. It's a long (three hours!) and excellent Frontline documentary about the Tian'anmen protests made in the late nineties. I thought it captured perfectly that moment in history, the arrogance of both sides and the pure but often naive idealism of the protesters. You really feel how things turn to poo poo as they fight among themselves and eventually get helplessly crushed by the machinery of the state. I'll start chipping in again soon -- does anyone have Chinese govt structure questions or similar stuff I can try to answer? I'm on a glide path as far as work and stuff goes for the next week, so I'll have time to post some analysis and links. On another note China Elections has an interesting analysis of the Hong Kong elections here: http://chinaelectionsblog.net/hkfocus/?p=355 Though I think it's a little bit alarmist. I am sure there will be immediate calls for resignation, but I don't know that it will be so powerful a choir as her analysis puts up. A great deal of Hong Kong politics depends on keeping the wheels greased, and Leung will be able to do so, limiting strong protests to a handful of pro-democracy or anti-Beijing activists.
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Apr 6, 2012 20:48
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french lies posted:At this point this thread seems to have devolved into me just posting links, but I really felt I had to share this after seeing it. It's a long (three hours!) and excellent Frontline documentary about the Tian'anmen protests made in the late nineties. I thought it captured perfectly that moment in history, the arrogance of both sides and the pure but often naive idealism of the protesters. You really feel how things turn to poo poo as they fight among themselves and eventually get helplessly crushed by the machinery of the state. I'd written up about half a post on Chinese law, like promised, but I couldn't figure out how to make it entertaining or interesting to a general audience. I'll have another go at it next week...
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Apr 7, 2012 00:43
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Readman posted:I'd written up about half a post on Chinese law, like promised, but I couldn't figure out how to make it entertaining or interesting to a general audience. I'll have another go at it next week... Seeing as the Hoekstra ad is all but forgotten by now, I thought I would solicit some suggestions for a new thread name. Any takers? My best attempts so far have just been lame puns like "Xi's got to have it" and "Hu let the dogs out" so I hope you guys come up with something better.
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Apr 7, 2012 08:56
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french lies posted:I thought BrotherAdso had a good approach with his government megapost: Lots of pictures, informal/conversational tone and a small dash of edginess on top. I was browsing the news today and I came across this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2012/mar/23/china-decade-change-interactive-timeline More visually interesting than anything else.
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Apr 7, 2012 09:09
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China Megathread: Reviving the Spirit of Lei Feng Pretty much every classroom at my school has a big drawing of Lei Feng on the back blackboard. The stories of his perseverance and warmheartedness have really resonated with the people here in Chongqing. If China holds national elections Bo Xilai will become Paramount leader and spread the Lei Feng spirit around the world!
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Apr 7, 2012 09:44
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french lies posted:I thought BrotherAdso had a good approach with his government megapost: Lots of pictures, informal/conversational tone and a small dash of edginess on top. Xi Bolaidoff
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Apr 7, 2012 11:51
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kenner116 posted:Pretty much every classroom at my school has a big drawing of Lei Feng on the back blackboard. The stories of his perseverance and warmheartedness have really resonated with the people here in Chongqing. My classrooms have similar Lei Feng stuff, but one of my smartest classes has a big block of text about him in English that says he was made up by the Chinese government. There's a bunch of errors in the English so it might not actually be copied from Wikipedia either! I think it's pretty funny that they have this anti-propaganda up but nobody who might care to have it taken down can read it.
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Apr 7, 2012 11:59
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Arglebargle III posted:My classrooms have similar Lei Feng stuff, but one of my smartest classes has a big block of text about him in English that says he was made up by the Chinese government. There's a bunch of errors in the English so it might not actually be copied from Wikipedia either! I think it's pretty funny that they have this anti-propaganda up but nobody who might care to have it taken down can read it. Is this a new thing? I was teaching in the public schools in 2009-2010 in Dalian, and my rooms had propaganda but no Lei Feng (though my kids did know about him). I heard there was some effort to revive Lei Feng as a more central role model recently, but has it reached the level of a full fledged campaign?
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Apr 7, 2012 12:47
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Edit: Sorry, wrong thread.
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Apr 8, 2012 02:48
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Out in the countryside we just have Fire Safety stuff on the back boards, mostly because of Qingming Jie. This is a middle school, not sure where you guys are.
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Apr 8, 2012 03:00
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french lies posted:
Yes, The Economist, you can make the projections on your charts go whichever way you want with no reliance on historical data whatsoever. You can you anything you can dream up!
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Apr 9, 2012 02:51
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Wedesdo posted:Yes, The Economist, you can make the projections on your charts go whichever way you want with no reliance on historical data whatsoever. You can you anything you can dream up! You know, the assumptions are right there.
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Apr 9, 2012 03:08
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The issue is "gradually slowing" gdp growth which honestly isn't specified and almost certainly is in no way accurate. It is alarmist junk, the type of stuff you would see about the Soviets in the 70s/80s.
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Apr 9, 2012 03:32
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Ardennes posted:The issue is "gradually slowing" gdp growth which honestly isn't specified and almost certainly is in no way accurate. As a person who was born a year after the Soviet Union collapsed, were they just taking Politburo's cooked books at face value or was it just blind jingoism?
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Apr 9, 2012 05:09
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Spiderfist Island posted:As a person who was born a year after the Soviet Union collapsed, were they just taking Politburo's cooked books at face value or was it just blind jingoism?
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Apr 9, 2012 05:13
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Ardennes posted:The issue is "gradually slowing" gdp growth which honestly isn't specified and almost certainly is in no way accurate. It's a little more fair, but it does bury the most important stuff in the last three or five paragraphs. The article's research (with the exception of that dumb chart) isn't awful -- China is trying to mechanize and informatize their warfare, China is trying to keep out American direct deployment in local waters, there are some pretty strong war plans and policy language in place around the two-Chinas issue, yep. But the real issue is laid out in the last three paragraphs. In these, we learn in rapid succession that China's capacity is hard to measure, it's still tiny compared to the US, a gigantic and historically central player in the region is justified in wanting a strong military presence on the world stage, there are few options for China in the world of the US' alliance network, etc etc etc. By burying that information at the end of the article, they misinform the reader not strictly by wrong information (though theres a little bit of that), but also by analytic misweighting. Unless the reader is really really careful, he'll leave with a much stronger impression of the power and threat of China's military than is borne out even by the actual information in the article.
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Apr 9, 2012 05:14
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Jesus Christ, you guys are really making me regret posting that article. As BrotherAdso said, the alarmist tone subsides over the course of the piece, but yes, the Economist do love their bogeymen and orientalist scaremongering. Over to something completely different: Can you guess what this is?  You'd be forgiven for thinking it was some kind of paper shearing device, but no, this is a Chinese typewriter! Yes, it's real, and not just the punchline of a zillion jokes, an MC Hammer dance or the name of a badass (?) Tom Selleck TV series.  I don't have the slightest idea what's going on here.  In operation... Chinese typists often developed a hunched-over posture like this. How the gently caress does this poo poo work? As you would imagine, it's a fair bit more complex than the typewriters we are used to. A Chinese typewriter essentially consists of two parts: A traybed containing around two thousand five hundred characters worth of loose type, and a magnetic mechanism to pick up these characters and then ink and punch them onto the paper, one-by-one.  That's the traybed in front. Each one contained everywhere from 2000-2500 characters. Rather than me blathering on for pages, here's a video showing how it's used. It's quite fascinating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6iu9Nie4Oc The narrator explains that the characters were ordered by category, so that all characters that related to water, for example, were put in the "water" section of the traybed. Since 2500 characters didn't cover much beyond the essentials, the typist would frequently need to add new characters or rearrange the traybed as needed. New characters were looked up in a catalog and then added to the traybed from supplementary trays.  New characters were added from supplementary trays like these. So how fast could you type with this thing? Estimates vary, but a good typist in the 40s could average 20-30 characters a minute. For comparison, using a modern Pinyin IME an average Chinese computer user can easily input somewhere around double that. And a trained Wubi typist can even get up to triple that: 150 characters a minute! I mean, that blows pretty much even the fastest QWERTY typist out of the water.  As you can imagine, working with the Chinese typewriter was a slow and laborious process. Various improvements were made to the design over the years, but it couldn't change the basic arithmetic of how the machine worked. Adding to the frustration was the fact that the physical weight of each character would vary with the number of strokes. The typist would therefore have to adjust the punching power of the typing mechanism according to the stroke count, to avoid an uneven imprint or simply punching through the paper.  Only Chinese people had the stamina and bitterness-eating prowess to effectively use a Chinese typewriter. Pictured is a danchun imperialist dog longing for the simplicity of his native alphabetic system. Perhaps the biggest, and also most interesting changes to the typewriter, were made to the traybed itself. In the earliest stages of Chinese typing, the characters were arranged according to their radicals. These are not the beret-wearing, flag-burning kind of radicals, but rather a selection of frequently occurring components in Chinese characters. Radicals are often used to sort and index characters, most notably in dictionaries.  As if the typist's life wasn't difficult enough, the characters on the tray were upside down and mirrored. Typists had to have very good eyesight. This was a very poor and inefficient way of organizing the traybed. In this system, the characters were sorted not by their usage frequency, but by their stroke count and the stroke count of their indexing radical, going from lowest to highest. In practice, this meant that the typist would have to jump back and forth across the traybed to type even the simplest of phrases. Later designs would take usage frequency into account and group the most frequently used characters in the middle and the less frequently used to the sides. This improved the situation somewhat, but typists would still have to move the typing mechanism around an awful lot to render even the most common of phrases.  The Simpsons' depiction of a Chinese typewriter. I could sperg for hours over everything's that wrong with this. That all changed in the 50s, with a typesetter named Zhang Jiying. He came up with a way of arranging the characters that is weirdly reminiscent of what we call "predictive text". He would look at which characters he used most frequently, and more importantly, which characters they were most often combined with. Take Mao (as in Mao Zedong), for instance, that character can mean a lot of things but for an average typist in those days you could make a fair bet "Zedong" or "Chairman" (zhuxi in Chinese) came afterwards. So using his method, you would simply put ze, dong, zhu and xi next to the Mao and easily quadruple your speed setting these very frequent combinations of type.  An early traybed layout. In this layout, frequently used characters are in the middle, more infrequently used characters to the far left and right. "Special characters", numbers and the cyrillic/roman alphabet are on the immediate sides of the middle. Typists eventually adopted to using this system as well. Using Zhang's system, every typist would have a customized traybed tailored to his or her specific needs. A company secretary, for example, might have the names and titles of her boss and other upper-level managers clustered together, whereas a PRC typist would group words like "imperialism" and "socialism" around the affix "zhuyi", which is used for almost all "isms" in Chinese. This technique increased typing efficiency by a considerable degree, even if the sheer speed didn't come anywhere near what can be done on a computer today. The legacy of Zhang Jiying can be seen in popular IMEs like Sogou, which use different forms of predictive algorithms to speed up typing.  Look at number 4 in the upper right example. The IME correctly suggests xinnian kuaile (Happy New Years) based on the input of the four initial consonants "xnkl". At the end I'd just like to note that Western pro-Pinyin activists like Victor Mair were originally predicting that the rise of computing would spell the demise of Chinese characters. In fact, the very opposite has occurred: It seems the more advanced computing gets, the easier and more convenient the input of Chinese characters becomes. In a sense, computing may actually have saved Chinese characters from extinction somewhere down the line. The CCP did have plans for further simplifications of characters, which were later discarded. If this didn't satisfy your curiosity, you should check out the website of Thomas Mullaney, a Stanford professor who specializes on this very subject. I sourced most of this post from his Google talk, which is freely available (and very pro-click).
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Apr 9, 2012 11:04
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To add to the PLA discussion we had earlier: A Chinese general recently did a very aggressive column in the Global Times, essentially threatening the Philippines with military action if it does not concede its claims to the contested territories in the South China Sea. You can read it here. Among other things, he accuses the Philippines of coveting the oil resources in the SCS and acting as a "cat's paw" for the United States. It's also full of stock nationalist tropes like "China's had enough" and "we will use force if needed".  The WSJ did an okay summary of it here if you don't read Chinese. quote:Chinese General: Philippines Faces ‘Last Chance’ I noticed, for example, that he uses the phrases "national sovereignty" (国家主权) and "territorial integrity" (领土完整) to refer to the contested territories in the SCS. These terms are usually filed under what's called China's "core interests" (核心利益). This came into wide use after the signing of the Sino-American joint statement in 2009, and refers to matters in which the Chinese government will not negotiate or compromise. Basically, a core interest is something which China will go to extreme lengths, if not all-out war, to maintain. "National sovereignty and territorial integrity" in the central government's nomenclature, refer explicitly to Taiwan and Tibet. The Spratlys and other contested territories are not considered a core interest. So my wild guess would be that internally, the PLA operates with a very different definition of what China's "core interests" are, and may actually be pushing for an expansion of the term. If that really happens there is precious little that the other players in the SCS can do about their territorial disputes with China. I guess this goes back to what we were saying earlier: China's arms build-up isn't a threat to the West, as the US right would have you think, but it does carry significant implications for its neighbors. I'd be interested to see how far the US is willing to go to protect the Philippines if it does come down to a military confrontation over the Spratlys.
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Apr 10, 2012 11:23
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french lies posted:Jesus Christ, you guys are really making me regret posting that article. As BrotherAdso said, the alarmist tone subsides over the course of the piece, but yes, the Economist do love their bogeymen and orientalist scaremongering. Somebody fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Apr 12, 2012 |
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Apr 10, 2012 11:41
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What's the general Chinese consensus for overseas Chinese who migrate to Japan for work? When I lived in Japan it was fascinating to see how many Chinese students and workers come to Japan given remaining anti-Japanese sentiments from the war.
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Apr 10, 2012 18:33
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What is going on with Bo Xilai? It looks like they are calling the Heywood death a murder and his wife is a suspect. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/world/asia/detained-party-official-facing-ouster-from-politburo.html?hp
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Apr 10, 2012 19:25
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Vladimir Putin posted:What is going on with Bo Xilai? It looks like they are calling the Heywood death a murder and his wife is a suspect. I was just about to post this. The Guardian is reporting that Gu Kailai has been accused of murdering Neil Heywood. It almost seems like something out of a movie.
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Apr 10, 2012 19:37
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Wang probably has actual dirt of the killing of Heywood, otherwise the Poliburo wouldn't used heywood case *publicly* to nail Bo. Also on the news article it referred to his wife as "Bo Gu Xiang-Lai" instead of "Gu Xiang-Lai". Mainland China never attach husband's last name to the wife's name. This could hint that Gu has changed her nationality and this is her official name on her new passport. This news is taken directly from xinhua website. whatever7 fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Apr 10, 2012 |
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Apr 10, 2012 22:38
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QuoProQuid posted:I was just about to post this. The Guardian is reporting that Gu Kailai has been accused of murdering Neil Heywood. It almost seems like something out of a movie. Rumor has it Gu Kailai and Heywood had a thing. I was just saying today that this would make an absolutely awesome movie, too bad that sort of thing would never pan out...
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Apr 11, 2012 02:55
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french lies posted:I guess this goes back to what we were saying earlier: China's arms build-up isn't a threat to the West, as the US right would have you think, but it does carry significant implications for its neighbors. I'd be interested to see how far the US is willing to go to protect the Philippines if it does come down to a military confrontation over the Spratlys. Out of curiosity, one thing I don't know about all this is the genesis and the veracity of who holds what. Is this stuff in total limbo, or do the various pieces of dirt in question actually (probably) belong to one side or the other? ReindeerF fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Apr 11, 2012 |
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Apr 11, 2012 03:03
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hitension posted:Rumor has it Gu Kailai and Heywood had a thing. Neil Heywood may have been banging Bo Xilai's wife: some guy
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Apr 11, 2012 07:04
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Why have I not heard of this "China Daily Show" earlier? This is probably the most reliable source of news about China.
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Apr 11, 2012 08:44
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quote:Out of curiosity, one thing I don't know about all this is the genesis and the veracity of who holds what. Is this stuff in total limbo, or do the various pieces of dirt in question actually (probably) belong to one side or the other? The Chinese internet is kind of blowing up now and there is so much commentary on the Bo Xilai incident it sort of makes my head spin. I thought Jeremiah Jenne had a good take on recent events, and how bald-facedly hypocritical the government has been its handling of them. What Xinhua is now reporting as fact was squashed by government censors for being "malicious rumors" only two weeks ago. After something like that, how the gently caress is anyone supposed to trust the state media? While I think it's too early to say anything for certain, I wouldn't discount Jenne's assertion that this may be a watershed moment in relations between the Party and the Chinese people, the same way the Lin Biao incident was. I also noticed that some commentators (like Hong Huang, "China's Oprah") are pointing out an element of classic Chinese misogyny to all of this. The media is for all intents and purposes blaming Bo Xilai's downfall on Gu Kailai, which is in turn reminiscent of how Jiang Qing was blamed for Mao's evils, the vilification of Empress Dowager Cixi, and even Yang Guifei and Bao Si if you go all the way back in Chinese history. How are things on the ground in China right now? I don't think I've been this absorbed by China news since the Olympics, and I really regret that I couldn't be there myself. I can just imagine the atmosphere and the discussions people are having.
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Apr 11, 2012 14:56
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I can't help but spend a few minutes thinking about Bo Guagua, stranded in the US with his patronage network in tatters. I'm sure he'd rather be there than some of the alternatives, but I can't imagine that the funding sources he was relying on (weren't his scholarships through Dalian Group?) will be anywhere close to steady. He'll have to cut back on the fast cars and champagne.
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Apr 11, 2012 15:37
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Cefte posted:I can't help but spend a few minutes thinking about Bo Guagua, stranded in the US with his patronage network in tatters. I'm sure he'd rather be there than some of the alternatives, but I can't imagine that the funding sources he was relying on (weren't his scholarships through Dalian Group?) will be anywhere close to steady. He'll have to cut back on the fast cars and champagne. I suspect it's worse than that. I am willing to bet that the Bo family has some enemies that won't rest with simply ending Bo Xilai's political career, but want to see his family ground to dust. I would think that under normal circumstances, a high level politician falling from grace would generate just enough official media coverage to tell it occurred, and then be hushed up as it could be embarrassing to the Party. With all the Officially Sanctioned news about Bo's fall in China, it really does feel like someone wants to twist the knife.
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Apr 11, 2012 15:44
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Stim0r posted:I suspect it's worse than that. I am willing to bet that the Bo family has some enemies that won't rest with simply ending Bo Xilai's political career, but want to see his family ground to dust. Which means a whole lot of talking went into the cost/payoff analysis. On one hand, as French Lies points out, the degree to which the message machine has swerved on this one is unprecedented in recent years. So, not publicly nailing his coffin (and taking criminal proceedings against his wife) must have been deemed particularly risky. People talk about his existing base of support, so the delicious possibility might have been that if they hadn't been public about it, six months down the road he'd have wiggled out of his political death sentence and started to hop around as the new and improved 薄僵尸.
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Apr 11, 2012 16:03
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Anyone know anything about the protests going on in Chongqing the past couple days? http://www.molihua.org/2012/04/30_11.html is all I've really seen so far.
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Apr 11, 2012 16:15
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Arakan posted:Anyone know anything about the protests going on in Chongqing the past couple days? http://www.molihua.org/2012/04/30_11.html is all I've really seen so far.  Don't know how credible this guy is.
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Apr 11, 2012 16:26
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Stim0r posted:I suspect it's worse than that. I am willing to bet that the Bo family has some enemies that won't rest with simply ending Bo Xilai's political career, but want to see his family ground to dust. Check out this article: The Revenge of Wen Jiabo This is hard core helter skelter political knife fighting that could only happen in a totalitarian state. It's freaking fascinating.
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Apr 11, 2012 16:35
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