Occasional Tales

At least think of the children. China isn’t just a rather unpleasant authoritarian empire that resembles a coop full of retarded chickens. It’s also one of those countries in the world where human decency happens to other people. My first National Day Holiday here was preceded by an eight-day week, but the key word is “preceded”. We had a few days off over New Year, but because of the miserable, puritanical attitude of the empire’s tyrant overlords to time off, we lost last weekend. I can well remember that first eight-day week and how trying it was, but at least it preceded the holiday. This one followed, and the benefits of having a few days off came to nothing before last weekend was even over. We also had exams this week, but the combination of marking, dull, tiresome invigilations, pointless babysitting classes, and general end-of-term ennui was enough to have us wilting. I hate to think what it was like for my students. And at last we look out over the plains o...

Rebellion is never justifiable, is it? I’ve just been reading an article on The Economist about China’s attitude to the rebels in Libya and its wibbly-wobbly approach to dealing with the rebellion there. It includes one of those deathless lines, viz.: It does not want to send signals at home that rebellion can ever be justified. Let’s think. What happened the last time there was a change of government in China? Oh that’s right. A small number of people decided that by violently opposing the previous regime, which itself had not gained office through a popular vote, they had the legitimate right to govern the Empire. Did they bother asking everyone else what they thought? While we’re talking about irony, why are the Mainlanders complaining about the Americans selling posh kit to the Taiwanese? They should be quite pleased because Beijing doesn’t have to spend 一角 on the defence of Taiwan which, as we know, is part of China. (True, but a stupid truth.) Since the Taiwanese a...

Did you even miss me? Thanks to one of my colleagues, I now have access to the Internet again – the whole thing and not just some declawed cat. I’m now facing my old dilemma of what to do with this blog which has been so idle for so long. My WordPress blog remains my main blog with my LJ one in the wings. Apart from those two I have a couple of others for my more specialised interests, but they need not concern anyone apart from me. The first difference I note is that YouTube videos are appearing on websites where they have, until today, been missing. It’s not that I was a massive fan of YouTube, but it is a blasted sodding nuisance to miss out on the video part of some online article because of a bunch of mean-minded, miserable sods. In fact, I’ve started calling them joy vampires because they want to suck as much happiness as they possibly can out of everyone else’s lives. I see over on Language Log, Victor Mair has posted an entry about the use of the phrase “ hurt the ...

In at least two senses. But first, short shorts news. My outing to Carrefour yesterday resulted in a score of 150 points in spite of the day being a little cooler. Not sure there will be much short shorts action today because it's raining. Anyway, now that that's out of the way, on with the main feature. It's been noted in various places (aka expat blogs) that China does appear to attract some rather peculiar foreigners. The programme I'm with has had alcoholics, drug addicts, gay child molesters, and a couple guys who apparently set themselves up as pimps. There are also the missionary tendency people who seem to be older colonial women who, at least subconsciously, appear to believe they're bringing enlightenment to the heathens. I'm told that Chengdu is full of foreign weirdos. Tësaien celmenne tei' édhi. Cadhan si·mei mé 'tei. All these sorts of people seem to think that the laws of physics don't apply in China. Somehow, what would be normal dece...

The burning barrel. The people next door seem to have been quite busy this morning. I got out my door to find them burning stuff in a barrel, and when I got back from the shops, I noticed that they had the table just near their front door set up like a shrine with pictures of a couple of people flanked by incense. Sum of the angles. From British-born Chinese Blog , there's this story about maths tests in China and England. The scary thing is that I think I can remember how to do all the things in the latter, which I'd regard as high school geometry at most. The sort of maths that kids do here at high school would probably be beyond most undergraduates at British universities. I don't know why the Chinese insist on doing such advanced maths at school level. Like learning English, it's a waste of time for large numbers of pupils here who, once they leave school, will never need calculus or advanced geometry. I still think that for most of us, logic would've been a fa...

Is it Nanny or is it the Net? I can't log on to Spaces; I can't check Hotmail; I can't get past the front page of The Guardian; and other sites are behaving erratically. Once again I'm left helpless because I don't know whether the problem is part of the Internet itself, or whether Nanny is mucking around with the switches. I'm going to be charitable and assume the former, since the problems al somewhat random in nature. I'm trying to pack for the trip. I had to break out the medium-sized suitcase in the end. I couldn't fit my suit comfortably into the small one, and the gifts I've bought for my parents would take up too much real estate. Unfortunately, the side handle came off the medium-sized one after I came back from Hong Kong. I can use the handle on the top, but it's a bit of a nuisance. I've tried to keep things to a safe minimum. I'll have a little extra space coming back, which will help because I'm intending to buy a few thi...

...and Chinese government truths. Since blogspot is blocked from Mainland China, but I can still post here, I see no overt reason for not being a little more forthright about this country. We gave our pupils the first progress test yesterday. The last question in the written part of the test is a short paragraph on some topic. This is what one boy wrote: Taiwan is one island of China. long long ago, Chinese go to this island and live on it. But now some people want to put Taiwan leave China. It is a bad job. We can't agree with it. Taiwan have many people from China at first, they like get back to China, because they want to see their family together. So, China must be stronger and we must study heart and soul to put Taiwan back to China. This is typical of the sort of unthinking nonsense that the mainland Chinese believe. As foreigners tend to do, because we acknowledge Taiwan's separateness, I once unintentionally referred to it as a distinct political entity to one of the pu...

I can say it, but I can't see it. Blogspot has been blocked again from China, although as I learnt from my friend Chris, I can still post here. That means that I can probably be rude as I like about the government; say whatever I like about Taiwan, Tibet and Tiananmen; and apparently use phrases such as "freedom of speech" and "peaceful democratic transition" without concerning myself about this blog getting blocked as my original Spaces blog has been. I guess people beyond the Great Firewall can comment, and I assume that I can moderate the comments and do just about everything else here. I just can't view the resulting mess. Anyway, in case, somehow, you've got here from Green Bamboo, I've now set up another Spaces blog, Xin Phoenix, which is now my main blog. Yeah, I'm a narcissist. I like to post and then look at myself afterwards. 25th Mar. 2019. Removed long-dead URLs to blogs that no longer exist.

The zombie trade. The Register has this article about China replacing Britain as the home of the greatest concentration of zombie PCs. In recent days, my old e-mail address has been getting spam which is appearing as if it comes from people on my contacts list. Normal spam ends up in the junk folder, or in my inbox, but never usually claiming to be from people I know. I did suspect that someone who has been in contact with me had been infected. Of course, they'll never get anywhere because being an unrepresentative sample, I don't conform to the spammers' notions of a person who is stupid enough to fall for their implausible scams.

But not the right place either. In case you've strayed over from Iain Dale's Diary where I just recently posted a comment about the accessibility of Iain's blog and the 18doughtystreet site from China, this is merely my spare blog which I update as frequently as whenever. If you feel like straying onwards, then click here for my active blog.