China Meiguo

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, when Americans hit the streets, stores and shopping malls in a materialistic frenzy. A more recent term, Cyber Monday, has also been coined by online marketers for the Monday following Black Friday to encourage people to buy even more online. After reading a news article entitled 150 Counterfeit Websites Shut Down by Feds, I wonder if Cyber Monday might also be referred to as Counterfeit Monday - the day greatest number of fake goods are purchased online.

According to the article, the Feds used Cyber Monday to announce that they've shut down 150 websites selling knock-off or pirated merchandise to bargain-seeking e-shoppers. The sites sold a wide variety of merchandise including movie DVDs, NBA jerseys and Louis Vuitton handbags, two of the most popular pirated brand items worldwide. From the list of domain names seized in this investigation, it seems that any domain name with the word jersey in it is likely to be selling counterfeit NBA and other sports league jerseys.

Fake v. Authentic Louis Vuitton bags: Can you tell the difference? This website tells you how.

I read a China Daily article recently called A Homeland Away From Home which is about Shirley Wood, an 86 year old American woman has lived in China for 65 years. Wood married a Chinese man and moved from Arkansas to China when she was 20 years old (although I imagine Arkansas to China is quite a culture shock at any age). Wood lives in the city of Kaifeng 开封in Henan Province (abd near Zhengzhou 郑州 where I lived last year).
Wood's story is quite unique in several ways. First of all, she moved to China when there were almost no foreigners living in China. Accordingly, she was one of the few foreigners to be present in China in 1949, the founding of the People's Republic of China. Finally, due to the lack of foreign companions until relatively recently in China, she had to become assimilated and live as a Chinese person. Nowadays, there are more foreigners living in China, but they almost always tend to live somewhat isolated (not necessarily physically) from their Chinese neighbors (due largely to language differences and the resulting inability to communicate well). This may be slowly starting to change, but Mrs. Wood has obviously been a China pioneer, well ahead of the times.

Last year I lived in the city of Zhengzhou (郑州) in Henan Province (河南省), the most populous province in China with a total of over 100 million people. Recently, Henan enacted a law that modifies China's one-child policy to allow couples to have a second child if the husband and wife are both from one-child families. A number of other provinces in China had previously done this and it seems that the cumulative effect may be that China now has more of a two-child than a one-child policy.

Kindergarten kids that might not be from one-child families since the photo was taken in a rural area

An old poster promoting the one-child policy

Most people in the West tend to believe that the one-child policy is a rule that's strictly enforced. However, there are significant exceptions to the rule as well as ways of getting around it. First of all, the policy provides quite a few important exemptions, including couples living in rural areas (still the majority of China's population), ethnic minorities, and parents without any siblings. Additionally, some parts of China such as Hong Kong and Macau (which are mostly self-governed) are not subject to the policy at all. Finally, some provincial governments in mainland China (such as Henan mentioned above and quite a few others) have adopted less restrictive regulations. In fact, its estimated that only about 36% of China's population is subject to the one-child policy.

A few evenings ago I biked into downtown Jimei with another American professor to pick up some groceries. We decided to find a restaurant to have dinnner first and my friend wanted to try a small place purporting to be a Greek restaurant. At the least the sign had the word "Greek" prominently displayed as shown in the picure below. I was sceptical since there probably aren't any Greeks around here and local Chinese wouldn't be likely to know much about Greek food. Nevertheless, the place looked clean and decent so I was willing to give it a try.

Greek restaurant that serves only Chinese food

Authentic Greek food in China

This past weekend at the East Asia Summit in Bali, U.S. President Barack Obama met briefly with China's Premiere Wen Jiabao (温家宝). Although the meeting was brief and somewhat informal, the main concern expressed by Obama was his belief that China should adjust the value of its currency. As the 2012 presidential election in America approaches and the U.S. economy continues to stagnate, Obama has been taking a slightly more critical role of China.

Obama and Wen Jiabao look friendly while meeting in Bali

According to a recent Economist article, "more Chinese people live outside mainland China than French people live in France, with some to be found in almost every country." The article also includes this map showing the top 20 destinations around the world for Chinese as well as Indian migrants.

Although China remained almost totally isolated from most Western influences from the founding of the PRC in 1949 until the early 1980s, this has changed dramatically over the past few decades, especially in terms of Western pop culture. To Westerners' ears, Chinese music tastes can seem extremely strange, but Western pop music has become increasingly prevalent throughout China's big cities and even in some of the remote countryside areas. So it shouldn't be too surprising that the Chinese, like people all over the world, have gone goo goo for Lady Gaga. Young Chinese have also somehow picked up the exclamation Oh My Lady Gaga!, used in place of Oh My God!  to indicate surprise.

Among other things, I've decided to blog about some of the Chinese music that I've discovered that I find appealing, interesting or amusing. So, first up, is an eclectic Chinese singer musician that mixes Chinese folk rock with additional influences such as Uyghur music and Sichuan opera.

Dāo Láng (刀郎) is a Chinese singer who became popular after the release of his 2003 album The First Snows of 2002 (年的第一場雪). The album became a surprise blockbuster, reportedly selling 2.7 million copies, an exceptionally high sales figure in a country where far more pirated than legal copies are sold and considering that his previous album sold only about 2000 copies. First Snows also had almost no planned marketing or promotion to generate sales. Instead, it was played initially in record stores (which still existed in 2003) largely through the efforts of a Chinese record  producer, Song Ke. From record/video stores, the CD spead to clothing stores, beauty salons, etc. throughout China.

I'm currently living in the city of Xiamen 厦门, but spent the previous academic year teaching at a university in Zhengzhou 郑州 in Henan Province in central China. I just came across this photo taken at a coffee shop appropriately named Coffee Time in Zhengzhou that I used to go to ocassionally. I met a friend there who loved the artistic coffee design so much she almost couldn't bear to drink it. 

The campus of the university I'm teaching at (Xiamen University of Technology) is located in an area that, while not too far from Xiamen Island, is a bit isolated. In fact, until they built the campus, the area consisted mostly of small farms. The area is rapidly changing with construction projects taking place constantly. In a year or two, things might look completely different here, but in the meantime, a few small,neighborhood farms remain, some right next to my modern high-rise apartment complex.

One day last week while walking to my apartment from the university, I ran into a few of my neighbors. They were having their lunch along the sidewalk. Nothing too odd about that you might think, except that these neighbors are of the bovine rather than human variety.


Two of my neighbors enjoying a roadside snack

These cows and birds seem to be great friends - one bird often rides on a cow's back

This week's inconsiderate neighbor. Next week's dinner?

Much of Fujian province is situated along China's southeast coast, including my current home city of Xiamen. Due to its location, many Chinese men and women earn a living by fishing. This past Saturday, while I was attending the Xiamen Boat Show, a fisherman in another part of Fujian province (Baiqing village in Pingtan) scored a really big catch. While out in the South China Sea, the fisherman netted a very large fish which turned out to be a gray whale. The whale turned out to be 13.9 metres (about 45 feet) long. Liu claimed that when he realized it might be a whale, he tried to release it, but it was already dead.

This past Saturday, I went to the Xiamen Boat Show which is basically an opportunity for companies that make yachts and sailboats to show them off to potential buyers and even enthusiasts who aren't really in the market to purchase. I fall much more into the latter of these categories, but I still enjoyed walking around and getting a look at the many boats available to those in a higher income class. One of the largest yatchs that I got a tour of was made by an American company (but built in nearby Tiawan). It was a beautiful, luxury yacht that sells for a mere U.S. $4.7 million. If that seems a bit high, they also have a cheaper model in the $2-3 million range which didn't look bad either.

The show took place around the Xiamen Marina so I took the opportunity to take some photos of the boats as well as the surrounding view from the marina.

Last night after going to a boat exhibition in Xiamen (I'll post some photos of the nice yachts I saw later), I visited the JJ Bar and Grill, JJ Bar and Grill is located in the popular Haiwan Park area which, in addition to a park with a nice view of the sea, has a variety of restaurants, bars and nightclubs. In the early evening, you almost feel like you're actually in Texas with the bar's decor, and the menu featuring mostly Western style food with an emphasis on Texas BBQ. I didn't really try the food (other than a small sampling of appetizers), but since I was in the bar area, I could see a lot of it coming out of the kitchen to the restaurant area and it looked quite good.


At night, the place livens up largely due to the band made up of Filipino musicians and singers as well as one Chinese singer. Some of the Texas atmosphere gets lost at this point since the band plays a variety of music, but mostly rock and dance-oriented songs rather than the country music played on the sound system in the earlier hours. The band plays mostly English-language songs (from AC-DC to Lady Gaga and much more), but the female Chinese singer adds some Chinese pop songs to their repertoire as well. They are quite good and keep the mix of Western expat and Chinese customers well entertained.

Texas-style decor on a wall at JJ Bar & Grill

Road sign for inebriated expats at JJ Bar & Grill