Wake Up, People! And Stop Killing Our Children!

Taixing Central Day Care after the attack on April 29. On the colorful stone at the gate, three Chinese words read: sunshine, future, hope.


Nothing is more horrifying and evil than purposefully slaying children in groups. Yet in China, five such incidents occurred across the country in less than two months.

On Mar.23, eight elementary school students were killed by a man just outside the gate of their school in Nanping, Fujian. On April 12, several elementary school students were injured in front of their school in Hepu, Guangxi. On April 28, another man injured 16 students and school teachers in Leizhou, Guangdong. The next day, one man attacked 32 people in a day care center in Taixing, Jiangsu, seriously injuring several small toddlers. The following day, in Weifang, Shandong, yet another man attacked students and teachers in an elementary school.

State media only confirmed eight deaths of children so far, but bloggers in China claim the actual number is much higher. These children were not killed by gun, since fire arm is strictly controlled in China. They were killed, and others injured, by knives and in one case, a hammer.

A blog post by someone who appears to work in a day care not far from the one attacked in Taixing, provided a graphic account of how four men, instead of just one as reported by state media, slaughtered toddlers with knives. While the state media were reluctant to confirm any death in the Taixing incident, the blogger claimed at least five small children were brutally murdered at the scene and more were fatally injured.

The entire country was shocked, public outraged, parents terrified, while the media, including the blog sphere, lashed out at the crime—it was cruel, cold-blooded, evil, and totally insane!

Scholar Yu Jianrong warned that the Chinese society is in a psychological crisis, as people living on the edge of the society are seeking revenge not just against society, but against humanity. Writer Zheng Yuanjie wrote a song that reads: “Dear daddy and mommy, I am going to school. I hope I will be safe, and come home alive”…

There were speculations that the attacked schools are elite schools, and the attackers intended to harm children of powerful and affluent families. But soon there were others claiming most of the children in those schools are from ordinary families.

For some pundits and bloggers, the crime is rooted in social injustice, as income gap and disparity in social status continue to widen in China. But for others, blaming the society is misleading, and those who committed the crime should be condemned and punished as the most iniquitous murderers, and can never be excused as victims of social injustice.

Any one of these killings would be shocking and tragic enough for a country with 1.3 billion people—seeing such brutal violence deliberately targeting children: the most vulnerable and innocent members of our society. Yet China had five in a roll in slightly more than a month!

Forget about the extravagance of the World Expo in Shanghai. The sharp contrast between the bloody scene of children being slain and the lavishness of the World Expo only belie the realness of the “harmonious society”!

Less than two years ago, when thousands of babies were sickened by melamine tainted formula, we already saw how a money-making-driven society can do wrong to children.

Sadly for China, that was still not the end of the slippery slope. And now we see knives hurting those small bodies and we see blood, children’s blood. But is this the end? How many children have to die before we realize something deep is seriously wrong with the society in China and really do something to stop it from falling into hell?

Wake up, people! And stop hurting our children!!


Bloggers on the Taixing incident:
http://www.letscorp.net/archives/4223
http://liuyejin.blog.sohu.com/149926434.html?act=1272779014377#comment
http://gpdsdzy.blog.sohu.com/149981589.html

Scholar comments:
http://www.nbweekly.com/Print/Article/10115_0.shtml

More about the serious killing:
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/sd/2010-05-05/003620204529.shtml
http://news.sohu.com/20100428/n271805052.shtml
http://news.sohu.com/s2010/fujianxiongshaan/
http://news.sohu.com/s2010/taixing/
http://edu.hsw.cn/system/2010/04/29/050497693.shtml

Netizens Criticize Earthquake News for not Covering the Disaster

TV shows rescue workers flying to Qinghai


Some Chinese netizens have voiced displeasure over the fact that despite state media's heavy coverage on the earthquake in Yushu, the news is not really about the disaster. In particularly, it is not about the suffering victims.

Instead, the coverage is mostly about rescuing workers saving lives, government officials visiting disaster zones, and celebrities writing big checks, etc.

As one Chinese blogger put it, "all the news is not about the disaster or the victims. The theme is about the brave armed police officers and rescue workers." On TV, as this blogger described, rescue workers were dressed in red uniforms, fought against all odds "to create one after another miracle of life," and then there is cheering and happy tears, along with moving music soundtrack and emotional announcements from news anchors.

Not that there is anything wrong with all these, but what about the victims? What about their suffering, their loss, their pain? Who would give them some voice in the media?

True, today's state media in China no longer simply rely on Xinhua text, photos or footage in their coverage. True, newspapers, magazines, television stations from all around the country now could go to the disaster zone and gather abundant information enough for 24/7 live news feed. But make no mistake, quantity does not translate into variety of content.

Studies by media scholars show that during major disasters, state media in China usually frame their stories from the perceptive of government reactions or rescue work, rather than human interest. In other words, the news is often chockfull of rescuers' actions, quotes from government officials, but not much about individual suffering.

Such a pattern has been repeated in various disaster coverage for at least the past decade, including the 1998 Yangtze River flood and the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In covering other man-made disasters such as the melamine-tainted baby formula scandal and many coal mine accidents, the official angle is even more dominant.

In comparison, Western newspapers tend to focus their coverage of disasters on the human interest angle. In the New York Times' coverage of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, for example, the narrative of most stories was based on individual victims, who were mentioned by full name, age, quoted directly, and depicted with great details.

I'm not saying that the New York Times is the golden standard that all Chinese media have to follow. I simply want to make the point that if a foreign newspaper could give personal voices to the suffering individuals, why not media in these people's own country? Why the authorities are so afraid of showing people's grievance and suffering, even during natural disasters? What drastic result could letting out the victims' voices incur? I really do not understand the rationale in the minds of those propaganda officials.

People affected by the disaster need to tell their stories and share their feelings, and other people want to hear. Why not target the camera at the victims, and let them express themselves? So they know that people around the country, including the media, care about them, and people watch the media can feel better connected with those in need.

The Life-and-Death Struggle for Chinese Home Owners: At Least in a TV Drama

Guo Haiping (right) and Guo Haizao, sisters experiencing the struggles for owning a home, in the TV drama Wo Ju.

To own a home could be a matter of life and death for Chinese people. This is one of the messages a popular yet controversial TV drama tries to send.

"Wo Ju" (蜗居, meaning living like a snail in a small place), a 33-part series adopted from a novel of the same title, was one of the most popular TV dramas in China in 2009. The show tells stories of conspiracy between corrupt officials and real estate developers, the disparity between haves and have-nots in urban China, and the tough life people have to live in order to save or make money for buying a home, among other things--all very familiar to Chinese people.

In the drama, which is set in contemporary China in a fictional Shanghai-like city of Jiangzhou (江州), a low-income family even lost a life in a stand-off against the demolishing of their ghetto. The developer offered the family a brand new apartment for free, something these people could never dream of owning, in exchange for the family dropping the charge against the developer for killing a family member during demolishing.

"A life exchanging for a home," a government official in the show said of the incident. And yet, this official is behind the demolishing effort and devotes himself to using his political power to make way for property developments, and then shares with the developers the huge profits.

Besides plots that vividly depict today's social reality in China, the censorship rumor around the show made it even hotter. The rumor started when the rerun of the show on a Beijing television channel stopped abruptly after 10 episodes. Words then spread on the Internet that China’s governing body of broadcast media ordered the show off the air, on the ground of sexual content.

Viewers also noticed that the TV version of "Wo Ju" had 33 episodes, while the web and DVD versions had 35 episodes. Beijing News said in a story that Beijing TV cut two episodes' length of sexually explicit content before showing it.

Wang Lizhi, a university professor in Beijing, said the show went through the first round of broadcast across China but is not up for reruns like many other popular TV dramas. As Prof. Wang saw it, the issue with the show was not obscene content, but sharp language.

"Wo Ju" is known for its stinging comments that reflect the reality only too candidly. For example, one character told his wife that he took a usurious loan in order to make down payment for their new home. “The interest is only a little bit higher than bank loans,” he says, trying to calm down his furious wife. This comment implies that mortgage in China are having interests almost as high as usury.

In another scene, the wife of the low-income family complains: “We are all proletariat, all working people. There is neither lowliness nor nobleness among labor divisions, but why in a place like Jiangzhou some people live in garden villas…while we live in such a place [a city ghetto]? We are working honestly, too!”

"Such extreme language will influence social mood,” Prof. Wang said. When such expressions gain currency among people, they might encourage extreme actions. “It is better to use rationality. There is no benefit if people are emotional,” he said. For him, stopping reruns of the show was more of a stability consideration.

Despite the controversy, the series is still available on various websites.

News reports about the controversy:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/society/2009-12/12/content_12634070.htm

Watch the show:
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTI1NzAyMjYw.html

Related story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/business/global/05yuan.html

Entertainment Extravaganza and/or Propaganda Campaign: The Spring Festival Gala Show's Tough Job

Wang Fei performs at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala






The people, the party, the advertisers, all of them need to be pleased, and that’s the mission of the Spring Festival Gala show. By the eve of the Year of Tiger, the job for China Central Television (CCTV) has only gotten tougher.

For the past nearly three decades, watching the Spring Festival Gala show on CCTV has become a new custom of Chinese people’s lunar New Year celebration. The show is never pure performing arts, but always carries messages that the ruling party wants to convey to the people, which mostly promotes the legitimacy of the party. But in this year’s show, comparing with those in recent years, the propagandist intention seemed to be more blatant.

Particularly in those group song performances, by singers dressed up in minority outfits, or very old artists dubbed as teenagers, etc., political slogans have been turned into lyrics. A singer in Uyghur costume, for example, sang enthusiastically about the benefits of the newly established rural cooperative health care system. In reality, though, the system is facing all kinds of problems, and exactly how many rural residents are benefiting from it is worth questioning.

In another performance, a group of teenagers expressed loyalty to the party by singing: “without the communist party, there will be no new China”, and “following the community party, let’s build a great China.”

The first line has been the central theme of the party propaganda since the foundation of the People’s Republic, and has become such a cliché that very few young Chinese today would embrace it. But for the purpose of propaganda, sing it anyway. The second line is a relatively new invention, and more or less bears some nationalism sensation, which is gaining popularity among the Chinese youth. In one way or another, the party is trying to fortify its legitimacy in the minds of the entire nation by imposing the message on the performances, rather aggressively.

A show full of political preaching could only annul the intended political messages, of course. So for a better part of the entire gala show, entertainment is still the focus. Super star Wang Fei’s appearance certainly put this year’s show at a high point of China’s pop culture, while the reunion of Xiaohu Dui satisfied the nostalgia of China's rising middle-class: the generation born in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, putting together such entertainment extravaganza has become increasingly expensive, with ever fancier visual effects, better stage equipments, etc. CCTV therefore had to use the show to serve the advertisers, too. Unlike the Super Bowl broadcast in the U.S., CCTV’s five-hour airing of the gala was commercial free, which left the television station with few choice but to weave product promotion into performances. So actors wore aprons printed with the name of Lu Hua cooking oil, magician Liu Qian made a magic with Hui Yuan juice, and an actress in a short drama giving out Guo Jiao 1573, a famous liquor, as gifts.

Overall, it’s a tough job for the gala to appeal to everybody. After all the extravagance was over, however, people would keep talking about those entertaining or nostalgic moments, while forget those propagandist messages pretty quickly. Chances are, people would remember Guo Jiao 1573 better than the success of the rural health care system.

See more of the gala:
http://ent.sina.com.cn/f/v/2010cctvcw/index.shtml