May 29th, 2007 Chris
When pigs are dying in droves down south and China’s top health inspector is on death row, maybe it’s time to cut back on the swine. And Xinhua doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.
Jeremiah over in the Granite Studio has a way of seeing the world through Terentino-colored glasses. I tend to view things a slightly yellower shade:
Homer: Are you saying you’re never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.
via The Simpsons Quote Page
Posted in self-indulgence | 1 Comment »
May 28th, 2007 Chris
The Tin Whistle has been sold.
I was sitting in Starbucks on Friday afternoon when my phone buzzed. It was my friend Matt, one of two guys who started the Irish bar downtown. He sounded distracted, maybe a little more emotional that usual.
“So, uh, I just wanted to say, uh, we sold the bar.”
“You what?”
“Yeah, we sold it, so this is our last night in the bar.”
And at that point I was sort of dumbstruck. Didn’t they love running the Whistle? Just a few months ago Matt was telling me about expanding, making it more of a restaurant. They’ve been serving Irish breakfast (eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato, baked beans) since the start of the year. “Who did you sell it to?” I asked.
“Some Chinese people. Anyway, this is our last night in the bar.”
I didn’t make it down to the Whistle on Friday for Matt and Eddie’s last night, and I haven’t seen either of them since. What I gather from people who were there is that they just got tired of it. The business was becoming a job, and neither left their homes in Ireland to spend all their time working. Eddie is on pension, and Matt does some part time consulting. Both realized a few years ago that living on Euros in China was a lot easier than scraping by on fixed income in Europe.
When I think about it, though, it’s not all that surprising to see them give up the bar. The place has been dead empty the last few times I’ve been in. Except for twice-monthly poker nights, there just hasn’t been much happening, and the owners were becoming a rarer site.
Matt broke his foot on St. Patrick’s Day, a few minutes after that poker tournament I almost won. He walked out of the bar sometime after 3 a.m., stumbled on the steps, and ended up in the hospital. He didn’t return for two months.
That seemed to take a lot out of him. It sapped his desire to run the place and kept him homebound for weeks. Eddie started showing up less and less, too, and they let another guy manage the bar for a while.
When I told people that the Whistle had been sold, the reaction was little more than a widespread shrug. I have a sentimental attachment to the place because it was the first bar I found in Dalian, and I have good memories there. I’m curious to see what becomes of it, but part of me doesn’t want to go back. I’m afraid of what it will be, and some memories are best left untouched.
The new owner used to work in the bar, and she’s a former classmate of Matt’s wife. For now, it will remain an Irish-themed bar, but I don’t know if you can still get Irish credit without Irish owners, though. It needs more than wood paneling and Guinness on tap. There might be rules about this.
Posted in the Dalian life | 3 Comments »
May 25th, 2007 Chris
If someone wanted to turn a shipwreck that claims 16 lives into more of a mess than it already is, here’s a tip: paint different national flags on each one, preferably making them from countries with a touchy relationship already.
Remember the uproar after Virginia Tech, when the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the shooter was Chinese, and the national sigh of relief when it turned out he was Korean? This is a smaller scale, but I smell the same whiff of face-saving and nationalizing with last week’s shipwreck in the Yellow Sea. Xinhua is reporting heroic search and rescue efforts; Yonhap is grim and forlorn.
Chinese divers pulled two bodies from the ill-fated Golden Rose today, while a third remains with the sunken Korean vessel 61 kilometers southeast of Dalian, where it went down last week after colliding with a Chinese freighter Jinsheng last week. After the crash, the Jinsheng continued on toward Dalian without aiding the Golden Rose or its crew, arriving seven hours late but unharmed.
Chinese authorities may in fact be investigating the Jinsheng’s actions last week. Some punishment could be meted out. Lots could be happening behind the scenes, but so far the Chinese press has printed only one storyline:
YANTAI, Shandong Province — Chinese rescuers have recovered a second body, confirmed to be the captain of the Republic of Korea (ROK) ship that sank off the east China coast ten days ago after a collision with a container ship.
The body was found in the captain’s office on the second floor of the vessel, said an official with the rescue and salvage bureau under China’s Ministry of Communications Tuesday evening.
On Monday, Chinese divers recovered the first body of a crew member.
By Tuesday evening, Chinese rescuers had found three bodies of the 16 crew members of the ROK ship, but only managed to salvage two of them.
The ROK ship, “Golden Rose”, which was loaded with 5,900 tons of steel, sank around 3:00 a.m. last Saturday off the coast of Yantai after it crashed in heavy fog with the “Jinsheng”, a freighter operated by Shandong Lufeng Shipping Company Ltd. The “Jinsheng” is registered in Saint Vincent.
Of the 16 sailors from the “Golden Rose,” eight are ROK nationals, seven from Myanmar and one from Indonesia, according to figures from the Ministry of Communications.
More than 300 Chinese ships and three aircraft, as well as 30 experienced divers and a diving vessel, have taken part in the search for the missing sailors. China has invited the ROK to send its own rescue boats and coast guard vessels.
(Xinhua, via China Daily)
Who braved wind and fog to pull those corpses from the briny depths? Chinese divers, of course. Look how many ships are out there.
It’s a far cry from a week ago, when “Chinese maritime authorities mobilized 22 boats and two helicopters for search and rescue operations,” as the Associated Press reported on May 13. China rejected calls for a joint rescue operation, the same story notes.
Yesterday’s story also makes note of the Jinsheng’s registry in Saint Vincent, as Beijing Newspeak mentioned before:
A diplomatic desk reporter, when pressed about an inadequate translation of a Foreign Ministry statement pledging to use “all its strength†to search for the missing sailors, said, “Well that’s all the information we received. And anyway the ship was registered in Saint Vincent, which means it was an accident between two foreign ships which happened to occur in China’s waters and China is doing all it can to save the sailors.â€
The numbers still don’t match, either, as Chris O’Brien also pointed out. Was it seven Koreans and eight from Myanmar, or the other way around? (The last one is Indonesian.)
Compare that with part of Yonhap’s version:
One of the bodies was identified as that of Heo Yong-yun, the 58-year-old South Korean captain, while the other was believed to be of Tin Aung Hein, a Myanmarese seaman, according to local police. The bodies arrived at Yantai aboard a small cargo ship with a temporary body storage facility at about 1 a.m. Heo’s body was driven to a funeral hall in the suburbs of the Chinese city, where his family members were waiting.
All 16 crew members of the 3,800-ton Golden Rose went missing after their ship collided with the Saint Vincent-registered freighter Jinsheng in heavy fog on May 12 and sank in waters 61 kilometers southeast of Dalian, a city in China’s northeastern province of Liaoning.
The crew was composed of seven South Koreans, eight Myanmarese and one Indonesian, according to South Korean coast guard officials.
Chinese divers found one more body from the ship Tuesday morning but failed to retrieve it due to high seas and strong winds.
No glory here, just bringing home the dead. Stay tuned.
Posted in News | 2 Comments »
May 21st, 2007 Chris
More on the Chinese-Korean shipwreck, as promised. Donga.com reports today that the JinSheng (called Jinsung in Korean) arrived in Dalian seven to nine hours late. It was coming from Yantai in Shandong Province.
The Jinsung entered the port at 2:40 p.m. on May 12, China’s state-owned news agency Xinhua reported. This is a different story from the announcement by the Chinese government stating that the ship sailed without being aware of crashing into the Golden Rose to arrive at nearby Yentai City. If it has sailed without knowledge of the collision, which took place at 03:08 a.m. (Chinese time), it should have entered the port at six to seven in the morning.
To discover the whereabouts of Jinsung during the hours is therefore crucial in finding the truth about the accident.
Prior to Xinhua’s news, China’s marine search team under the Chinese Ministry of Transportation reported that the Jinsung did not take any measures after the accident took place, kept sailing to enter the port.
Did the Chinese ship indeed go searching for the Golden Rose and its crew, only to give up? Did it suffer damage that slowed it down? Was it off course to begin with?
The sunken vessel is now resting under 38 meters (about 125 feet) of water, about 61 kilometers (38 miles) southeast of Dalian. Korean rescue divers deployed earlier this week to aid in the search, according to Yonhap News Service, while families of 16 missing crew from the Korean ship are in Yantai to press for a full investigation.
In a briefing on the accident held by the Yantai Maritime Safety Administration (YMSA) later in the day, the YMSA told the crew’s relatives, “Given the type of sinking of the Golden Rose, chances are very low that the missing crew is alive.”
“The South Korean cargo ship may have sunk directly below the sea due to the weight of 6,000 tons of steel products, so chances are high that no air remains inside the ship’s hull,” it added.
“As the temperature of the sea around the Bohai Bay averages 13.6 degrees centigrade, the chances of the missing crew’s survival are close to zero, drifting for two days,” the YMSA said.
I expect the real fallout will come when (or if?) the bodies are discovered.
Previous posts on this:
Did the Chinese Freighter Hit & Run?
Chinese Shipwreck and a Japanese Extradition
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May 18th, 2007 Chris
Whenever people see my computer, the first response is a quiet gasp, then an amazed stare, then the question: “Is that an…Apple?”
Shocking, but yes, I’m a Mac guy. I bought my black MacBook last August, and I love it.
And I’m stoked. A licensed Apple retailer opened today in Dalian, between Friendship Square and Zhongshan Square on Zhongshan Lu.
The retail outlet is a direct seller, and prices are the same as Apple’s online store, according to store staff. The walls yesterday were half-filled with iPods and accessories, while the rest of the interior was still being assembled. One iMac was up, but not running.
There’s some question of who can afford to buy a Mac, which is still about a third more expensive than a PC. Incomes are rising everywhere, but it’s still hard to find a Chinese person crossing over.
I get a lot of, “You can run Windows on that,” too. Why would I do such a thing? Ick.
Dragon Star Apple Store
#5 Zhongshan Lu, Dalian
dl_applestore@126.com
0411-82656523
The photo above was taken with my laptop’s built in camera, because I forgot my real point-n-shoot at home. Cool, huh?
Posted in the Dalian life | 11 Comments »
May 17th, 2007 Chris
I should have gone to Tibet last summer. Or in February. Even over May holiday or whenever there was a chance to fit it in.
Now it’s going to be much, much harder to get a worthwhile trip. China is tightening restrictions on foreign tourists in response to protests at Mt. Everest base camp a few weeks ago, the Times Online reports (h/t Granite Studio).
The new rules came into effect after the week-long May Day holiday, according to an official with the state-run China Travel Service in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.
She said: “We can’t let foreign tourists just go anywhere by themselves. In the past they could be left alone to travel independently as they wanted for a few days. Now this is not allowed any more.â€
The restrictions will also stop foreigners applying for a permit to enter the region from the office of the Tibetan travel bureau in the southwestern city of Chengdu, from where there are direct flights to Lhasa. All travel must now be approved by the head office in Lhasa, which operates under police supervision.
The Free Tibet folks, all Americans, were detained and expelled from the country, according to the story.
I have to ask the protesters: What was actually accomplished with this stunt?
Having graduated from UC Santa Cruz, I’ve seen more than my quota of protests, rallies, demonstrations, sit-ins and walk-outs. I’ve got up and stood up. Hell, I even organized a few noise-making events back in the day. One of the things more astute organizers always stressed to me was the need for clear targets. Targets aren’t people you take out, they’re the ones who can give you what you want. In this case, that means Beijing, as Davesgonechina pointed out in his post last month, Free advice for the Free Tibet crowd. Right now, it’s hard to say who the target is.
So now I don’t know when I’ll make it out west. Maybe next year, if things have relaxed a bit.
Posted in roadside blogging | 3 Comments »
May 16th, 2007 Chris
China goes all out to find 16 missing ROK sailors
China Daily, China - 12 hours ago
BEIJING — China vowed Tuesday to spare no efforts to find the 16 sailors missing after a Republic of Korea (ROK) vessel collided with a Saint …
Rescuers battle winds in hunt for missing sailors
Shanghai Daily, China - May 13, 2007
THE search continues for 16 missing sailors from a Republic of Korea ship that sank off China’s eastern coast on Saturday, but high winds have hindered …
Headlines like these almost make it look like the Chinese have been doing their duty in the Yellow Sea, where three days ago, a Chinese cargo ship struck a South Korean vessel, sinking it 38 miles southeast of Dalian. Sixteen sailors remain missing, but maybe that wasn’t so accidental.
Donga news service reported early on that the crew on the 4,800-ton Chinese ship waited two and a half hours before beginning their search for the seamen. AP reported in its original story (the one I linked to) that the JinSheng’s crew only reported the collision after arriving in Dalian, seven hours after the incident.
International conventions such as the Law of the Sea and the International Maritime Association—of which China is a member—require ships to provide assistance when they receive distress calls or strike other vessels.
Experts in maritime affairs argue that the Jinsheng crew was trying to flee from the scene. A KCG official in the Search and Rescue Division said, “It is a matter of common sense to clarify where responsibility lies after an accident, just like when a car crashes on land. The fact that the Chinese vessel ran away from the site demonstrates that it is very likely they were responsible for the incident.†The KCG believes that the Chinese cargo ship hit the Golden Rose on the side.
South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency ran an editorial yesterday slamming the Chinese for dereliction of duty, again calling it a “hit and run.”
They obviously knew that the Golden Rose was going to sink and didn’t care about rescuing the sailors.
This not only goes against international practice, when the closest ship to a wrecked ship is to do the rescuing, but also against the basic conduct of human life. It is an act contrary to morality, transgressing human laws. It is obligatory for the closest ship to do the rescue, by international agreement. Accidents in remote oceans are difficult to reach for rescue teams, so rescue by the closest ship can save more lives.
It’s hard to be surprised that China’s state-controlled media is doing some nationalist PR for the motherland, especially after what looks to be a rather sloppy international screw-up and a big loss of face. I wonder, though, if a better message might be something along the lines of, “Somebody blew it and we’re going to fix it,” instead of, “We’re coming to rescue you (three days later). Aren’t we heroic?”
Then again, China has never been especially good at PR.
Quick update: Beijing Newspeak puts this incident with several other recent reporting delays, plus insider perspective that’s priceless.
Posted in News | 9 Comments »
May 13th, 2007 Chris
AP reports that a South Korean cargo ship sank near Dalian after colliding with a Chinese freighter early this morning. Sixteen crew members are still missing.
Also today, Reuters reports that Japan agreed to extradite Yuan Tongshun, from Dalian, who is wanted for embezzling public funds. He used to run a state-owned enterprise here.
Longer excerpts of both stories are pasted below.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in News | 1 Comment »
May 12th, 2007 Chris
Part of what drew me to Dalian over bigger, possibly more lucrative cities was it’s reputation for being more livable than first-tier locales like Beijing and Shanghai. “Clean and open” is almost an unofficial slogan, and I find myself using it quite often. The descriptors require a caveat—”by Chinese standards”—but compared to other places I’ve traveled in the Middle Kingdom, Dalian holds up.
Chinese may not see it that way, though. Samuel, a well-traveled IT worker who hails from Benxi, laid it out for me in English corner Wednesday night.
“In other cities, you work for a few years, you get a house, start a family, you start to say, ‘This is my city,’” he said. “In Dalian, even if you live here, have a family here, you’re still not Dalianese. So, I don’t think Dalian is open.”
I turned to the two women at the table, one from Changchun, the other from Yinkou. They nodded in agreement.
This had me curious, so I put it to my oral English students today. Sure enough, Dalian people have a reputation of looking down their noses at newcomers.
This could all be unfettered snobbery, the same sort displayed between Los Angeles- and San Francisco-ren and probably shared in most moderately-successful Chinese cities. But maybe it’s bigger.
“The Mongols and Manchu became Chinese after invading,” Samuel said (a dubious claim, but common enough). “The best advantage of China is to merges, to bring the best together.”
Other insights about Dalian, from non-locals:
- Women here are tall, beautiful and have great (white) skin
- Prices are rising faster than income
- Dalian people are perhaps a bit too friendly with the Japanese
- Bus and taxi drivers are rude, indifferent, possibly crazy
- The local dialect is (surprise!) a mess to understand
I’m leaving my own commentary out of this as much as possible, except to say that Dalian has treated me well, for the most part. I’m more curious about other cities. Is this just a Dalian thing?
Posted in the Dalian life | 12 Comments »
May 6th, 2007 Chris
News of what could be a triple homicide is bubbling through the blogosphere this weekend, despite a reported ban on coverage.
ObserveChina reports (via ESWN translation) a taxi driver, his father and wife are dead at the hands of police officer Su Kai in a suburb north of Dalian.
A police officer with the Dalian Railroad Department fired five shots to kill a family of three who had showed up to demand compensation. The local government and publicity department censored all news. All information on websites were deleted and the media were not allowed to cover the story. The world still do not know what will happen to police officer Su Kai who fired the shots as well as the results of the police investigation.
On April 26, the sounds of five gunshots rang out in the duty room of the public security bureau in Xiongyuecheng town, Dalian. A taxi driver Wang Hongwu, his wife and his 62-year-old father were dead. The police quickly sealed the news so that the local media could not report on the incident. The Publicity Department forbade the national media from following up. The truth of the case is being investigated. But the attempt to black out the news is seriously violating the right of the victims’ family and the people as a whole to know. It is also possible that there is a risk for black box transaction behind the scene. All this is eroding the people’s trust in the local government.
On the day of the incident, Beifang Net published a news report. But by the next night, it was deleted. The local media received ban orders not to report on the incident. On April 28, Yunnan’s Chuncheng Evening News and Fujian’s Haixia Metropolis Daily made brief reports. But all the nationally influential newspapers quickly received orders not to report.
I haven’t found anything published in English on this, except through ESWN. ObserveChina is blocked on my ISP but available through a proxy.
ESWN says a Baidu News search on “Dalian”+”Police” (大连 è¦å¯Ÿ) found a Dongbei Net news report at Shuimou Net with additional photographs and a different account of the events leading up to the taxi driver’s death.
According to ObserveChina, the officer is 37 and was assigned to Xiongyuecheng three months ago. “It is still unknown why he fired the shots,” ObserveChina wrote. “But the police seemed very angry at the information being spread around the Internet and they said that those were irresponsible false information.”
I’m curious to see if any more information—official or otherwise—comes out on this. ObserveChina says a “special case squad” is investigating the incident. The more I read the two accounts—at ObserveChina and Shuimou, both via ESWN—the more complicated this case seems.
“At this time, we only know that a police officer fired five shots which killed three persons. The exact cause is still being investigated. There are many causes. Did they attack the police officer? Did they take any action? The case is still undecided,” ObserveChina quotes an unnamed Dalian Railroad Public Security Bureau officer as saying.
Like I said, it’s complicated.
Posted in News | 2 Comments »
