A Slow Boat to China

In Japan, I became used to the heated toilet seats, complete with a bidet, fountain wash, and dryer. At times it worked very well, although it kind of depends on your mood, and how much of a hurry you are in. :) It’s not really surprising that this kind of toilet has crossed the ocean–it looks like a company called Lotus909 is marketing the same thing in China.

But the claims of this company are much different, and loftier, than those of the Japanese toilet companies–Lotus909 apparently claims that this toilet can practically wash out your colon “with the perfect amount of water pressure.” Kind of like an enema. Even if you don’t understand Chinese, the animations will clarify everything for you…

This picture really is worth a thousand words. Tibet is beautiful, and yet you always have this feeling…

The title may be a little unfair, because not all buses in China are kept completely full with migrant workers. But many are. I bargained for a sleeping seat right in the middle, and had no idea the aisles would soon be irelevant. Here’s me taking a picture of my relatively comfy surroundings:

And then we stopped to let the migrant workers on. These guys were nice, but they smelled like they had been working for months. And the driver made them take their shoes off, to boot.

For the last few weeks, I have been reviewing a new service called echineselearning.com. This site offers Chinese lessons in a monthly subscription format–for $100.00, you can participate in daily hour-long classes. Lessons are given one-on-one with a native Chinese teacher via Skype. For those Chinese students that aren’t in China, it’s a great way to learn or maintain Chinese.

The website is well run, with an extremely helpful and courteous staff that will aid you in navigating the site and, if you wish, arranging a trial lesson. The trial lesson is conducted by Ms. Zou Hongqiong, a very capable teacher with obvious experience teaching Chinese as a second language.

Materials are generally e-mailed to you before the lesson, and it is your responsibility to prepare. Ms. Hong ran through some drills, testing my comprehension of the material and probing whether I could flexibly use vocabulary and grammar that was part of the lesson. She was extremely adept at getting me to test my limits, strict with correcting errors, and overall was excellent.

Since then, my experience with echineselearning.com has been mixed. I’ve rotated through several teachers (of my own volition–I wanted to see what kind of teachers they had), and none of them come very close to the level of ability that Ms. Hong demonstrated. The types of materials seem limited, although in fairness I never completely clarified my study goals. On the plus sides, all the teachers are lively and make great efforts to please their students. For beginning and intermediate students of the language, there probably isn’t a better way to learn–besides going to China.

I found the below article in Qihoo. It is interesting that although the blogger notes China’s domestic movie industry is completely backward, he still feels that protecting “ethnic culture” requires limiting imports on movies and DVDs. So its OK to have pirated DVDs influencing the population, but not legitimite ones?

Feng Xiaogang Has Also Bought Pirated DVDs

Next to the Northwest Third Ring Road in Beijing, near the gate leading into the Beijing Foreign Language University, a middle-aged man selling pirated DVDs holds up an empty DVD cover. In a low voice, he explains to the customer, “American and Japan both sued China!” In order to minimize losses if he is searched, he first allows the customer make his selection from empty DVD cases, and after he confirms their choice, another person will retrieve the DVD from a nearby location. Amongst his customers, many are foreign exchange students, so that probably includes Americans and Japanese.

Scenarios just like this exist in places all over China. With the speed of the internet age, news quickly reached the ears of street vendors that the United States is suing China in the WTO over pirated materials and import restrictions on cultural products. (Japan is preparing to assist the United States in this suit). Several days ago, the spokesman for China’s National Copyright Agency, Wang Ziqiang, said that the United States’ criticisms that China import market restrictions on movies, books, and musical products stimulates the market for pirated goods is not substantiated.

That market restrictions can stimulate pirated goods is strange argument. It may be that market restrictions lead to pirated goods, but that is definitely not the main cause of the problem, and relaxing market restrictions will definitely not solve the problem of pirated goods.

If it’s not import restrictions that leads to pirated materials, then what does? And what must we do to to stop the problem?

On the surface, two important factors for the spread of pirated goods are “inexpensive prices and a quality product.” Much has been written about the cheap prices of pirated goods, but the “quality product” aspect is often overlooked. Pirated goods often arrive on the market quicker than legitimite versions, and there are often more versions, fewer restrictions, and newer content to meet the market’s needs.

The spread of pirated goods is world-wide. Take Microsoft as an example, who has even claimed that if someone were to use pirated software, they should use Microsoft products first! This is a desparate measure, and is also a clever way to claim market share in the massive pirated software market. People use pirated Microsoft software because they are inexpensive and the product quality is high.

It is especially interesting that the users of pirated goods are not only average people–celebrities also buy them! Ironically, the film director Feng Xiaogang acknowledged that he had bought pirated DVDs, and that many of them were very good. At the same time, Feng told reporters that he planned on shooting a short adverstisement to campaign against pirated goods.

Closer investigation reveals that the root of this problem does no lie in China’s lack of a free market for cultural products. In the environment with a weak rule of law and strong administrative control, the backbone of our cultural industry has become soft. Our cultural products are still too palid, and the boundless energy and creativity of the Chinesepeople has yet to be utilized. This is a malady that we still need to address and remedy.

When we lack the ability to produce superior, legitimite products that satisfy our various demands, but we still need to limit the import of foreign cultural products in order to protect our ethnic culture and domestic industries (which is the correct policy), then theoretically, the production and sales of pirated goods are unavoidabe. But restrictions and protections can not be a permanent policy, so we really do need to seriously consider: Why have pirated gods become the sole choice in China? How can the cultural industries of China begin developing? How far are we from the dream of becoming a superpower with cultural influence, who exports culture rather than importing it? ….