Migrant Worker

With October 1st holiday bearing down like one of those huge blue trucks filled with bricks/ sugar cane/ peasants gone out of control on a Yunnan mountain road, I can’t help but notice all the new travel options coming our way.

Xishuangbanna-Thailand speedboat: Jump on the ferry at Jinghong, check out the golden triangle, hop off a couple days later in Chiang Rai. Check out press here and a fantastic, detailed description of how to get it done from treehouse here. As a side note, I think MeiMei’s cafe in Jinghong may be gone or in a new location. Anyone have an update on this?

Singapore-Kunming train(s): Both Chinese and international (Asian) newspapers have been going nuts with this one over the last few months. I’m still not sure what the exact route will be, and maybe no one is — initially there were three proposed routes but now it seems like they’re just going to build all of them? The train will definitely pass through Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, and may possibly have lines running through Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, and/or Laos. Yunnan already has a track from Kunming to the Vietnam border at Hekou, and there is a proposed route entering from Ruili on the Myanmar border.

Yunnan-Tibet railway: A road already runs from Kunming through northwest Yunnan and into Tibet. With permits, this is a legal overland that many tourists undertake. Rumours about railway construction abound, but until I read it in the Chinese press, I can’t confirm.

Kunming-Thailand highway: Chiang Rai - Northern Laos - Customs at Mohan, Xishuangbanna - Jinghong - Kunming. The Jinghong to Kunming leg is done, Jinghong to the border is still a work in progress. This is the first highway linking Laos, Thailand, and China, which may seem a bit surprising, but I can personally vouch for the fact that until very recently, all the roads between Yunnan’s southern border and Kunming were borderline impassable much of the time. As it is, Jinghong still takes 12 hours by bus, and Ruili requires something like 20 hrs (most buses pass through Dali on the way).

Kunming-Vietnam power lines: Infrastructural links between Yunnan and South-east Asia are not limited to planes, trains, and automobiles, as reported by China Daily here.

Construction of the line, the largest cross-border power line to be built by China, started in February this year. It is part of a US$500 million power supply contract signed in October 2005 between the China Southern Power Grid and Electricity of Viet Nam. The contract stipulates that the Chinese firm will supply electricity to the six provinces in northern Viet Nam for at least 10 years

Given the perennial rolling blackouts across China, not to mention continued construction of ecologically questionable hydropower stations under the banner of a desperate need for increased power resources domestically, one has to wonder why Yunnan is selling their power across international borders.

Coolest link I’ve seen in a while — check out the long term railway building plan for all of China here. The map and all labels are in Chinese. I can’t find a key with any kind of time lines on any of these routes, nor can I really determine the original source of this map (Does it actually come from the Chinese gov’t? If so, which bureau? These things make a difference in terms of likelihood of the lines getting built.)

Many of these projects were brought to you by the Asian Development Bank. Know thyself, know thy funders.

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For the last year, I have been living in an apartment with solar hot water. I have seen the water heaters from a distance, on roofs surrounding my office, but never had a chance to get up close and personal until I stopped by the 8th floor hotel room of a visiting friend last weekend. Kunming is known for its effective use of solar technology, but very few Kunming residents ever get a close look at these things unless they are purchasing one, or happen to live on an 8th floor. (Most apartments here are only 7 stories, since they do not have elevators, anything more would be excessive).

When apartment hunting, the bathroom was always my deal-breaker. I expected a western toilet (even though they’re hazardous to your gastrointestinal health) and I DEMANDED hot water. Shockingly, a number of rental options lacked any heated bathing options. A few had electric or gas water heaters installed in the bathroom: sleeping-bag sized rusty metal monoliths that provide scalding water and a palpable explosion/electrocution threat. At least 70% provided solar hot water, generally referred to in Chinese as “solar capacity” or 太阳能

There are definite quality differences in the heaters from apartment to apartment. Some hold their heat through two cloudy days, others start cooling after 18 hours or so. Some can give you a hot shower after only two or three hours of sun, others need 6 or 7 hours to recover from a cloudy spell. I’m lucky enough to have a very effective unit (not sure of brand, it’s on my roof).

There are many rumors circulating about the use of solar water heaters here in Yunnan, and particularly in Kunming, but I can’t find any confirmation for the most persistent one, which is that Kunming city supposedly has the highest solar energy use of any city in the world. Kunming was a project site for a Global Environment Facility (GEF) and UNDP joint project on renewable energy, and is home to one of the 3 major research bases for solar energy:

Yunnan Normal University Solar Energy Research Institute (Chinese, and a fussy load)

A bit more about the units being used here, courtesy of this story from June 06 in PlanetArk:

All have the same basic design, a row of sunlight-capturing glass pipes angled below an insulated water tank. The key to the demand boom, even in the freezing northeast and chilly western deserts, is the vacuum separating the inner tube with its energy-trapping coating from an outer tube. Sunlight travels freely through the glass tubes but the heat it generates is trapped inside the central one where it can be transmitted to water. “The vacuum prevents molecules carrying heat away, as there is no direct contact between inner and outer tube,” Huang said. The heaters are also easier to produce than better known electricity-generating panels. Himin’s workers making these wear white overalls and hair caps, in rooms sealed to visitors. But downstairs, water-heaters roll off a production line in open warehouses filled with the clanging of giant metal presses, the roar of painting machines and open flame of glass-handlers.

There are quite a few companies producing these units here in Kunming, websites in Chinese here and here. I would love to hear more from anyone who knows about the solar water heater industry in Yunnan province, particularly what kind of research is being done on cost, market adoption, or extrapolation to other cities/regions.

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Last night I got dinner with some friends, including the team behind gokunming.com. Although there was only one practicing vegetarian at the table, we somehow found ourselves leaning towards a completely meatless meal. This is generally hard to do in China and can be particularly difficult in Kunming, where it seems like there are slimy bits of pork in almost everything. Check out the original photo on Flickr to see my description/translation of each dish. Some of this stuff (particularly the grandma’s potatoes/ lao nai yang yu) can only be found in Yunnan province, but other stuff is pan-China.

For anyone coming through Kunming this GuoQingJie, allow me to recommend Heavenly Mana, the small Chinese restaurant next to Salvadors at the intersection of Wenlinjie and Wenhuaxiang. It’s well-located, the food is consistently good, the menu is broad and effectively translated into English (everyone can order! yay!) and pricing is very reasonable. We spent 40 RMB/ US $5 on the pictured meal.

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Sometimes we migrant workers just can’t handle the stress anymore, and we find ourselves doing inappropriate things. Like biting pandas.

A drunken Chinese migrant worker jumped into a panda enclosure at the Beijing Zoo, was bitten by the bear and retaliated by chomping down on the animal’s back, state media said Wednesday.
Zhang Xinyan, from the central province of Henan, drank four jugs of beer at a restaurant near the zoo before visiting Gu Gu the panda on Tuesday, the Beijing Morning Post said.

“He felt a sudden urge to touch the panda with his hand,” and jumped into the enclosure, the newspaper said.

The panda, who was asleep, was startled and bit Zhang, 35, on the right leg, it said. Zhang got angry and kicked the panda, who then bit his other leg. A tussle ensued, the paper said.

“I bit the fellow in the back,” Zhang was quoted as saying in the newspaper. “Its skin was quite thick.”

This reminds me of a sarcastic comment I often hear about the boring nature of Chinese journalism and the sensationalism American journalism:
The Chinese paper reports: Dog bites Man!
The American paper reports: Man bites Dog!

Sure enough, this man bites panda story comes not from a Chinese newspaper, but MSNBC. And it also gives me the excuse to post my favorite picture of a panda.

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Gokunming.com covered an interesting story that has been developing over the past few weeks in the heart of Kunming’s university district —

A dozen of the tenants in the new development located inside popular dining and shopping alley Wenhua Xiang (or ‘Culture Alley’ in Chinese) are displaying bright red signs which state: “Investing here is extremely risky; investors please be extremely cautious.” Some tenants have gone further, hanging banners which accuse Kunming Foreigner Street developer Wuxin Realty of “maliciously trapping” tenants in a bad investment.

Get the whole story here.

I’ll be interested to see whether the crackdown on outdoor seating persists beyond Chinese National Day (Oct. 1st). Although it seems to have been brought on by a petition from surrounding families, polices are often particularly overzealous in the periods leading up to holidays, golden weeks, and dates of significant “incidents.”

Also, Chris was too tactful to mention this point, but the development in question is so ugly that many expats and foreign students refer it as the “pee and poo building” or the “piss and blood building.” The developer got a great piece of real estate and then did a shoddy job all around.

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Banyan Tree Ringha, the Tibetan-style branch of the Singaporean boutique luxury spa and resort chain, has recently garnered a lot of press, including this September 10th review in the New York Times.

I had a chance to visit the area in early August, and while the place is absolutely gorgeous, there are two sides to this coin. I am writing with some reservation because my first-hand experience was at the courtesy of a friend in the travel industry whose position I don’t want to jeopardize. However, through NGO contacts and on that trip, I have both heard and experienced firsthand what I consider to be ethical development and management issues with this place.

First: The road in to the resort is a disaster. It is an uncomfortable ride calling for a 4-Wheel Drive SUV at the best of times, and would be borderline impassable during rain. Why build a luxury resort this hard to reach?

Locals and NGO contacts told me that the village with administrative control of the road has strongly resisted BT’s efforts to improve the road because of their frustrations with the resort (not sure about specific reasons).

Banyan Tree management told me that they purposefully left the road in that condition to preserve the rugged feel of the place, and are actually building another road that is supposedly even more extreme through some nearby mountains (and a different village area). I didn’t ask them specifically about the concerns expressed by NGOs.

Regardless of whom you want to believe here, it seems like there are some issues with the road. If the village is refusing to cooperate with Banyan Tree, there has obviously been some kind of failure in participatory development. If Banyan Tree is actively trying to maintain an undeveloped and rugged status quo, again, one has to wonder if the village would prefer a different course.

Second: Local Chinese travel agents are fenced out by the security. Although they constitute a major source of business, Banyan Tree Ringha has basically been closed to local operators who want to actually have a look at the place. My sense was that this is not a problem for western tour operators, let alone NY Times reviewers.

I understand that the resort needs to maintain security and prevent random outsiders from wandering about, but local partners should fall into a different category, if you want them to recommend you! And this isn’t a matter of simple exclusion. During my visit to the lodge (it seemed that only English speakers can talk their way in the door), we (the foreigners) were offered beverages, while a Chinese travel agent we were traveling with was not. Maybe this was a chance oversight, but I was hyper-conscious of the different treatment.

Third: Are they giving back to the community? Banyan Tree Ringha’s draw is that it is nestled in a rural area, in a pristine eco-environment, and surrounded by Tibetan people still living in a traditional way. The lodge contracts with local people to provide some trekking and guiding assistance (horses and so on). These are treks that that cost between $100 and $200 USD/day/person. The local people are paid less than $10 USD/day for their assistance. This, according to my NGO contacts, is one of the major sources of tension for the village.

The UN Environment Programme’s Sustainable Tourism homepage provides some clear guidelines for sustainability. Here’s where Banyan Tree Ringha seems to be going wrong:

Sustainable Tourism should […] 3) Ensure viable, long-term economic operations, providing socio-economic benefits to all stakeholders that are fairly distributed, including stable employment and income-earning opportunities and social services to host communities, and contributing to poverty alleviation. Sustainable tourism development requires the informed participation of all relevant stakeholders, as well as strong political leadership to ensure wide participation and consensus building.

On one hand, $10/day is a significant sum for the locals. On the other hand, they are aware of the much larger sum that is pocketed by Banyan Tree. What is a “fair” distribution of profit? There is no easy answer to that question, but the disparity would be eased if Ringha was giving back to the community in a noticeable way.

Unfortunately, the company’s incentives seem to be to PREVENT many types of development from occurring in the village and preserve the rustic, isolated feel. Not sure if these potentially conflicting interests can be resolved.

Full Disclosure: The lodge facilities are absolutely stunning, the location is unbelievably beautiful, the service standard is high, the spa looked great, the nearby Ringha temple is a do-not-miss for anyone interested in Tibetan Buddhism, and it really is rustic, isolated, and peaceful. If I wasn’t both very committed to the needs of local communities in Yunnan and absolutely broke, I would be very tempted to stay here.

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A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. -Joseph Stalin

China’s government recently announced a project to construct or remodel over 1,000,000 public bathrooms in rural areas, including my home province of Yunnan. Why?

A total of 4,532 key bilharzia-stricken villages in the provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan and Yunnan will benefit from the two projects, the ministry said.

I had never heard of bilharzia, but it is usually called by its other name, schistosomiasis. This is a parasite spread by snails. What does this have to do with public toilets? The US CDC fills us all in:

Fresh water becomes contaminated by Schistosoma eggs when infected people urinate or defecate in the water. The eggs hatch, and if certain types of snails are present in the water, the parasites grow and develop inside the snails. The parasite leaves the snail and enters the water where it can survive for about 48 hours. Schistosoma parasites can penetrate the skin of persons who are wading, swimming, bathing, or washing in contaminated water.

For those of you who have never travelled in rural China, these “public toilets” they’re talking about aren’t some sketchy structure to be avoided on the edge of a public park. In many villages, the public toilet may be the only formal bathroom of any kind.

The problem isn’t lack of a place to dispose of the poo (it all ends up getting mixed with straw and used as fertilizer aka “nightsoil”). The issue is simply whether or not streams or runoff get contaminated by the poo in the meantime. Bravo to the Chinese government for doing something about this. Here’s hoping that the funds actually become bathrooms, and not Hummers for local officials.

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For the last few months, an exhibit on AIDS has filled the 50-meter long display case along Cuihu Nan Lu along the south border of Green Lake Park. Last night at dinner, conversation turned towards AIDS awareness and government involvement here in Yunnan, and I mentioned that the government was at least doing something by way of public information. I’ve never taken a close look at the display case, though, because AIDS in China is often thought of as a “foreign disease” and I can only imagine a lengthy visit would deepen the association in the minds of onlookers.

I know a few people working on AIDS issues in Yunnan through Population Services International and Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, and as a result, am vaguely aware of the landscape of this issue. I am still surprised at times, though, as I was this morning reading an article carried by Reuters and picked up widely under the headline China AIDS policy must be matched by enforcement: UN (I’m linking to the version from Scientific American)

The article quotes heavily from an interview with Peter Piot, executive director of the United Nations AIDS agency UNAIDS. His basic argument is that the central government is making decent policy on the AIDS issue but enforcement is lax and the PSB is getting in the way.

I found this bit interesting:

Early this year Chinese police held prominent dissident and AIDS activist Hu Jia in secret detention for 41 days. Last week they detained him again only to release him a day later.

More on Hu Jia from Answers/Wiki (not blocked) More on Hu Jia in International Herald Tribune Sept 11 06

Piot went on to make a comment that I initially thought was completely ridiculous and unfounded:

“We have to see that public security is not going to arrest a woman who has a condom in her purse and say she is a prostitute. The State Council has issued a directive saying ‘no, that’s not a reason for arrest’,” he said, referring to the Cabinet. “But that’s going to take time.”

Uhhhhh…. WHAT??? So I did a bit of searching to figure out where this was coming from (and crashed my google trying to access a page from Human Rights Watch… should have known better) and it turns out that THIS DOES ACTUALLY HAPPEN — but only to sex workers or people the police hate, and possibly mostly in Hong Kong.

Condoms are very accessible in China, easily available in all drug and grocery stores (unlike San Francisco’s Sunset District, where Safeway locks their condom display case - a theft issue). There are even condom vending machines at fairly regular intervals all around the city of Kunming (see photo). So what gives?

Apparently when police want to arrest a known sex worker, they often add condom possession to the list of incriminating evidence. According to 108 mainland sex workers interviewed in Hong Kong by Ziteng,

On the use of condom, over half (52%) of the sex workers surveyed did not insist on using condom, for fear of arrest and prosecution because of its possession (82%). […]Moreover, 37 sex workers reported that they had been fraudulently accused by the police, with condoms as the prearranged evidence.

Not sure if this is happening on the Mainland. I’ll ask around and try to report back.

In the meantime, for those of you from Kunming, this is what I will be doing next Saturday evening, and I invite you to join me: Contageous Love, an exhibition of art and public education at the Nordica artist’s community. Openings at Nordica are usually free, and involve a great crowd and snacks.

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My office subscribes to Shenghuo Xin Bao, a local Yunnan daily newspaper whose name might be poorly/directly translated as “Lifestyle New Journal.” Coming back from lunch, I noticed it sitting on the desk in our entryway, and took a quick glance at the headline, which read “Construction on Yunnan’s tallest building will begin at year’s end” - and then I took a glance at the accompanying photo — the world trade center collapsing on Sept. 11th. Here’s a screenshot of the online version:

I added the red boxes around the WTC and the offending headline. Somebody in publishing totally screwed this one up. This is horrible! And the print version was even worse, because it was bigger.

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Last Friday, my usual 10-minute bus ride from home to the office was extended to over 20 minutes as the bus crept through a teeming crowd at the corner of Longquan and Baiyun road. I’d been watching the progress of renovations to the old ShengXing supermarket each day as I passed for the last six months, but only recently did I realize what was going on: the huge building had been sold to Carrefour, and a new branch was opening in Kunming.

I did a bit of snooping around to see if the expansion was being greeted with media attention, and found this article in the International Herald Tribune. It explains that Carrefour, a French company, has pursued aggressive expansion in the developing world. Kunming gets a mention, too:

Carrefour has about 7,000 outlets in 29 countries and opened its 80th Chinese superstore in Kunming last month, according to its Web site.

But wait! The branch on my bus route just opened last week! What gives?

Turns out Carrefour has opened two new Kunming branches in the last month or so, to augment the two branches we already have. I can’t say I mind, because weekend trips to the downtown Carrefour generally make me feel as if I am a salmon, slowly swarming upstream to my ancestral breeding ground (whole wheat bread and imported cheeses) while attempting to avoid bears (businessmen screaming into their cellphones), dams (housewives with heaping carts who have run into each other — literally or figuratively — and having a lengthy conversation) and toxic waste (the fish section).

If anyone has any specific political objections to these stores or the company I’d love to hear them. As I see it, they provide safer meats which they are sourcing locally, they sell organic produce (can’t tell where it’s sourced, possibly outside of province but not international imports), and their non-organic produce is pretty worthless so people who don’t want organic will still buy at farmer’s markets. Their clothes and plastic crap section isn’t any cheaper than smaller stores, so they are only getting the business of people who don’t want to bargain or people who are willing to pay extra for one stop shopping — still a very small proportion of Chinese consumers.

Most big box stores in China actually generate an extensive market area of smaller shops in the surrounding areas. I think eventually these stores may do some local economic damage, but at this point, I’m not seeing it.

See the above map for the locations of old (red) and new (red-yellow) Carrefours in Kunming. The red labels are generally what I would tell a taxi driver if I wanted to go there (along with Jia Le Fu 家乐福 of course).

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Normally when I want to bore my friends to sleep, I talk to them about rural land rights and agricultural development. The topic is a fascinating one in China, but it requires a background in agriculture and legal theory that most people don’t really have the patience to acquire. Luckily, I had a little help in the form of my senior thesis, and as a result, get really excited every time the central government tweaks the system.

I can’t promise to keep you awake here, but I’ll try at least…

Yesterday brought a fairly significant announcement from the State Council, reported by China Daily here — think of it as an executive order, because it hasn’t really been codified or vetted through a legislative process yet. Some of the more interesting requirements include:

To stop local governments from giving land to investors free or at throwaway prices, the central government will set a minimum price, which will vary according to what it is used for. Officials who sell land at prices lower than the minimum will be prosecuted.

What incentives do local governments have to take land from farmers and give it away for a pittance? Many are involved as management or investors in the development schemes that receive the land. Even if they’re not directly/legally involved, officials will often receive substantial under-the-table payments in exchange for such land transfers. At minimum, officials believe that having major developments in their (previously rural) jurisdiction will bring them prestige.

There will be a ban of leasing land from farmers for construction purposes, a back-door tactic increasingly used by some local governments and investors to dodge taxes on land sales and approvals by higher authorities.

This one really caught my eye. A BAN on LEASING? I understand that it is intended to prevent permanent structures from being built on the leased land (amounting to a de facto permanent transfer out of agricultural use, regardless of the official designation of the land) but this seems like a notable subtraction from a portion of the property right previously allocated to farmers. In an article in Land Economics from May 2000, Yang Yao describes farmers’ difficulty gaining permission to lease to their neighbors before migration/relocation. I can’t imagine this added layer of suspicion will improve things much.

I also liked this one:

Land sale revenues must be incorporated into local budgets so that they can be scrutinized by higher authorities a major departure from the current practice where local governments have total freedom to spend the money as extra-budget revenue.

Didn’t the idea of preventing local officials from directly pocketing land-sales revenue without any legal ramifications occur to someone before? We political economists like to call this a “perverse incentive.” I know, it sounds dirty, doesn’t it. The change is a good one, but you’ve gotta wonder why it took this long (household responsibility system since 1978, major problems with arable land loss to development since the early 1990s at least) to come up with an innovative idea like this.

The article concludes with this gem:

A survey of 16 cities by the Ministry of Land and Resources last year showed that nearly 50 per cent of new land under development was acquired illegally. The figure was as high as 90 per cent in some cities.

Check out the extended entry for some fun facts about China’s land and property rights! If I haven’t bored you so far, fear not, for I will bore you shortly.

Ownership, or property right, is not a single entity but rather a “bundle” of related rights including various aspects of:

Utilization - right to make daily or long term decisions regarding use, development, and operation, etc

Return - right to the profits from use, right to consume or sell crops, etc

Transfer - right to sell, donate, bequeath, mortgage, lease, etc

These rights are held on a continuum: property rights are never absolute.

In the US, for example, your right to utilization is constrained by environmental regulations, and your right to returns is constrained by property taxes. Thus, legal theorists Alchain and Demsetz note, “It is somewhat arbitrary to pass judgment on when the conversion to private control is said to change ownership from public to private.”

Since the early 1950s, China has been a living laboratory for the political and economic effects of various theoretical definitions and systems of “property ownership.” China’s place on the continuum is still up for debate today, especially if one looks at all the heterogeneity of rights allocation in rural areas.

A key factor to look at when analyzing the degree to which a system of ownership is public or private is received tenure security or lack thereof. Tenure insecurity explains the behavior of the expat who hesitates to open a restaurant due to worries about the stability of a lease. It also explains the unwillingness of a farmer to invest in a new irrigation system when he suspects local officials may re-allocate or develop his land at will.

One last tidbit from the CIA World Factbook, although this should be magnificently obvious to anyone who has looked at a map: The US has roughly 6 times as much arable land as china per person.

China land: 9,326,410 sq km arable land: 15.4% population: 1,298,847,624 (July 2004 est.)

USA land: 9,161,923 sq km arable land: 19.13% population: 293,027,571 (July 2004 est.)

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I’m hopefully well on the way to getting my Chinese text fixed (a big thank you to Michael, Princeton University alum and IT wizard who also knows Chinese). I’ve also been messing with the way things look a bit in the last week, please pardon my schizophrenic style updates for just a while longer, as I hadn’t touched html, movable type, or really anything like this in my life until about 3 weeks ago.

Along the same vein (learning new skills for a new environment), Lexi, the other Princeton in Asia fellow here in Kunming, pointed out this excellent resource to me a few days back. This website gives you access to a search-able, route-generating bus schedule for the city of Kunming. I guess it is only useful if you are 1. in Kunming and 2. read/write Chinese, so that is probably a grand total of one other person reading my blog (Lexi) and since she is the one who told me about the site in the first place, what I should be doing is apologizing for wasting your time. Sorry.

And now for something completely different —

I enjoyed this article in Chinadaily about a man who was beaten up for refusing to hire a prostitute. After turning the girl down and refusing to pay off the owner of the hotel (near the train station — best place for anything illegal in Kunming), some hired thugs beat him up.

Based on what I’ve heard from other NGO staff who work in the field, the going rate for a sex worker starts around 15-20 RMB/sex act and in sketchy hotels near Kunming’s railway station, it probably won’t get any pricier than 200 RMB. My advice to you, dear reader: just hire the hooker. Worst case scenario, you’re out about $23 US and you don’t get assaulted by hired goons.

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Why does movable type screw up my Chinese language input? I’m not illiterate, and the fact that I add Chinese to my posts correctly and then movable type maliciously changes the characters when I save is starting to piss me off. Anyone have any idea what is going on here? I’m not imagining things, I’m not sloppy with my pinyin, I don’t have a problem with Chinese input on my computer in general, and (strangely enough) the Chinese in my posts previews correctly, it just (sometimes) changes after I post. Tomorrow, I will research this problem further, but for now, if anyone actually reads this junk and knows how to fix this problem, pleeeeeeeeeease let me know.

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"Without work, all life goes rotten." - Albert Camus I just had one of those days at work that is so stimulating (not amazing, not horrible, but something like overload) that I've been trying to calm myself down for the last few hours. It all started when a couple of people from an international NGO called GRAIN came to our office to continue some connections and get our help with a bit of research on China's hybrid rice varieties. It had been a few weeks since I had to do any formal oral translation, and I was feeling a little rusty at the beginning of the day. By 11 AM, when we headed over to the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences to meet with guy #2 in the China hybrid rice research world, I was back into the swing of translating things that I only vaguely understand like "hybrid rice" (杂交稻) and things that I have no idea what they are beyond the English and Chinese words involved, like "apomixis" (无融合生殖) After that was over, we headed back to my office to discuss some research we've been doing on Bt Cotton. This lasted for the rest of the afternoon, during which I ate a ridiculous quantity of the fantastic "Philippine" Mangoes that the guy from (surprise) the Philippines brought over as a gift. We went to a mushroom restaurant for dinner -- if you haven't been to Yunnan, it's a bit hard to explain, but bear with me and imagine a restaurant where most menu items are some type of mushroom. We had mushroom-broth hot pot and added some Songrong (松茸) and Niuganjun (牛肝菌)... normally I can't justify the pricey mushrooms but these things are excellent, and can't be cultivated, they have to be harvested from the wild. I also like the subtle feeling of risk I get from mixing and then eating strange varieties of mushrooms. Apparently my grandfather was also into this, but I can barely remember him. If he was still alive, I'd get him to come over here and go to this restaurant with me. apomixis n. Reproduction without meiosis or formation of gametes (In case it was going to keep you up at night. If you need to know even more, check this out) If you want to see more of what I do at work, check out my flickr photo set called "What I Do At Work." I'm so creative.

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As you may already be aware, discrimination during hiring in China is not only permissible, but completely accepted and at times encouraged. Height, weight, and “attractiveness” requirements are commonly listed on job descriptions for a broad range of positions in which you would never have imagined that looks played any role. The vast majority of offices will require all applicants to attach a photo to their CV. I took my own resume head shot photo a few weeks back, wearing a blouse and jacket above the waist and a scruffy pair of athletic shorts and dirty red slippers below the waist. But local Kunming news has been reporting on a new obstacle between this soon-to-be-unemployed migrant worker and her next job: PREGNANCY TESTING

Apparently a few young women were asked to take a pregnancy test before starting work at a Kunming company, as reported by China daily here.

Feeling angry and embarrassed, the three went to the human resources manager, who said their refusal to take the test indicated that they were pregnant and told them they would need to have abortions to keep their jobs.

The article goes on to mention that 4 out of 10 companies that require health checkups for employees also request pregnancy testing.

I grudgingly attach a photo to my resume, although I know it is used to discriminate on the basis of race while hiring. I’ve thought long and hard about this one, but I am not really sure how I can both effectively resist the picture-attaching thing and actually get jobs.

But let it be known that I will NEVER NEVER NEVER take a pregnancy test in order to get a job, regardless of what is locally acceptable. This is almost as bad as South Dakota, where abortions are only legal if you have been “Napolied”

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I really have no intent to write about drugs on a regular basis, but for some reason I have been hearing a lot about the illegal drug trade in the last few days. Tonight at dinner with some staff from CBIK, the topic came up yet again. A couple friends were about to head off on a trip to a few of the organization’s project sites in northwest Yunnan, and they were being accompanied by a British photographer who is travelling along the Mekong river. Being a photojournalist on his first trip to Yunnan, he was interested in all the usual squalor: drug trade, sex trade, HIV rates, illegals from Myanmar, and so on. And of course, our table of local NGO types were eager to oblige with tales of woe.

He asked briefly about whether meth is a problem in China, which brought to mind this article which I’d seen earlier in the day (the full text is copied here, apparently details are not forthcoming):

POLICE in Lincang City in Yunnan Province detained a drug-smuggling suspect and seized over 10 kilograms of methamphetamine hydrochloride, also named “ice.” Police said the suspect was attempting to smuggle the drug from Myanmar to China. The captured suspect said another suspect gave him 15,000 yuan (US$1,875) and asked him to carry the drug into China.

And indeed, the Chinese also refer to meth as ice - 冰 - which surprises me to some degree because I always thought of that as slang that originated in my hometown. I don’t have any personal experience with meth (does it look like ice?) but I have always been vaguely aware of it, due to the incredible prevalence of use across poor, rural areas of the west and Midwest (read, South Dakota). As an elementary school student, I remember my family speculating that the falling-apart house filled with 20-somethings across the street was a “meth lab,” with a complicated code for dealers or buyers based on use of their porch light. And indeed, one night the police showed up en force. As to whether the place was actually a meth lab, I have no idea. It was probably 10 years later that I finally figured out what meth meant.

Trolling around to see if meth use is ACTUALLY higher in South Dakota than other places, I discovered a great article on binge drinking (and a brief mention of meth) in yesterday’s New York Times. The headline points to “boredom” as a cause of these destructive behaviors, which I guess has some value. Apparently the difference between normal SD teens and us nerdy ones was that when we got bored, we climbed public buildings at night, researched federalism, and volunteered for Senator Daschle (RIP).

On an only somewhat related note, my search for meth-related South Dakota information on the web also turned up this piece by the folks over at stopthedrugwar.org

Although China has long waged war on drug users and traffickers, it has never had statutes aimed specifically at the drug trade and dealing with drug users. That is about to change. Chinese lawmakers Tuesday began debating a new bill that would expand police powers to crack down on the cross-border drug trade and set standards for drug treatment, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported. […] Police would also be granted the power to force suspected drug users to submit blood or urine samples — a practice so far limited to primitive places like South Dakota — and owners of bars and nightclubs would have to post anti-drug propaganda on their premises. (emphasis added)

Primitive? Primitive? Hey. I resent that.

Photocred to Nada*

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Shanghaiist mentioned this map made by a guy named Mark Wang. Basically you check off a list and it fills in a map of China showing where all you’ve been. I couldn’t resist:

create your own China map

The stuff in red only encompasses provinces I’ve actually been somewhere in. Passing through on a train doesn’t count in my book, and if it did, I could add about 5 more provinces to my list. All that huge stuff out in western and northwestern China is Tibet, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, and Inner Mongolia, areas which are, to put it mildly, somewhat outside the Han majority “cultural center”. Xinjiang and Qinghai are currently foremost on my to-do list, I’d love to see Tibet proper but it is expensive and annoying to get the permits, and they kind of herd you around to tourist areas. I’m waiting, because there is a persistent rumor that the permit system will end within the next year or so.

I am also keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll get to head to Xinjiang (Korla, specifically) for work within the next couple months, that is, if I can finish up the last bit of translation on Pesticide Development in China: A Comprehensive Report. ::shudders::

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Today I ran across an article entitled “China’s nomads on energy’s cutting edge,” by Lenora Chu for the Christian Science Monitor (republished by USA Today here). I had seen some of this stuff in the flesh just a few weeks ago on my trip to Zhongdian.

A few weeks back I took a trip to Zhongdian that turned out to be more interesting than I initially expected (the area is now firmly on the beaten track) because of spending a bunch of time with some Tibetan guides and eco-tourism operators. One of them was a man named Tsepo, who, once the shop talk was over, was willing to put up with a lot of ignorant questions about his upbringing (raised in a nomadic family near the Gansu Sichuan border, left for India to be educated at the age of 16). I asked a question about payment/gifts when traveling in (very rural) majority Tibetan areas — this is a major issue in a culture that has a very strong ethic of hospitality to strangers but is increasingly burdened by tourists. Giving money to a Tibetan family in exchange for a stay can be inappropriate or outright insulting, but bringing gifts or needed supplies is acceptable and appreciated. So I asked him what kind of stuff he generally would bring to his family when he goes home (once or twice a year) and he mentioned, among other things, DVDs.

I was fairly surprised since he had just finished talking about how difficult it can be to actually FIND his family when he heads home for a visit, since they are still semi-nomadic. I asked how they managed to watch TV, and he explained the portable solar units. Later on, I found a huge supply in a store on Zhongdian’s main drag — can’t find the photos but I know I took some. These things are basically foldable solar panels the size of a large briefcase/small suitcase and are heavy as lead.

The CSM article focuses on one family through interviews with the female head of a semi-nomadic Kazakh household in Xinjiang province, and illustrates some of changes that electric power has brought to their lives:

“My favorite program is the international news, because I can find out what’s happening now,” says Sitkan, her face weathered from the rigors of nomadic life. “Before we had a TV, it would take months for us to find out about news. These are big changes.” She favors dramas and news programs in Uighur and her native Kazakh language, but after TV opened new worlds, she switched her children from the local Kazakh school to that of the Han Chinese. Her children will be educated in the language of China’s ethnic majority.

Tsepo also added another interesting tidbit of information on this point: with the solar generators, small TVs and satellite dishes that many nomads use, it is very easy to pick up international television programs from India and other neighboring countries — channels that are difficult for most Chinese to access. This means nomad kids on the Tibetan plateau are learning English from Indian TV even though some of them don’t speak a word of Mandarin Chinese. It also means they get a different picture of the world than those who rely on CCTV for news.

In some cases, local police come around and confiscate satellite dishes, but families quickly learned to hide them, and the isolated nomadic communities are pretty difficult to crack down on.

Just something to think about the next time you flip on your lightswitch…

Photocred to Shazia04

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