Archive for the ‘China Today’ Category

Pictures that ever moved the whole China.

Sunday, September 23rd, 2007

These are photos which quite popular in most of Chinese bulletin boards, I saw many readers replied that they cried after they saw those pictures.  I , also, can’t stop my tears during I browsing and translating them.

It’s another side of China, but they are so real.

Modern buildings, exciting nightlife, rapid economic developments, … that’s one side of China in most new visitors’ eyes. However, unfortunately, there are other sides.

Sometimes, I feel so hard to talk about China’s situation to my foreign friends, I worried about if I tell them the negative side of China will makes people have more miss understanding of China, however I can’t just repeat the lies that they always hear. 

I know many of my friends, colleagues are so interesting in China, and some are planning to travel and experience China.   I quote those pictures here and translate the description in English just wish to let you get understand better the either side of China.

I tried to translate the descriptions into English myself since I can’t find a ready made English version.  I gave each picture a title by myself, the description was translated from original post, I also converted the numbers from CNY to USD to help reader understand the money in those descriptions. (I used USD:CNY 1:7.5 as convert rate)  Please forgive my lost in the translation.

For me, I feel sad and helpless, I wish those situation could gone in the future, not just get covered and pretend that we are already rich and strong and the fact in those pictures does not exist. 

It’s my homeland, but I am so helpless, shame on this, as some of you may know, though I eventually escaped… but I tried… yes, I do tried. 

(The original links is here, there are more pictures inside, I only selected some from them)

Hero in tears

He is a soldier in Tibet, his medals show his contribution and achievement for this country. He couldn’t come back home when his wife was dying for the difficulty of birth.

Ignore

No one gave a seat to the lady who carrying a baby in the bus

Unfortunately, less and less people willing to help others…esp. after a young man lost a law suite against him by an old woman who he helped.

Lover in the street

Two old blind couples lead a hard life by sing and perform in public.

Help

An old poor lady is dropping a coin to a blind singer on the street

Hard rain

A human wagoner in the hard rain.  Generally his income is less than CNY 5.00 for this trip. (CNY 5.0 = USD 0.60)

Teenager miner

A teenager miner, he is only 17, his income of carrying 50KG for 1000 meters is around CNY 1.00  ( equal to USD 0.13)

Teenager miner II

Old country side lady

A very old lady have to carry for her daily living. This is a typical photo in the country side.

Noon snap

An old man snapping on the street during he selling his how brewed  vegetable

Protest

An old gentleman protest for the unbelievable high education cost. The banner he carrying said: "No school should treat the students as money making target.  No country should turn the students to goods for sale or the source of revenue."

The universe if our classroom

A primary school of a Chinese village, they can’t afford for a class room, so they study outside; they can’t afford for the table, they use stone and woods to build them.

Small farmers

This two brother can’t afford the education cost, for only around CNY 100 per year, and had to work in the farm.  (CNY 100 equals USD 13)

Classes
Two moms and two child. The different classes in the modern China.

Helpless couple

A man was beaten so badly only because he asked for his salary. (Lots of people can’t get paid for years of hard working)

Boy don’t cry

A grand father is wiping off the tears from his grand son. (In China, many family have to be separated, the parents has to go out to make a living, and leave their children along at home with their grandfather, grandmother)

Boy don’t cry II

Strong

In Yangzi river, some ship transportation are still powered on human being.

Rainman

An old man sit on the rain. (it’s very possibly he is a newspaper seller or a gatekeepers for the bikes in the street)

Father and son

A father with his son in the arms are selling his home brewed vegetable.  
 

A professor

This old man looks like the poor people above, but he is a professor in a famous University.  He donated his all to poor students and support them to get educated, he lead a very thrifty life life style since professor in China don’t get paid that much.

Sun shine on the faces

The sun shine reflect on the faces of a poor family.

 

Street artist

Young children were trained to performance dangerous acrobatics, they have to perform on the street and get very little money to make a living.

 

Hungry

A hungry child is eating the wasted cake on the street corner.

 

Working teen girl

She makes money herself for studying.  Everyday after school, she goes to a factory to carry good, she carry 40KG and makes CNY 0.03 for each time.  (CNY 0.03 is equal to USD 0.004)

 

Grandfather cried

A grand father cried after he know his grandsons could come back to school.  (In China, the only hope to change a poor life is get educated and find a job)

 
 

A village school teacher

A young mom carrying her baby and teaching in a village primary school

Popularity: 69% [?]

A Farewell to"Don’t be evil" — Google.cn banned a common Chinese people name.

Sunday, August 26th, 2007

Just read from a friend’s twitter update that Google.cn has banned a Chinese name "Shijing(石靖)". I tried to search that name in google.cn, here is what I got:

Google 首页

无法访问您所搜索的信息,请返回 google.cn 查询其它信息.

The above Chinese is: "Access denied for the information you are searching, please back to google.cn to search other information".

The name "Shijing" is a very common Chinese name for male or female, maybe in China there are around several hundred thousands of people are named as "Shijing". However, for google China, they not exist any more.

"Shijing" became a popular search keyword in the last couple weeks because someone discovered her naked photo were appeared in an American idiot Robert Kugler’s online photo album. That guy post many Chinese girl’s photo(include some naked) in his myspace pages, and declared that he  had sex with lots of Chinese women and post those photo to show off. All I can say for this is, that stupid guy is a complete idiot, he should pay price for what he did( Publishing private photos to public without permission).

No doubt, it’s because some department of our government’s pressure, generally they just ask a web site to remove any thing they want to remove, they don’t care what they are and how they related to the daily life.

Since Google launched a self censored web site: Google.cn, she was blamed a lot in Chinese "google fans", many people feel they were betrayed or cheated by google’s famous slagon "don’t be evil". As a person who ever ran a web site in China, I am a few of people who support the self censored version google — "google.cn", it’s not possible to fight with a government like China when you decided to do business in China. Open a self censored google.cn is a win-win situation for both google and google users. However those self secorship only related to those political related content and some sexual/pornographic contents.

But this time is complete different, this is the first time google banned a keyword completely (without display anything!), and this keyword is not related to any political terms, it’s just a common name that several hundred thousands of people are sharing! I believe it is so "EVIL" for those people who using this name or they have some relative who using this name.

Goodbye, "don’t be evil", I believe it’s  only a start point that google China become far and far away from what it said before.

(Chinese version: 和谐了的谷歌算Evil呢还是不Evil呢?)

Popularity: 36% [?]

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