6 April 2014

Hello everyone,

The last week seems to have been relatively quiet, news-wise.

The mystery of Flight MH370

The search for missing plane MH370 continues in the Indian Ocean, now about 1,500 kms north-west of Perth, Western Australia. Lots of debris inspected, but nothing from this aircraft yet.

Yesterday one of the Chinese search vessels, Hai Xun 01, picked up a sonar signal for 90 seconds. Nothing has been confirmed yet.  Fingers crossed that this might be a break-through, as the batteries powering the sonar signal on the 'black box' are expected to cease tomorrow.

The search area has moved north.

Chinese ship Hai Xun 01 searching the Indian Ocean, detected a sonar signal yesterday.   Let's hope it's a solid lead.

Cuba

A few days ago Cuba adopted a new Foreign Investment Law, continuing the liberalising which started a couple of years ago and has seen the mushrooming of small private businesses.  Wonder what Fidel thinks of his brother's actions?

Is North Korea now the last bastion of true economic communism?

Qing Ming Festival

Yesterday, 5 April 2014, was Qing Ming Festival.  The University has given staff & students three 3 days off (yesterday, today and tomorrow).

The Qing Ming Festival (Chinese: 清明节; pinyin: Qīngmíng Jié),  is celebrated 104 days after the winter solstice - it usually occurs in early April in the Gregorian calendar.  This festival is also known as Clear Bright Festival, Ancestors Day, or Tomb Sweeping Day.  

It is the day to commemorate one's ancestors, a bit like All Souls Day in Western countries.  

The Qing Ming festival dates back over 2,500 years.  After being suspended for several decades, this festival was reinstated as a national public holiday in 2008.

Observances include the cleaning and sweeping of graves of ancestors, offering food and burning paper money and other paper gifts for the deceased so that they are comfortable in ‘heaven’.

A cemetery in Beijing during Qing Ming Festival.

A family honoring ancestors at a cemetery in the countryside.

But this is the more common sight these days, as cremation (rather than burial) is now almost universal in China.

Burning paper imitation money is common, to ensure that ancestors have enough money for their needs.

Paper replicas of mobile phones being burnt, to ensure ancestors have phones should they need them.

This man's lucky ancestors got a 4 storey house!

It is estimated that more than 1,000 tonnes of paper products costing more than Y10 billion ($1.6b) are burned as offerings during the Qing Ming Festival period. 

Burning paper imitation-money has long been a tradition, but now there are many other paper products on offer, such as imitations of Gucci bags, Ferrari cars, Rolex watches, iPhones, garments, wine and cigarettes.  You can even buy paper cut-outs of concubines and nannies, to ensure that ancestors have everything they need to be comfortable in the after-life.

I remember a couple of years ago a bizarre story in the China Daily that a family bought the body of a young woman who had died recently, and on Qing Ming buried her next to their just-deceased 17 year old son.  They wanted him to have a ‘bride’ to keep him company in the after-life.  But grave robbers dug up her body and sold it to another needy family!

Special food

Of course, it wouldn't be China if there weren't traditional food involved.  

Special green-coloured 'dumplings' with vegetarian fillings, eaten cold.

Qing tuan sweet green rice balls are popular in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces during Qing Ming.

In our province of Shandong, a Qing Ming tradition is to make swallow-shaped steamed bread.

Swallow-shaped steam bread. Cute!

Qing Ming is also a time for people to celebrate the arrival of Spring (踏青 Tàqīng, "treading on the greenery").  And right on cue, the blossoms are out on our campus!  The maximum temperature today is 16C, not summer yet, but the weather is definitely warming up.

Spring has arrived on our campus.

Suddenly the trees on campus have greenery.

Poetry

To commemorate the change of season I described two poems to my Oral English classes this week: "Spring" by Gerard Manley Hopkins, followed by "Ode to Autumn" by John Keats.  There is a lot of imagery in poetry, and it took some time to explain the poems.  From the quizzical looks, I suspect the students found all this rather heavy going, but I hope my enthusiasm carried the day.

Student opinions on social issues

This week I discussed 3 interesting articles from the China Daily with my Oral English students.

First: Zhengzhou University in Henan Province, to encourage greater fitness, has introduced a program whereby the first 150 students to run 800 meters will get free breakfast. I asked the students if they thought a similar program should be introduced here by the China University of Petroleum?

Most of the students said that such a scheme would not appeal to them.  They are busy Double Major students and need their sleep.  They normally get up after 7am, have breakfast, and then make their way to the first class which starts at 8am. They usually spend less than Y5 (80 cents) for breakfast.  The trade-off of losing an hours sleep to save four or five yuan did not appeal to them.

But that doesn't address the underlying issue of physical fitness. All students have a compulsory weekly 2 hour PE class.  From their comments, my impression is that less than 50% exercise at least once a week other than the PE class (sporting activities such as table tennis, volleyball, yoga, jogging, etc).  When I walk around the campus I always see students playing games such as basketball, football (soccer), tennis, and in-line skating and I formed the opinion that students are generally pretty fit. But, if the students in my Oral English classes are representative, then only a minority of students on the campus actually get much regular exercise.  Most are engrossed in study or play computer games or watch tele-movies or listen to music or sleep.

Second: A young man attended his friend's wedding banquet in Beijing recently.  He died the following day.  His father believes that his son died from "excessive drinking" at the wedding and is suing the bridegroom for compensation of Y720,000 ($116,000).

About 80% of the students didn't think that the father should get compensation from the bridegroom.  They admitted that in China there is often much drinking at social functions.  But the son was an adult and it was his own responsibility to manage his intake.

About 20% of the students thought that the father should get some compensation on the basis of shared responsibility, but less than the amount requested.  It will be very interesting to see how the court rules on this case.

Third: A woman in Beijing was married with a child.  She fell in love with a married man who also had a child.  They divorced their partners and lived together.  Subsequently the woman had a son, while still single.  So she contravened the one-child law and also the social taboo of having a child out of wedlock. The authorities levied a 'social maintenance fee' of Y330,000 ($53,000) for her transgressions.  But she is low-income and hasn't been able to pay the fine.

Because she hasn't paid the fine, the Beijing government has refused to issue a residence permit (called a hukou) to her son, now aged 8 years.  A hukou is very important - for example, you can't attend a government school without a valid hukou.  In this country, without a hukou you are basically a non-person, existing only on the fringes of society.

Last year she met a sympathetic lawyer who agreed to help her.  On 9 October 2013 they took the local district office to court, arguing that China's Household Registration and Nationality Law requires that a hukou be issued to every citizen.  On 14 February 2014 the court found against the plaintiff, saying that the Beijing government had the right to impose preconditions such as the payment of an outstanding fine.  The woman and her lawyer have lodged an appeal.

A clear majority, about 65%, of the students agreed with the court's decision.  They said that the woman had broken the One Child Law and also had exhibited bad morality by having a child out of wedlock.  She deserved to be punished and knew the punishment.  It was too bad about the boy - he was collateral damage.  But if you start making exceptions where will it end?  Better to enforce the rules strictly.

The other 35% of students felt that the boy should be given a hukou.  He was an innocent party and should not suffer for the rest of his life for something his mother did.

There was a clear division along gender lines.  Almost all the girls agreed with the court's decision, and almost all the boys supported the boy getting a hukou.  That was a surprise - I didn't expect such a division along gender lines.  Chinese girls are unexpectedly tough ... protectors of the nation's morality?

According to the article in the China Daily, there are about 13 million children in China who, for one reason or another, don't have a hukou.  Can you imagine, about 50% of Australia's population living in "limbo"?

Fast Eddie

Just 3 weeks old and already looking for a game of footy ......




...

Well, that's it for another week.  When I started this post I didn't think I had anything to write about, but there's always something, isn't there?

Best wishes and keep smiling,

alex & vera olah
English teachers at the China University of Petroleum, Qingdao.
Sunday 6 April 2014