Gun Shape Baby Cradle by Shi Jinsong

There is currently an exhibit called "China - Contemporary Revival" at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, Italy. Shi Jinsong, a contemporary artist from Hubei has his works as part of the display there, entitled "Gun Shape Baby Cradle." I was not incredibly drawn to his work until I read his three major influences:

1. Radical socio-cultural change in China.

2. A reading of Foucault's Madness and Civilization.

3. The birth of his first daughter.

Then, his work made a lot more sense.

Photo and information from DesignBoom.

Chinese people see environment as biggest security threat

From Newsweek:

Conducted by the Lowy Institute for International Policy and the MacArthur Foundation, the study found that three quarters of Chinese pointed to environmental problems such as climate change as a major threat to China's security, while 67 percent cited water and food shortages, and 58 percent said internal separatists. Only half of respondents thought the U.S. posed a security threat, and 45 percent still worried about Japan (though the survey indicated that would change if Japan were to acquire nuclear weapons). The other big regional players--India, Russia, and South Korea--were seen as relatively negligible risks.

Chinese universities unite against discrimination

I've been reading about the continuation of employment discrimination in the United States. It's disheartening to read the personal accounts.

Here is an article from ChinaCSR on how Chinese universities are fighting sexist employment tactics:

A group of 14 Chinese universities including South China Normal University and China University of Political Science and Law have united to resist employment discrimination against college graduates.

It is said that female college students are more likely to be discriminated against and they are often asked such personal questions such as "do you have a boy friend?", "when do you plan to get married?" or "when do you plan to have a child?" as the employer thinks female workers will be more troublesome than their male counterparts. What's more, women often retire earlier than men, this means they will work less time for the employer than men.

In addition, there are some other ridiculous examples of discrimination. For example, an employer who was born in the Year of Dog doesn't want to hire someone who was also born in the Year of Dog to prevent possible conflict between them; or an applicant surnamed Pei may be rejected for a job because the pronounciation of their family name sounds like "loss of money" to the employer.

It is understood that employment discrimination is discrimination in hiring, promotion, job assignment, termination, and compensation based on such factors as nationality, gender, social background, age, physical condition, and disability that have nothing to do with a person's capability. Currently, most employers in China set limits on permanent residence, age, height, and gender for a job applicant. It is learned that in addition to direct discrimination such as "men first", there is also indirect discrimination such the employer requiring that all potential applicants to be over 1.7 meters tall, which can be seen to be a discrimination against women.

Besides the universities' action, a Law on Anti-Employment Discrimination has been drafted to draw people's attention to employment discrimination.

A poem by Bei Dao

Black Map

in the end, cold crows piece together the night: a black map  I’ve come home-- the way back  longer than the wrong road long as a life  bring the heart of winter when spring water and horse pills become the words of night when memory barks a rainbow haunts the black market  my father's life-spark small as a pea I am his echo turning the corner of encounters a former lover hides in a wind swirling with letters  Beijing, let me toast your lamplights let my white hair lead the way through the black map as though a storm were taking you to fly     I wait in line until the small window shuts: O the bright moon I’ve come home-- goodbyes are less than reunion only one less  

Translated by Eliot Weinberger. 

Chinese:

黑色地圖

寒鴉終於拼湊成 夜﹕黑色地圖 我回來了—歸程 總是比迷途長 長於一生  帶上冬天的心 當泉水和蜜制藥丸 成了夜的話語 當記憶狂吠 彩虹在黑市出沒  父親生命之火如豆 我是他的回聲 為赴約轉過街角 舊日情人隱身風中 和信一起旋轉   北京﹐讓我 跟你所有燈光干杯 讓我的白髮領路 穿過黑色地圖 如風暴領你起飛  我排隊排到那小窗 關上﹕哦明月 我回來了—重逢 總是比告別少 只少一次 

More of his poetry: Jacket 14, lyrikline.

Twitter around the firewall!

Wow, so I just found this via someone who just added me on Twitter (simabull).

All of these links can be used to access Twitter and get around the Firewall:

http://t.guancha.me/2009/11/24/latest-twitter-use/

I just tried Power.com and I can't believe I didn't know about this before - you can even register for a Twitter account through the site.

Tell all your friends in China! Or tell them to subscribe to this blog via RSS...

Environmental China on Blogspot

For those of you who think e-mail newsletters are a bit old-fashioned, or who just like reading everything in RSS, here is Environmental China as a blog.

Note: For those of you in China, RSS feeds are not blocked, even if the original website is - so subscribe to the RSS feed.

The Blank Slate of Sexual Education in the Chinese Countryside

As Chinese youth are exposed to more and more sex via the Internet in China’s rapidly expanding economy, the education system still has to catch up to their newfound curiosity. Even many schools in Beijing have only recently started true sex education classes, and these only usually begin in high school. There is an inconsistency in the way that China is becoming increasingly liberalized in some ways, but not quickly enough in some important ways and the problem of sexual education illuminates this (you can see the progression of abortion rates here). A number of horrific incidents have occurred recently, including a young woman giving birth in a toilet. Here is a recent article in the Slate concerning the lack of sex education in China. The following story provides a detailed description of the reaction of a small town to the incident of a 14-year old girl giving birth with no one ever noticing she was pregnant.

[From ChinaNews] While the other farmers of northern Guangdong are celebrating the much-needed rainfalls, 42-year old Deng Decai has locked herself at home, unremittingly smoking and sighing. Even in his dreams he never would have thought that only a week earlier, his 14-year old daughter Deng Chunhua would secretly give birth to a baby boy in her dorm room and proceed to throw the baby boy out the 5^th floor window.

The tragedy happened on November 4^th at a junior high in Aobei. According to local sources, one morning Deng Chunhua felt stomach pains and decided to not go to class and gave birth to a baby boy in her dormitory. The birth petrified Deng Chunhua, she was terrified of being reprimanded by her parents and despised by her classmates, so she put the baby in a black plastic bag and threw it out her window. However, the bag landed near the school walls and was discovered by a teacher later that day.

The above story was confirmed by the school principal. After the baby was discovered, the school immediately sent the physically weak Deng Chunhua to the hospital.

On November 6^th, Deng Chunhua was taken away by the police. Yu Fu, the school principal says that the question of whether or not the baby was thrown out of the window by her and how she got pregnant will have to be officially confirmed by police investigations.

The news soon led to heated discussion on other issues in the quiet town, the local residents are extremely dissatisfied with the local education system and forms of supervision. When a new student registers at a school, there should be a physical examination, how can no one notice that a young girl is pregnant while attending a school? However, during interviews, her classmates and parents all thought that she had merely gained weight.

“She had only been in school for two months and teachers and students all thought that it was just body fat,” Xu, the vice-president of the school told reporters. The school does have a physical exam when students enter the school, but it is scheduled in December.” Xu does admit that the school cannot avoid supervision duties and responsibility, and after the incident the school had an emergency meeting to discuss and summarize the incident.

Seven kilometers away from the school outside the small village, the reporter found the girl’s father Deng Decai. Upon seeing the reporters, Deng Decai unceasingly blamed himself, “I am to blame! A few months ago, Chunhua’s mother was washing clothes by the river and neighbors mentioned that Chunhua looked pregnant, but I said, she’s so young, it’s impossible, she’s just gained weight.”

Even now, Deng Decai has no idea when her daughter was impregnated. Deng Decai has three children, two boys and one girl, Deng Chunhua is his second child, and Deng Decai has always felt that Chunhua a sensible and obedient daughter, she never went online, and never got involved with riff-raff. Everyday when she got home from school she would help her mother with household chores.

This is a tragedy that should not have happened, besides the future of these junior high girls, what worries one even more is that when tragic incidents are increasingly more frequent, there is not attempt to change the fact that there is a lack of sex education at home and at school.

This case in northern Guangdong is not an isolated incident, on December 18^th, 2008, Cong Hua, who should have been entering into the second year of junior high, gave birth to a baby boy; on October 15^th, 2009, a 17-year old at a school in Southern China gave birth to a baby boy in her school dorm. Similar to the case of Chunhua, the parents, teachers, and classmates of these two girls had not idea that the girls were pregnant, the two girls also chose to be silent and secretly dispose of the babies.

“If I had known about the effects of teenage pregnancy, much of this sorrow could have completely been avoided,” Chunhua’s school director told reporters. There is basically no sexual education at schools in the countryside in China, these schools often have health classes, but once they reach the topic of sex and sexual organs, many teachers will allow students to self-learn, this type of avoidance is very dangerous in a generation of curious youth who are exposed to sex very early via the Internet, these adolescents have no sense of methods of birth control, and many times when they become pregnant, it is only understood to be weight gain.

“In our small town, no one has the nerve to talk to small girls about sex, if the girl is 17 or 18, the mother may remind her.” Deng Decai and the other farmers in his small town are not prepared to handle pregnancies of teenagers born in the 90’s.

During the interviews, the reporter found that many students did not know who to turn to to talk about their problems. They feared criticism from their teachers, contempt from classmates, and were not willing to communicate personal issues to adults at their school, and their parents were often busy in the fields all day.

The director of the school, Zhang, told reporters that the school plans to open psychological counseling rooms to help students in the uncertainly of their teenage years. Still, the school is unsure how useful these counseling rooms will actually be.

Posted first at ChinaHush.