One of my favorite writers reveals just how shallow Brooks’ “analysis” of China is. Go there now.

I was on the Olympic Green all day today and was amazed at what I saw, or rather at what I didn’t see, namely crowds of people. There were none. The Green was a relative ghost town (compared to past Games). It took no time at all to get there, and only seconds to get through security. Nearly all the faces were Chinese; Westerners were in very short supply, for whatever reasons.

The low numbers is due in large part to a new and especially neurotic BOCOG policy forbidding anyone but ticket holders and staff from entering the Green. (Usually visitors can get a day pass and stroll around at their leisure.) So the place is kind of depressing. Watching some of the Games isn’t too uplifting either, seeing all those empty seats. Well, they did bring it on themselves, but I also feel sorry to see it.

Sorry, but that’s all I’ve got time for blogging today.

Raj

The Olympics have only recently kicked off, but there is already a lot to talk about. For example, Michael Phelps is bidding to win an unprecedented eight gold medals in the swimming, something that he could quite possibly do – one down, seven to go. But regardless of whether he can reach this target or not, all Americans should feel proud of him anyway – even with a “mediocre” haul this year he would still be one of the most impressive athletes ever to contest the Games.

But perhaps some of the more interesting news deals with events surrounding the Olympics. The start was tainted by the sad murder of an American tourist, Todd Bachman, by some psychopathic Chinese man, who then himself committed suicide. But what I found even more horrifying were allegations that the Chinese authorities have been trying to sweep this under the carpet.

Chinese residents who lived and worked close to the scene of the crime appeared to be under orders not to discuss the incident. ‘Why are you paying so much attention to this? Murders happen all the time. You should pay attention to the two gold medals that China won today,’ said a middle-aged woman in a flower-patterned shirt.

Yes, so long as China tops the medal table who cares if visitors to Beijing are murdered?

We can hope that the report is wrong, but what this woman said seems like a typical result of Chinese propaganda enforcement. When people are told to ignore bad news and focus on the good, comments like these slip out. The other explanation, that this was a genuine view, would be even more terrible if it reflected a wider attitude and would indicate that Chinese nationalism being whipped up by the CCP over the Olympics is now leading many Chinese people to abandon common-sense.

Then we had the eruption of conflict in Georgia, with Russian troops responding to an attempt by Tbilisi to bring the rebel region of South Ossetia under its control – thousands may have died already. There have also been reports of gun-fights and attempted bombings in Xinjiang.

In regards to overly optimistic hopes that the Olympics would lead to greater openness/freedom in China, AP reports that human rights activist Zeng Jinyan has “disappeared”.

A Chinese human rights activist whose husband was jailed earlier this year has disappeared and may have been taken by police to prevent her from speaking to journalists during the Beijing Olympics, an overseas-based human rights group said Friday.

The group, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said Zeng Jinyan disappeared on Thursday and has not been heard from. Zeng is married to activist Hu Jia, who was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison in April.

I’m sure the Chinese authorities will claim that she has wandered off on his own accord and have no idea where he is. That’s CCP regional monitoring at its best – its defence to detention of people who give a damn about something other than their own interests is that it has no idea what the local authorities are doing. If that’s the supposedly “efficient” Communist autocracy that we’re repeatedly told is China’s only future, God forbid that we see chaos and incompetance from the CCP.

Furthermore it appears that anyone asking for a protest permit is being turned down – what a surprise! Indeed, it’s an even better wheeze for the Chinese authorities, as they can use the lure of Olympic protest to flush out protestors and detain/arrest them. Not unlike the way Mao used the Hundred Flowers Campaign to identify and then silence his critics and potential opponents.

A housing activist who applied for permission to hold a demonstration in Beijing’s specially designated Olympic protest zones has been detained by police. The detention of Zhang Wei, whose home was demolished two years ago to make way for an upmarket development in Beijing’s Qianmen district, highlights the Chinese government’s crackdown on dissent ahead of the opening of the games on Friday.

Police detained Ms Zhang on Wednesday for allegedly “disturbing social order”, a member of her family said on Thursday. She was told Ms Zhang would be transferred to a detention centre in south Beijing, family members said.

Yes, “distburbing social order”. Otherwise known as “highlighting the not-so-heroic actions of the Chinese ruling party” and spoiling their attempts to trick the Chinese people into think that they are practically-perfect-in-every-way. This theme is continued by the laughable assertions of Wang Wei, who said that blocking websites is “good” for Chinese people.

“That’s an assessment made by the authorities of which sites are good and which are not good for our youth. It’s like what any other country does.”

Perhaps Wang would like to tell us what websites critical of the ruling Labour Party and its policies are blocked in the UK? Conservatives.com? libdems.org.uk?

The feeble rebuttals of Jacques Rogge, IOC chief puppet, to examples of China violating its Olympic promises continue.

“But there will be a review of what happened when we come to audit the Games when they are over.”

Yes, after the Olympics are over and the CCP has already have extracted maximum propaganda effect from it, the IOC can come down hard for the 2012 Olympics to ensure that us Brits don’t block websites for criticising the UK – which we already doesn’t do…..

Does the IOC have any shame? Guess not – the flood of dollars and yuan make up for that.

Finally we have the damning comments of a former top Party official, Bao Tong, on the way China trains its athletes.

It is very naive to take the number of gold medals won as an indicator of the rise of China. That sort of patriotism…has nothing to do with the Olympic spirit…

China has sponsored a top-down professionalized system, a totally segregated approach to athletic training… It has its roots in the Chinese Communist Party’s experience of the 1927-37 Chinese civil war, when peasants who relied on the land for their existence took up arms as their revolutionary duty to fight for a share of it. In the process, they were torn away from their families, from the rest of society, and from normal economic activities…

China’s athletes are chosen as young children…and taken away from their families, from their schools, and totally cut off from normal social activities. The door is closed, and they give up their entire youth and part of their childhoods for the sole aim of entering and winning competitions, an aim for which they are totally re-molded by the system.

The whole article should be read, but I thought these comments especially good:

China’s array of medals and prizes was produced out of the sweat, tears, and lives of generations of athletes and paralympians…You can’t use the achievements of our young people to cover up or to dilute the mistakes of the country’s leaders.

That the CCP tries to do that shows its real nature. To it, any Chinese person is a “natural resource” that can be exploited in any way, at any time, to prolong its rule.

There is one clear barometer of how good a political system is. It’s no good listening to what people say; mouths are very unreliable. You have to look at what the feet are doing. A good system will attract people. People in China may be living quite happily, and foreigners may make light of traveling a thousand miles to visit. But would they want to emigrate here? When they have seen the Olympics, seen the show, and had a chance to understand Chinese people a bit better, and to compare China to their own country, then what? I am certain that while they will say a lot of nice things about China, they are not going to start flooding in to live here. Whereas Chinese people would be leaving in their tens of thousands if the opportunity was there.

Quite true.

Go here and keep scrolling. UPDATE: this one is definitely worth a look as well.

I’ve only been able to watch bits and pieces. It’s way cheesier than I had hoped.

UPDATE: I have to say, I was wrong when I called it cheesy. I was only able to watch about 2 hours of the Opening Ceremony and I learned yesterday that by chance I caught the very worst part – the interminable walking around the track by athletes waving flags -and some children dancing. Since then I saw some extended clips of what I missed, and I spoke with many people who were actually there. The clips I saw were amazing. Absolutely beautiful. And everyone I know who was there said it was truly beyond belief despite the oppressive heat. They loved it. (They all agreed about the flag-waving athletes.)

So I retract my earlier comment. I should have said some sections were cheesier than I expected.

This has been making the rounds these past few weeks, but with the day finally here, it’s too hysterical not to post.

“We can be sure it is a trap. They’ve been preparing for this for thousands of years. According to the satellite images we are getting from Beijing, they are digging large holes which they claim are for Olympic venues, but we know full well they are going to cover them up with branches and leaves and the athletes from America are going to fall right into them.  Nah, they’re going to wait until it gets dark and then they are going to bring out their dragons…”

Perhaps the funniest/saddest part is the comments section on You Tube where not a few idiot fenqing completely missing the satirical quality of the video–not that irony and satire are common currency in the fenqing mindset–and go right into robotic whining mode about how some vaguely defined “West” hates China.

Enjoy.

Careful what you say. The cabs have ears.

Tens of thousands of taxi drivers in Beijing have a tool that could become part of China’s all-out security campaign for the Olympic Games. Their vehicles have microphones installed ostensibly for driver safety that can be used to listen to passengers remotely.

The tiny listening devices, which are connected to a global positioning system able to track a cab’s location by satellite, have been installed in almost all of the city’s 70,000 taxis over the past three years, taxi drivers and industry officials say.

As with digital cameras used in cities such as London, Sydney or New York, the stated purpose of the microphones is to protect the driver. But whereas the devices in other countries can only record images, those devices in Beijing taxis can be remotely activated without the driver’s knowledge to eavesdrop on passengers, according to drivers and Yaxon Networks Co., a Chinese company that makes some of the systems used in Beijing. The machines can even remotely shut off engines.

And people I know hold confidential meetings in taxis on their mobile phones all the time. I mean, like every day. Maybe ask the driver to increase the volume on that cantopop he’s listening to?

Via this excellent blog.

As everybody knows, it was always a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’ stunt protesters would descend on the Beijing Olympics.  Sure enough, today somebody climbed a 100-foot electrical pole near the Olympic Green to fly a “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet” flag for the length of time it took the Beijing Fire Department and PSB to arrive and take it down.  The protesters were all–unsurprisingly–foreigners.

But back to the if/when thing…I’ve maintained all along that China risks losing face in the international court of public opinion not because such stunts will happen (they will, nothing can change that) but what the reaction will be by official representatives on the ground, especially toward any media outlets interested enough to cover such protests.  The answer so far: Not well.

ESPN Blogger Arty Berko is in Beijing covering the games as a credentialed journalist.  Following word of an ‘incident’ at the Green, he rode his bike over to check it out.  Berko reports:

There was a crowd of about 100 people down the hill from where the post was located; policemen were located at the top of the hill, closer to the post.

I dropped my bike and started taking pictures. After a few minutes, I wanted to try to talk to the man up on the post. So, I climbed up the hill to get a closer look. I yelled out, “Hey buddy, who are you?” The policemen turned and looked at me, but didn’t react. But then, a man in civilian clothes (he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt) started screaming at me and tried to wave me away.

I held up my credential and yelled out, “TV! Media! Press!”

The man kept yelling, speaking mostly in Mandarin; but through some broken English, he pointed to the stadium, saying, “You’re only here for [this].” He was implying that I was only here to cover the Games and this protest was none of my business. Then, he screamed, “Who are you? Who are you?” I kept trying to explain I was credentialed media.

Some of the policemen walked toward me and grabbed me by the arm. They were angry and aggressive while holding on to me, yelling in my face. But I still kept yelling, “TV! Media! Press! TV! Media! Press!” The policemen were speaking into their walkie-talkies, but I didn’t understand what they were saying.

I then went back to the bottom of the hill and took more pictures. By that point, a fire truck pulled up and moved a cherry picker up the pole to try to bring down the protester. The same civilian came down the hill and started screaming at me again. Some of the onlookers joined in, and I was circled by people who started pushing and shoving me, screaming and pointing to the stadium. I never got hit or punched, but I was definitely physically accosted. I was trying to be smart about it and I wasn’t hitting anyone, but I kept yelling, “Media! Press!”

Am I the only one who thinks that before the Games are all over there is going to be at least one ugly incident involving a foreign journalist, the police and/or hopped-up Chinese spectators? 

For what it’s worth, I think the kinds of stunt protests the four activists pulled this morning are more self-aggrandizing than anything else.  If people were serious about reaching out and trying to effect change, they might start by writing the signs in Chinese. (UPDATE: Several are reporting that there were also Chinese signs as well.)

That said, if the ensuing confrontation was any indication of how the local boyos and the PSB react to protests/media spectacles during the games, then we’re in for a rocky few weeks.

…who doesn’t think the mood in the city is now totally, breathtakingly surreal – a hundred times more so than usual? It’s really here, that moment so many have been waiting for, whether with trepidation or joy, and it’s starting to sink in: This is it. Police cars, sirens whirring, are everywhere, taxis are at a premium, everyone seems to be trying to speak English, and there’s a general mood of contained hysteria. It’s the moment of truth. They asked for it, they got it. Let the cards fall where they may.

This is one of the oddest, most disturbing stories I’ve read about Internet depravity. Parts of it are simply unbelievable.

“Lulz” is how trolls keep score. A corruption of “LOL” or “laugh out loud,” “lulz” means the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium. “Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh,” said one ex-troll….

Another troll explained the lulz as a quasi-thermodynamic exchange between the sensitive and the cruel: “You look for someone who is full of it, a real blowhard. Then you exploit their insecurities to get an insane amount of drama, laughs and lulz. Rules would be simple: 1. Do whatever it takes to get lulz. 2. Make sure the lulz is widely distributed. This will allow for more lulz to be made. 3. The game is never over until all the lulz have been had.”

…The willingness of trolling “victims” to be hurt by words, he argued, makes them complicit, and trolling will end as soon as we all get over it.

Their oxygen is your reaction. Without it, they’re rendered impotent. Enough said.

While you’re over at the NYT, be sure to read this shocker, which I’m sure gave Michelle Malkin a dizzy high. And when I say a shocker….

It’s hardly an exhaustive list and is mostly based on observations and experiences from the past week or so, but I thought I’d jot down a few of my favorite things about the ‘Jing.

• Beijing parks in the early morning.  Jingshan, Beihai, even tiny Nanguan…parks all over the city are bustling at 6:00 a.m. I’m certainly not a gerontologist, but there has to be a significant mental and physical benefit to seniors who participate in daily group exercise.  And the variety of activities is something to behold–dancing, tai chi, calligraphy, bird walking, one fellow who bends at the waist, legs straight, and walks on all fours for the length of the park (try this sometime, you won’t make it 10 yards).

• The variety of great food available for less than 10 RMB.  Snacks, breakfast, lunch, noodles, chuan’r…you can live in Beijing and spend anywhere between 15 and 1500 kuai on dinner, and some of my 15 kuai dinners have been the better than a few fancy banquets I’ve attended by a long shot.

• I like the new metro lines. The trains are comfortable and the two giant xiangqi boards built into the floor of the Dongsi Line 5 platform are a nice touch.

• Hutong living.  YJ and I just moved into a small pingfang in a yard with about 19 other families.  The yard itself is cool and I love our little house, but the best part about living there are the neighbors.  Within a week of moving in, we’ve met just about everybody and it really seems like the residents all look out for each other.  (By contrast, we lived in our loufang for nearly two years and never exchanged more than a forced ‘ni hao’ with the yuppie across the hall.)  It’s also been fun sitting in the middle courtyard with the neighbors after dinner shooting the shit about whatever.  Good times.

• Basketball.  You’re never far away from a court in Beijing and once you’re on the court, it’s easy to get into a game.  The skill level varies wildly among the local players, but the enthusiasm is always consistently high.  Generally speaking too, people are pretty good sports.  There will always be exceptions, but it’s usually a friendly atmosphere without a lot of egos getting in the way of a good game.

• So many people are into history.  I love it when random interactions with strangers or passing acquaintances turn into 45 minute discussions of military strategy during the Ming-Qing transition.

• Good move on the part of the municipality to go to odd/even days for cars.  It hasn’t really had any effect on the air quality, but it’s made the streets a lot nicer for bikes and pedestrians.  Personally, I wouldn’t have any objection to making the policy permanent after the games.

• Ding zuo. You can have just about anything custom made in Beijing. Dining room table in the showroom too short? We’ll build it taller.  Need to hide the ugly refrigerator in the middle of your living room? Custom-made Qing style cabinet with no floor or back and an extra-wide door.  Good suits. Leather shoes. Whatever.  If you can draw a picture and give some idea of what size and color, somebody can make it for you.

• The music scene. They’ll never get on the radio, but bands like Joyside, Snapline, Buyi, Brain Failure, and Second Hand Rose (to name only a very very few) play good music with passion.  Sure a lot of the bands might not have the greatest chops and some of the songwriting lacks polish, but the level of enthusiasm with which the music is performed makes up for a lot.  Besides, when was rock and roll ever about polish over passion?

What’s on your list?