A Slow Boat to China

Fang Jun (方军), one of the Chinese bloggers on Mindmeters, offered this thought regarding the killings at Virginia Tech, or more appropriately the media response of it. The title is “Tragedy.”

I feel sorrow for the campus tragedy that occurred in America.

But the thought suddenly occurred to me, why does everyone care this much about America?

In fact, today an accident where 32 people were killed also occurred in China.

At the Qinghe Special Steel Company in Tieling, Liaoning province, a molten steel spill killed 32 people and injured 2.

After 911, the entire world was shocked. It was called an an event that affected the entire world.

But soon after, a bomb exploded on a train in India. How many people remember that?

How many people remember the tsunami in Southwest Asia?

Don’t tell me that events in America have a more symbolic siginificance.

I believe one simple truth, that every life is in the end a life, and all are equal.

I’ve been following the events in Blacksburg like a lot of fellow Americans, because there is something shocking about the events there that is much more disturbing to me than those in Liaoning, or in Iraq. On a number of blogs in China, people have discussed why going to America is coveted by so many Chinese citizens. Often the answer is that they desire a “正常的生活”, or a “normal life.” I think this is probably what many Americans have (and many take for granted), and why events like the ones in Blacksburg, Columbine, and 911 shock so many people. Cho Seung-Hui had that normal life, and for some reason was still drawn to do what he did.

Fang Jun is right, though, that in Liaoning 32 families no longer have fathers or sons, in what by all accounts must have been a horrific accident. If there’s any decency in us humans, we’ll give them the same sympathy and attention we feel for Virginia Tech students.

32 People Killed when 20 Tons of Molten Steel Flows into Their Meeting Room

The widely-read Caijing recently published an article on the Cui Yingjie verdict in its online magazine:

Street vendor Cui Yingjie was convicted of killing a respected cheng guan, Li Zhiqiang, with the knife used for slicing the sausages cooked on his tricycle. Court documents say he was forced to scrape out a living on Beijing streets after a former employer, a karaoke bar, refused to pay his salary….

I visited the Chengdu Zoo in June 2005. As any of you that have been to Chinese zoos know, the animals there are usually treated no better than the poorest Chinese citizens–which means they generally get very shoddy care. The Chinese visitors routinely feed the animals all kinds of junk that they might have brought with them–in this case they are throwing potato chips, and a Chinese version of rice-crispie treats. Although I don’t catch the whole scene with my camera, at one point the visitors empty their potato chip bags all over the bears. No zookeepers or anyone else came out to stop them. The bears obviously seem to like it, the same way I like to eat a whole pizza while slouching on my living room couch…

While surfing the Chinese internet, my attention was grabbed by a link displaying a picture of an alligator with a man’s arm in its mouth. Usually these things are hoaxes, but apparently not in this case!

Warning–slightly graphic.

Apparently this crocodile is in the Shoushan Zoo （寿山动物园) in Gaoxiong, Taiwan. The arm is that of the crocodile’s zookeeper, who was trying to give the crocodile medicine when crocodile bit his arm off below the elbow. The zookeeper is undergoing emergency surgery to repair the arm. The crocodile released the arm when police shot at it, and although the shots didn’t kill it the zoo hasn’t yet decided its fate.

A Shandong newspaper includes a group of photos called “Japan’s most perverted inventions.”

These really need no translation–make sure to click on the numbers below the pictures to see all of them.

I’m not sure what the original source of these are on the internet–while they make fun of the Japanese, certainly, anyone who’s been to Japan knows that it is entirely conceivable that somewhere, sometime, a Japanese proposed these ideas.