Migrant Worker

A long (long) hiatus has left me with plenty to say and an increasingly messy space to say it in. I’m hoping to work out a few technical glitches and start blogging again here soon. For those of you who have commented and emailed over the last six months, thanks for the encouragement, sorry for disappearing, and I hope what I’ve been doing in the meantime will only make what I write here more useful to whoever stumbles across it.

In the meantime: a big thank you to the folks at ChinaTattler for mentioning me in their list of (just barely acceptable) laowai blogs about China. Not entirely sure I agree with their assesment of western vs. Chinese media, but I do agree with the better part of their blog related rant, particularly that that ‘a wise man says a lot with few words, while a fool says nothing with many words.’

And on that note…

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Loyal readers (for example, my father): Do not fear, although I have been a bit lazy lately, I will continue to blog. I will admit I have been on a rather long hiatus, however, I’ve been preoccupied with the details of my impending move to Beijing and a number of personal projects and issues. Although I will continue to write here until further notice or Princeton cuts me off, a few changes will be in store in the coming month:

1. I will be blogging from Beijing beginning in late December. I will still focus on development, agriculture, and environment, and I will probably be writing a good deal about Yunnan province, but since I will be living in Beijing, chances are you’ll be reading more about the frozen northern urban wasteland, and specifically, the migrant workers (of the impoverished Chinese variety) who have it really rough up here. More on that coming soon.

2. I won’t be blogging much about work. Why? Because I will be working for the US Department of Agriculture and am pretty well committed to stay away from anything interesting (read: controversial) that comes of it. Sorry. Line between blog and job must be maintained. On the other hand, if you want to read some thrilling market reports or hear about the latest food fair, watch this space!

3. The banner photo may have to change. I mean, honestly, there is nothing green up here. At all. When my Ipod shuffled up the song “California Dreamin’” this morning, I could identify for the first time in a while:

All the leaves are brown And the sky is grey I’ve been for a walk On a winter’s day If I didn’t tell her I could leave today California dreamin’ On such a winter’s day…

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Over the course of the last year, I have become increasingly concerned with what I would consider to be painfully shallow and trite China coverage on the part of many major American news outlets as well as other English language publications.

After speaking with a few friends who are working or have worked for the China bureaus of some of the leading English-language newspapers and magazines, I was given one startling piece of advice: If you want to be a journalist covering China, go home. If you are hired to research or freelance in China, you are not in line for your own byline for the office. Some of the world’s best news outlets hire their China reporters predominantly out of the US offices. They’re sent over with plenty of journalism background, but little understanding of China, and rarely any language skills.

(More ranting after the jump)

Continue reading "Anything worth reading on China?" »

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As you may already be aware, this Migrant Worker spent last week in Beijing, in an effort to mix business with pleasure and prepare for a (short-term) relocation to the Big Stinky early next year. Between the pollution, traffic, increased cost of living, and dearth of people who think they are important (present company included, obviously), I have been dreading the move for the last few weeks. But in an effort to focus on the positive, this is my photographic documentation of one of the best parts of Beijing:

Yes, that is a biscuit you see on the right-hand side of my plate.

That being said, Beijing was much better than I expected it to be. I saw blue sky on two separate days, baked cookies in a real oven, and almost went to the BBC symphony orchestra concert (the cellist Wang Jian, who I am dying to see live, only played the 2nd night and I was indisposed at the time — by China Eastern Airlines). I’ll be taking Beijing by storm as early late December and as late as Jan 15th.

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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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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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