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Xu Qian and Guo Zhijun, from If You Are the One's first migrant worker special

China’s matchmaking reality TV shows are a much more harmonious place following an early June overhaul meant to root out materialism, fakery, and vulgarity.

The shows, such as Jiangsu TV’s If You Are the One (非诚勿扰, a personals-ad line meaning “sincere inquiries only”), pitted sharp-tongued women against eager suitors and featured sharp-tongued banter from both sides, but their methods drew criticism even as they brought high ratings: some contestants were called gold-diggers, others became embroiled in unrelated scandals involving risqué photos and sex tapes, and shows were accused of deliberately fomenting class unrest. For example, the mother of one bachelor described her ideal daughter-in-law in this way: “She can’t be a rural girl. If her family isn’t well off, then sometimes it would her mom coming in from the countryside, and other times it will be her older brother….then our home would be a hotel!”

After SARFT stepped in, vulgarity was eliminated by the ejection of controversial contestants, materialism was countered by a the addition of a professor from a Party school, who represented the moderating voice of the establishment, and then on July 18, the rural population was placated with a special episode of If You Are the One devoted to migrant workers.

In the piece translated below, Liu Yuan, publicity director for the editorial department of Jiangsu TV, which produces the program, explained why the station decided to focus on migrants. It’s interesting to note the term translated “migrant workers” in the piece is 外来人员务工, literally “staff from outside,” rather than the more traditional 农民工, or “peasant laborers.” Huang Han, the Party school professor, went even further and advocated calling these post-80s migrants “new urbanites” (新市民). A second migrant worker special was broadcast the following week, to mixed reviews.

Why Jiangsu TV held a special migrant worker episode of If You Are the One by Liu Yuan

Last Sunday night, If You Are the One began the first special episode of its half-year of broadcast: a special episode titled “Migrant Workers.”

For half a year, over a hundred thousand single men and women have applied to take part in If You Are the One, and among this group, we discovered a special population – migrant workers born in the 1980s. Coming from the countryside, they are pursuing careers in the city, and they believe that through self-reliance and hard work they can create a place for themselves in there. They are young and have their own dreams and desires for love, and they hope that they can find a partner with whom they can weather the storms and build a happy life. Our producers discovered that many of these migrant workers filled out two application forms when applying to the program: one for the production team, and the other to keep as a memento….

Our idea was further solidified after we gathered background material. According to figures from the 2009 Report on Next-Generation Migrant Workers released by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, there are currently 100 million post-80s migrant workers, nearly 80 million of them single. This is an immense social group, a group that is right by our side as we take advantage of the so-called “happy life” brought to us by rapid economic development. They may be humble wait staff in a restaurant, stylists in a salon, sales clerks at a shop, or maybe they are screws on a production line, the core members of an enterprise, or perhaps they have just opened a shop at the gate to your neighborhood and have begun their own urban dream…

And unlike their parents’ generation, during the course of producing the program and interacting with these post-80s migrant workers, we discovered that we can learn from the many outstanding characteristics of these “new urbanites.”

First, their ideas and they way they express them are guileless and imbued with traditional Chinese values. Although their expression may be somewhat simplistic because of their fairly low level of education, both content and style are simple and honest. For example, Li Dafeng said forthrightly, “my partner’s parents are my parents”, “if the man has a problem, I will take care of him my entire life”, and Chen Xiangdong was willing to contribute two-thirds of his income to finance his older brother’s life at college. These are impressive words and actions.

Second, they have escaped their parents’ reliance on physical labor and desire instead to find wealth through mastery of technical skills. In the first episode, we saw five men who studied skills ranging from hair styling and product testing to cooking and electrical equipment and who became outstanding professionals in various fields. These next-generation migrant workers have realized that technology is important for personal growth and thus have begun to enter the ranks of the “technologically rich.” This is admirable.

Third, they have entrepreneurial aspirations. Next-generation migrant workers are no longer satisfied with simply working for other people. As they work hard, they dream of going into business for themselves. Take Wang Shaojie, bachelor #1, for example: he wants to open a chain of hair salons. Guo Zhijun, bachelor #4, wants to open a restaurant, and Cai Naiji, bachelor #5, wants to run his own laundry. Although their dreams are not identical, they do share one common element: practicality. These next-generation migrant workers have demonstrated through practical thinking their increased awareness and broadened horizons.

Fourth, they have realized the importance of knowledge. Although they might not be well-educated, next-generation migrant workers attach great importance to increasing their own knowledge outside of their jobs. For example, after Chen Xiangdong, bachelor #3, shuts off his machine at 8 every night, he reads books to deepen his knowledge.

And it is this simple language and these plain values that have brought a breath of fresh air to the program. Their language may not be flowery, but it has an extra measure of straightforwardness and tolerance. Their aspirations may not be grand, but they are honest and sincere….

There was a warm response to the broadcast of this episode. Media outlets across the country did publicity and reporting, and the Southern Daily in particular had a headline that moved me: “The female guests on this episode If You Are the One are the most beautiful!” Once again I thank our friends in the media for their support! In addition, many enthusiastic viewers actively discussed the program on the official website and in forums; the official website received more than 100 posts. One comment on Sina said that despite the sheer numbers of single post-80s migrant workers – 80 million – the media had previously paid scant attention to their feelings. But their goals for life and love both brought a breath of fresh air to the program. And another netizen summed up a few characteristics of the special episode: first, the performance of the migrant workers was sufficiently sincere, despite their somewhat reticent speech and shy behavior, their speech could be summed up in a single word – honesty – and from their questions for the female guests we could get a sense that they were looking for people to share their lives with. Their questions were pragmatic – were the women concerned about the man’s age or aspirations and so forth. Finally, the migrant workers gave us a sense of inspiration and ambition: each of them had a goal toward which they were struggling, and they were more aware than others of their age of what they needed and what practical efforts to take to obtain it.

Staging the special migrant worker episode of If You Are the One, we believe, is not only an endeavor in the public interest but is also one that has implications for society at large. Using the public media platform of the program, we were able to show off the attitudes of a group of next-generation migrant workers, enabling more urban residents to understand their brothers and sisters who have made such great contributions to the cities, and promoting communication and interaction between all sectors of society. It is our small contribution toward building a harmonious society. In addition, for Jiangsu TU, a member of the mass media, it is also an important manifestation of our sense of social responsibility.

Links and Sources

• Liu Yuan via Outlook Online (Chinese): Why Jiangsu TV held a special migrant worker episode of If You Are the One
• ACFTU (Chinese): Study of the New Generation of Migrant Workers (2010)
• China Newsweek (Chinese): Profile of Huang Han: I'm the one that's non-mainstream
• Chutian Metropolis Daily via Netease (Chinese): If You Are the One embroiled in another peasant bigotry controversy
• Netease entertainment (Chinese): If You Are the One does its first migrant worker special episode, Good reviews for migrant worker episode of If You Are the One, Another migrant worker episode for If You Are the One
• Earlier on Danwei: Surviving a dating reality show, Dating show contestant banned for sexy modeling?

Tags: If You Are the One, migrant workers, reality show

This article is from Danwei.org

Shenzhen Evening News, July 30, 2010

News that woman in Shenzhen having her rectum "stitched closed" by her midwife during her cesarean delivery touched a chord with the public whose discontent to the current health care system often lead them to assume the worst when it comes to doctors' ethics.

The woman's husband affirmed that the midwife sealed his wife's rectum in retribution for their failure to come up with a more generous bribe; the midwife countered that she might have overstepped the boundaries as a midwife to tie up the patient's bleeding hemorrhoid, but by doing so she only meant to do good.

A panel of medical experts were called upon to investigate into the case, but evidence is insufficient to support either claim.

What is clear is that prior to the woman's labor, her husband gave an envelop containing 100 yuan to the midwife, who accepted it. The envelope with money was later discovered in the patient's cabinet. However, the two sides differ in when and under what circumstances the money was returned, and what the midwife meant when asking the couple whether they were "prepared."

The midwife claimed that she initially took the money out of politeness only to realize it was wrong, so she returned it the next day, while the husband claimed that the midwife returned the money after he threatened legal action. As to the exact meaning of the contentious "have you prepared" (准备好了吗？), the husband believed that bribe was implied while the midwife insisted she was just asking whether the couple were ready for the C-section. In addition, the husband also accused the midwife of destroying evidence by tearing the stitches open under the pretense of giving his wife a massage.

Links and Sources

• Shenzhen Evening News (Chinese): Evidence is insufficient to prove the midwife stitched patient's rectum closed

Tags: medical accident, Shenzhen Evening News

This article is from Danwei.org

Modern Express, July 29, 2010

Reporting around the explosion in a plastics factory in Nanjing has been patchy. The factory, which has been called a "time bomb" before a gas leak killed 12, was in newspapers in the former capital today.

Modern Express is a Xinhua-run commercial newspaper. Today a black cover points to the explosion in Nanjing, and about how it is testing its people. However, no other major newspaper in the city had the explosion in a featured position on the front page.

Yangtse Evening Post

The Yangtse Evening Post went with the time allocated for National day holidays and the Pakistan airplane crash;

Oriental Guardian
Nanjing Daily

The Oriental Guardian goes with the anniversary of the Tangshan earthquake, and the government organ Nanjing Daily with a small side banner about the explosion being under control;
Xinhua Daily

The Xinhua Daily (not affiliated with the Xinhua News Agency) marks the ninth 'double support' model city commendation ceremony, and mentions the explosion in a small piece at the bottom of the page.

Tip from Media Wang's Sina microblog.

Links and Sources

• Modern Express (Chinese): An old plastics factory explodes yesterday
• Earlier on Danwei: The Chinese Internet reports on Nanjing factory explosion

Tags: factory explosion, Modern Express, Nanjing, Nanjing Daily, Oriental Guardian, Xinhua Daily, Yangtse Evening Post

This article is from Danwei.org

Next Media, publisher of Apple Daily in Taiwan and Hong Kong, has become famous for it news animations of events like Tiger Wood's car crash and fight with his wife and the failed crotch bomb. Above is Next Media's take on Steve Jobs and the iPhone antenna affair.

Tags: animation, Apple, Apple Daily, iPhone

This article is from Danwei.org

Hu Jintao's jet trails

From Wired:

The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”

Recorded Future has a blog where they explain some of their methods and show case studies. It includes two items about Hu Jintao that are linked below.

The posts use open source data from the Internet to track past Hu Jintao's travel arrangements. The first post attempts to analyze if his behavior has changed over the last year, and what that might mean his successor who is widely believed to be Xi Jinping (he of the well-fed foreigners remark).

The second post looks at Hu's travel arrangements in the run up to the Copenhagen climate talks last year and examines if it is possible to understand "intent through travel records".

Links and Sources

• Wired: Google, CIA invest in future’ of Web monitoring
• Recorded Future: Has Hu Jintao's behavior changed?
• Recorded Future: Understanding intent through travel records: China and Copenhagen

Tags: CIA, Google, Hu Jintao

This article is from Danwei.org

Protests against factory before blast, broken windows after; source

Today is the 34th anniversary of the Tangshan earthquake, but the Chinese Internet has been buzzing the whole day with news of a different disaster.

State-owned news agency Xinhua reports:

A powerful explosion at a factory in eastern China's Jiangsu Province Wednesday killed at least six people and injured many more, witnesses and hospital sources said.

Xinhua reporters saw at least six people recorded as dead at hospitals treating people injured in the blast that ripped through an abandoned plastics and chemical factory in northern Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu.

An initial investigation showed gas leak from a pipeline going through the plant at Mufu East Road of Qixia District triggered the blast at about 10:10 a.m..

Buildings and vehicles within a 100-meter radius around the factory were seriously damaged.

Much of the commentary and reporting on the Internet by citizens has taken a very different line from Xinhua. A few noteworthy items:

• According to a posting on the Xici forum website linked below, residents have been warning about the dangers of having the factory since 2009. The posting calls the factory a "time bomb".

The photo above also shows before and after the blast photos taken in the area around the factory; the signs in the top photo complain about a factory in the residential area.

Immediate satirical reaction: Chinese cartoon mocking official who stopped TV crew; source

• A Jiangsu TV journalist broadcasting live from the scene of the explosion was reprimanded by an official whose identity is currently being debated on the Chinese Internet. The official told the journalist to stop filming, saying "Who allowed you to broadcast live?" (哪个让你们做直播的)

This saying has been widely circulated on the Internet and is already the subject of mocking Photoshop jobs. The videos are still circulating on the Chinese Internet and have also been saved on various servers outside the country as they may get deleted from Chinese websites.

• One person posting on the XCar forum says that windows in buildings as far as 3km away from the blast have shattered. Link below with many photographs.

• At the time of writing, the official death toll is six, but Internet reports are claiming as many as 100 people dead.

Update (2010.7.29): The official death toll according to Xinhua is now 10.

See also ESWN: Newspaper Coverage Of Nanjing Gas Explosion

Links and Sources

• Xinhua: Blast hits factory in east China, causing deaths
• The Guardian: Chinese factory explosion injures hundreds
• Sina microblog (Chinese): Before and after photos
• Xici forum (Chinese): Help! Compatriots, help save us! (2009 posting about dangers of factory)
• Isaac Mao's Google Buzz: Backup of video of "Who let you broadcast live?" official
• XCar forum (Chinese): Photos of explosion that just happened
• ESWN: Compilation of reports, images and video

Tags: disaster, explosion, Nanjing, Xinhua

This article is from Danwei.org

Dongguan Times July 28th, 2010

This morning, Dongguan Times published an exposé on the resurrection of slot machines in surrounding townships. These illegal devices were recently stamped out by localities to reduce gambling in the area, an effort which met with temporary success. Dongguan Times reports that slot machines have “risen from the ashes” in several surrounding townships, such as Hengli (横沥) and Shijie (石碣).

During the second half of last year, Dongguan’s strategy to punch out all slot machines was highly effective. In a short period of time, the once rampant slot machines seemed to disappear completely. However, recent information has shown that these slot machines are making a vicious comeback. In township avenues and alleyways, the slots can be seen everywhere.

Other headlines include a story about a Hubei prosecutor, Feng Bin (冯缤) who appealed a court order which caused his wife to lose her job, eventually causing Feng to lose his own job. Feng spoke with Dongguan Times reporters about his outrage, amidst warnings from officials to give up his case.

Another headline introduces the story of Lu Zhisheng (卢志胜), a Taiwanese gangster who fled to the mainland to avoid prison in Taiwan.

Lu Zhisheng was born in Taibei in 1972, a member of the Tiandao gang (天道盟天鸣会). In 2008, a warrant was put out on Lu for smuggling drugs. Because he had nowhere to escape in Taiwan, Lu moved to the mainland in order to continue his drug trafficking. Links and Sources

• Dongguan Times (Chinese): Slot machines reappear in Hengli and Shijie
• Dongguan Times (Chinese): Court deputy warns Feng Bin
• Dongguan Times (Chinese): The story of the Taiwanese mafia coming to the mainland

Tags: lawsuit

This article is from Danwei.org

Dodolook, a girl from Guilin whose online videos became famous in China in 2006, is still around. In this new video, she compares Mandarin vocabulary as spoken in Taiwan with that of the Mainland. Also available on Youku.

Tags: dodolook, language, Mandarin, putonghua, Taiwan

This article is from Danwei.org

The new Sinica podcast went up last week, hosted at the excellent Mandarin and Cantonese learning website PopUp Chinese:

Hosted by Kaiser Kuo with yours truly and Will Moss as guests, we discuss the state of the English language blog scene in China: Death of the China blog (link includes several ways of listening to the podcast).

We mention a lot of blogs; one good blog that has been around almost since the beginning of the China blog scene is David Wolf's Silicon Hutong. There are plenty of other good blogs that we did not mention in Danwei's Model Worker awards.

There's a good discussion in the comments section of the Sinica post, and some follow up on other blogs: Peking Duck and Will Moss' own Imagethief.

One last comment: Rumors of our death are greatly exaggerated.

Tags: blogs, Sinica

This article is from Danwei.org

Oriental Guardian, July 27, 2010

Microblogs are a great resource for commuter newspapers. At just 140 characters, an entire microblog post can be quoted in a front page news-bite with enough space left over for a headline and short introduction.

Today's Oriental Guardian reproduces a post by director Feng Xiaogang, whose Aftershock (唐山大地震), a family drama set against the backdrop of the Tangshan and Wenchuan earthquakes, broke box-office records over the weekend.

With the box-office take for Aftershock skyrocketing, Feng Xiaogang has finally lashed out. In a microblog post yesterday, he replied to questions for the first time. "A certain expert commented that Aftershock has only tears but no feeling. This realization is not just unique: it is also displays great imagination. To be able to control the audience to the point of preventing their rush of tears from reaching their heart, to generate tears but not move the heart, requires technical ability far beyond that of Avatar. You'd basically have to join up with aliens. Your humble Feng has not mastered this sort of psychic power, so you've praised me too highly. Additionally, surveys show that cinemas in this country do not yet have plans to install oil sprayers to induce tears.

Feng also replied to accusations that he was exploiting a national disaster for profit

If this were the Cultural Revolution, charging Aftershock with "exposing national scars and exploiting a national tragedy for profit" would get me shot and my family would be billed for the bullet. And logically, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Titanic, and Hibiscus Town would all have to be brought to justice. Because their crimes are trading on fallen warriors, trading on the plight of the Jewish people, trading on the victims of a shipwreck, and trading on the victims of the Cultural Revolution. This age has finally made progress. I am fortunate, but fears linger.

The paper's cover photos pair a submarine, which illustrates a story on the US-South Korea war games going on off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, with an image taken in the DPRK, whose 57th anniversary of Victory in the Fatherland Liberation War is observed today.

Links and Sources

• Oriental Guardian (Chinese): Feng Xiaogang microblogs that cinemas have not installed oil sprayers
• Feng Xiaogang's microblog (Chinese): reply to tears, reply to profit

Tags: Aftershock, Feng Xiaogang, microblog, Oriental Guardian

This article is from Danwei.org

The Beijing Times, July 26, 2010

The Beijing Times headlines today's newspaper with the story running at the top of Xinhua's Chinese language website and on a number of papers around the country: the government's new rules to deal with "naked officials", i.e. government officials whose family have emigrated to another country and who are therefore considered likely to flee China once they have saved enough money from corrupt practices such as embezzlement and bribery.

The rules are not very harsh. The China Daily explains them thusly:

The rules stipulate that these officials must disclose their rank, the whereabouts of their spouses and children if they have moved overseas, while overseeing any and all roles these officials play in matters of public affairs. These rules also dictate the procedures these officials must follow when applying for personal passports, as well as requiring them to disclose any travel plans to Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan prior to departure.

The large photo shows an outdoor stand offering trips to seaside resort Beidaihe. According to the newspaper, the stand is run by a "fake" travel agency. The caption connects the photo with a story reported in the newspaper a days previously in which a travel agency using fake documents had arranged a bus from Beijing to Shenyang. The bus had an accident and three people died.

Another noteworthy headline is at the bottom in the box: "New demolition laws not dead yet". The story says that a Peking University professor believes new laws governing how residents are removed from their residences to make way for demolition and new development is still on the cards.

He believes the law will be considered together with amendments to China's land law, which will also cover taxes and levies on peasant farmers' houses. The professor's statements come after much media speculation that the new law was already unlikely to pass.

Links and Sources

• Xinhua (Chinese): What do the new central and local government restrictions on"naked officials" mean?
• The China Daily: China tightens oversight of 'naked officials'
• The Beijing Times: New demolition laws not dead yet

Tags: Beijing Times, naked officials, transparency

This article is from Danwei.org

China Computerworld, July 26, 2010

The current issue of China Computerworld (计算机世界) features a cover story on Tencent, the Internet giant that runs the QQ web portal and Internet messaging software and has its fingers in practically every other sector of the online economy.

The report is written from the perspective of Tencent's competitors in the industry, and it is their exclamation of frustration that provides the feature's title: Fucking Tencent ("狗日的"腾讯).

Critics quoted in the piece complain about Tencent's lack of creativity: never a first mover, it enters established sectors and muscles out the competition — shamelessly imitating its rivals, according to some accusations:

Tencent is never the first to "eat crab" [to try out new things]. It looks for a space in a mature markets to shove its way in. However, the methods it chooses also invite controversy: imitation, sometimes unscrupulous "shanzhai" copying.

As early as 2006, Sina founder Wang Zhidong openly accused [Tencent founder] Ma Huateng of being the industry's "plagiarism king," and of brazen plagiarism at that. Similar voices have been heard in the years since. Most recently, Data Center of the China Internet (DCCI) director Hu Yanping questioned Tencent's creative abilities, saying that it was not an outstanding innovator, and was actually the mortal enemy of innovation among smaller Internet enterprises.

Beginning with its first product, OICQ (the former incarnation of Tencent QQ), which copied ICQ, Tencent has never been able to bury its "copying gene." First it brought in QQ Show and a line of value-added products from Korea, then it imitated Sina by building a portal website. In online gaming, it copied Ourgame (联众) by developing a platform, and then like Shanda brought in international players, started in-house development (like Netease). Then there was the C2C e-commerce site Paipai, and the third-party payment service TenPay (财付通). Without exception, these were "shanzhai" products, which lies at the root of the hatred for Tencent.

"Microblogs, anti-virus, e-commerce, and now group purchasing: the business models in these sectors are there for the taking, and everyone is copying. How can you say that Tencent should be generous and not try to make money there?" asked Xie Wen, a long-time Internet professional. In an interview with this reporter, he said that the animosity toward Tencent within the industry is like "whining children," and "Fifty paces laughing a hundred paces."

As for the charge of imitation, Ma Huateng's response is: Imitation is the most reliable form of innovation.

As the excerpt suggests, the article itself is much less of a hit-piece than the provocative cover implies. Nevertheless, Tencent felt it necessary to respond to the brutal assassination of its beloved penguin mascot:

Statement by Tencent

On the cover of its July 26, 2010 issue, China Computerworld made a savage attack on Tencent. The Company makes the following statement:

Tencent is a meticulous and responsible company. QQ is a nationally-recognized trademark. For many years, we have striven to provide superior Internet services to the general public and to make the lives of our users richer and more convenient. We welcome commentary from the media on our products, services, and company development.

However, the China Computerworld feature story, without conducting any interviews with Tencent, used crude language against a responsible enterprise and used a disgusting illustration to damage our trademark and corporate image, creating an extremely adverse reaction and rudely hurting the feelings of the vast numbers of ordinary Tencent users. We strongly condemn this action and reserve the right to take legal action to protect our rights.

Tencent
2010.07.26

Update (2010.07.27): China Computerworld has responded with a pledge to continue its independent reporting on the industry.

We believe that controversy and differences of opinion are objective things that neither Tencent nor China Computerworld can avoid. For this reason, we choose to stay true to our duty as part of the media; we choose to stay true to objective questions about the industry; we choose to pull back the curtain and face controversy head-on.

We have noticed that upon its publication, the cover of this issue sparked attention and discussion, with supporters as well as critics. We will listen with an open mind to all opinions and, following our thirty-one-year principle of objective, independent reporting, will strive to provide the public with richer, more worthwhile content.

Links and Sources

• China Computerworld (Chinese): Fucking Tencent: Spoiler or Terminator?
• QQ (Chinese): Statement from Tencent

Tags: China Computerworld, Tencent

This article is from Danwei.org

"Dragonfly" Hu Xinglian, a professional wailer in Chonqging

A fascinating feature story in The Beijing News earlier this week took a look at the careers of professional wailers, performers paid to present the eulogy at a funeral and lament the deceased through anguished songs.

Cell Phone (手机), a TV drama that premiered earlier this year, featured a character named Lu Zhixin who worked as a wailer. Catering to the public’s curiosity about the profession, newspapers in Chongqing and Chengdu tracked down some local wailers. The report in The Beijing News pulls together the stories of several of those individuals to present an overview of the funeral performance industry.

The Joys and Sorrows of a Professional Mourner by Chen Ning / TBN

One can make a decent amount of money being a proxy mourner. The profession recently came to the attention of the public through the character Lu Zhixin, a professional wailer, in the popular TV adaptation of Cell Phone.

Wailers actually belong to an ancient profession that now keeps a low profile thanks to its singular characteristics. In Chongqing and Chengdu, wailers and their special bands have, over the course of more than a decade, developed into a professional, competitive market.

Studies show that wailers are predominantly laid-off workers. To support themselves, they rely on weeping and melancholy songs for their income. They and their bands believe that, like everyone else, they are engaging in a profession and performing a job.

Hu Xinglian’s hair is tied into pigtails pointing up in opposite directions.

Her stage name means “Dragonfly” in the Chongqing dialect (叮叮猫), and the two pigtails, which resemble dragonfly wings, are her trademark. She ties them up at every “performance.”

She is fifty-two years old, and she is a professional wailer.

Wailing is an ancient funeral custom. Texts show that dirges began to be used in ceremonies during the time of Emperor Wu of Han and became commonplace during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Customs varied across ethnicities and regions. During the Cultural Revolution, wailing was viewed a pernicious feudal poison and went silent. In the reform era, it was revived in a number of areas.

All of this history is unknown to Hu. However, she does not dodge the nature of her profession. To her, wailing is a “performance,” and only a good performance will be recognized.

According to reports in the local media, Hu Xinglian (胡兴莲) is known as one of the ten great wailers of Chongqing. She has been interviewed by Singapore TV and other media.

Today, Hu is not only a wailer. She is also a bandleader.

The band is unusual in that it mainly performs at weddings and funerals, and sometimes does commercial performances in between. They say that well-established bands in Chongqing have between four and ten members. Short-handed, and the singer also plays an instrument, but when they have the numbers, there will be members on keyboards, drums, a trumpet, and a saxophone.

The bands are organized relatively loosely. When there is a performance, they are called together. Things are similar with “actors.”

In Chongqing, people call funeral performances “singing the banban” (唱板板; banban is the colloquial name for open-air mourning halls in Chongqing), which lends the industry its name (板界). Hu Xinglian has been in the industry for fourteen years and has been a professional wailer for seven.

In her rough estimation, Chongqing has nearly 2,000 similar bands, and practically all of them have a wailer.

Performance
During the eulogy, Hu Xinglian sometimes howls “dad” or “mom” to create a melancholy atmosphere for the family

On the evening of July 7, a funeral is being held for an old man in a small neighborhood in the village of Baiyun in Jiangbei District, Chongqing. At around 7 pm, Hu Xinglian and her band arrive at the mourning hall.

Before the ceremony begins, she asks the family of the deceased about the situation. She must do this every time.

Hu arranges her pigtails and then beings putting on her makeup. She believes that makeup shows respect to the bereaved family.

She says that wailers usually put on some makeup and wear white mourning clothes. Some of them are more elaborate, with white stage costumes and “jeweled” headdresses.

At around 7:30, Hu calls the family of the deceased into the mourning hall and begins to read the eulogy.

There is a formula to the eulogy that is adapted to the particular circumstances of the deceased. Most of these say how hard-working and beloved the deceased was, and how much they loved their children.

Hu Xinglian (via City Life)

The eulogy requires a sorrowful tone and a rhythmic cadence. As Hu reads, she sometimes howls “dad” or “mom.” And then the bereaved begin to cry as they kneel before the coffin.

After the eulogy comes the wailing, a song sung in a crying voice to the accompaniment of mournful music. Hu says that the purpose of this part is mainly to create a melancholy atmosphere which will allow the family to release their sadness through tears.

Because of the special status of the deceased at this particular funeral, the family members have requested that the wailing portion be eliminated.

Hu says that more time is devoted to wailing in the countryside. In video recordings, Hu can be seen howling, weeping with her eyes covered, and at times crawling on the ground in front of the coffin in an display of sorrow. At some funerals, she crawls for several meters as she weeps.

This never fails to move the mourners. As she wails, the family of the deceased sob, and some of them weep uncontrollably.

After the wailing is done, the second part of the funeral performance begins. Hu says that a funeral performance is usually sad in the beginning and happy at the end. Once sorrow has been released through tears, then the bereaved can temporarily forget their sorrow through skits and songs.

This segment was once the domain of the suona, drum, and Sichuan opera, but now it has developed into songs, skits, and even magic acts.

In Hu’s experience, in the countryside the second segment often involves a major traditional opera, but this is seldom seen in the city.

On this occasion, at the family’s request, she has cancelled the skits and just has a few singers sing songs.

Shortly after this segment begins, family members begin to leave. Hu and her band sing a few songs and then end their performance: “If the bereaved think it’s important, we will too. If they don’t care, we won’t care either.”

Income
Once the performance is completed, the request portion brings the band some additional income apart from their appearance fee

Before the July 7 funeral begins, the family pays Hu Xinglian, who puts the money away and continues her preparations. Hu says that fees usually run between 200 and 800 RMB (US$30-118) per performance.

Tonight the fee is 200 RMB. Taking out 70 RMB for the agency leaves the six members of the band with 130 RMB.

The agency fee is given to the wreath shop. Hu explains that as the industry has grown, shops selling funeral products, which engage the families of the deceased directly, have become middlemen for the bands. And as bands have become more numerous, wreath shops have developed into one-stop providers of all funeral-related services. The band is just one link in the shop’s comprehensive service chain.

Most of Hu’s business these days comes from the wreath shop.

In addition to the fee they charge for their performance, wailers receive gratuities. In Chongqing, once the wailing ceremony has concluded, the bereaved will pick up the wailer and hand over a bouquet that contains some money. In Chengdu, they put small red envelopes beside the wailer as the wailing is in progress.

Hu says that tips vary widely, from a few yuan to several hundred.

Zhu Yili, a digital video enthusiast in Chongqing who spent nearly three years shooting the documentary Professional Wailers (职业哭丧人), explained that most wailers make around seven or eight hundred RMB a month.

When the funeral performance concludes on the evening of July 7, it is time for the spectators to request songs. Hu changes into a floral dress and sings and dances with the performers on stage, to occasional cheers from the audience.

This segment is a money-maker for the band: it costs 20 RMB to request a song.

In Chongqing, bands reportedly rely on requests for most of their income. Bands in Chengdu rely more on performance fees. According to Zhang Jian (张建), who started a band in Shuangliu County, Chengdu, a performance costs a few thousand RMB, and depending on the band’s skill and reputation, it could top 10,000.

Zhang and his wife Jin Guorong (金国荣) started the band together. His wife is the wailer, known in the Chendgu dialect as the chuichuir (吹吹儿). He says they make around 2,000 RMB a month.

That evening, Hu Xinglian’s band makes 700 RMB on song requests. Every member gets 110 RMB, and after expenses, she is left with 130.

Joining Up
Divorced, looking after her parents and child on her own, Hu Xinglian could not support herself on her salesperson’s salary, so she began a second job as a wailer

It is already late when Hu Xinglian returns home. She collapses on the sofa and lies there motionless.

She says that the performance is draining to both mind and body. When she wails, she says, “My hands and feed twitch, my heart aches, and my eyes go dim.” Wailing has more lasting effects, too: Hu says that her hands have gone numb from time to time over the past year.

However, she is used to this sort of performance. According to her own count, she has wailed for more than 4,000 people. She no longer sheds tears when she wails, but lets her voice and expression do the work instead.

Typically, wailers will bring to mind their own experiences to make themselves cry. Professional wailer Jin Guorong says that the first time she performed she was scared of not being able to cry, but when she thought of how she was in the profession despite being afraid of dead people, and how difficult it had been to go into business for herself, she wept hysterically.

Hu Xinglian gathers her emotions together before she wails to look for something in the deceased’s story that resonates with her and connects to details of her own life. When she can’t cry, she will adopt a sobbing tone in her voice.

Hu says that for a wailer, sobbing, covering the face, and kneeling on the ground are all techniques to increase the effect of the performance.

She discovered this set of techniques after she entered the industry.

She used to be a shop assistant at a department store. She divorced in 1995 and had to take care of her college-aged son and her ailing parents. Her monthly income was less than 300 yuan. She worked as a sales clerk during the day, and at night she waited tables at a restaurant.

“I was usually pretty active, and I liked singing and dancing.” Hu says that on one occasion, a colleague had her sing at a funeral. She sang three songs and made 20 RMB.

That 20 RMB aroused her interest. She said to the band leader, “If you think I’ll work out, get in touch.” Then she began a second job as a singer.

She recalls that she was terrified the first time she performed. That night, her head was filled with mournful music and she did not sleep a wink. She had never attended a funeral before.

Zhu Yili explains that most of the people in this profession are laid-off workers.

Comparatively, the way that Zhang Jian and Jin Guorong got into the industry in Shuangliu Country, Chengdu, is a little more unusual.

In 1997, when their father died, they asked a band to perform. The MC rubbed his feet as he did the eulogy, something Zhang found intolerable. A band member told him that a performance could bring in 500 RMB, after expenses. Zhang and his wife had monthly salaries of just 200 RMB each, which they were not issued from time to time.

They decided to start a band of their own. At the time, the local Sichuan opera troupe had disbanded and the actors were selling breakfast or shining shoes on the street. Zhang found a few of them to join their band.

In Chongqing, Hu Xinglian was laid off in 2003, at which point she entered the funeral performance industry full-time as a professional wailer. “I had no other choice. It was the only thing I could do.”

The Profession
Peng Ying, a wailer, feels that some young entrants into the field do not respect the profession but are only there to complete a task and make money

Hu Xinglian has special wailer’s clothes of her own design. For the past few years, her costume has changed significantly.

She says that she has tried many new things since she started wailing. She has designed wailing clothing that copies costumes from TV dramas, and has created wailing songs by adding her own words to excerpts from traditional operas.

She hopes that people will remember her, and hopes that more people will request her.

Her first performance, in 2003, left a lasting impression. “I added some extra moves, like kneeling down.” The bereaved family was touched, and for her first performance, Hu received a tip of 50 RMB.

Bands also remember her: “That gets more of them to request me to perform.”

Many wailers refuse to sing “Weeping for Dad” (哭爹), even if the family offers them a thousand RMB or more, because that song is sung with the wailer taking the deceased as a father. Hu sings it. She says that she does not mind the stigma: “If it’s shameful, then why are you hiring us to do it?”

“Wailing is one item on the program of the entire performance. Since the band has accepted the money, we will work conscientiously, whether or not there’s a tip given.” Hu feels that wailers ought to respect the work they do.

Peng Ying (彭英), a 31-year-old Chengdu woman who has been in the business for more than a decade, said that wailing ought to be filled with emotion. She feels that some young practitioners do not respect the profession but are only there to complete a task and make money.

Peng entered the funeral performance field at the age of fifteen. Her family was not well-off, so when she graduated from junior high, her parents sent her to study the profession as an apprentice.

Jin Guorong and her band perform at a funeral

Today, most wailers do not accept apprentices, because each apprentice represents an additional competitor. Jin Guorong says that theirs is not a stable line of work.

She says that to cut down on costs, bands ask wailers to sing and to act in skits in addition to wailing.

Peng says that wailers have to have multiple skills in order to make money. Otherwise, they cannot support themselves.

Roles have to be changed quickly. Weeping is necessary during the wailing portion, but afterward they have to pull themselves together and enter another mode of performance, which might be a comic skit. “From tears to laughter, just like face-changing in a Sichuan opera.”

The bands do funerals in the evenings, but during the day they sometimes take on weddings. Most of them do their best not to let people know that they are wailers.

Hu says that because of the transitions between such high-intensity work, wailers are liable to make mistakes. For example, if the line “Would the new couple please enter the mourning hall” is let slip at a wedding, that mistake would mean the forfeiture of the fee, and a beating as well.

She has made similar mistakes, but has ultimately been able to force the sorrowful words to become joyful words, “muddling through by acting ignorant.”

Apart from wailing, Hu has also learned a number of other parts in the band. She has been a singer, MC, skit actor, and has even occasionally filled in as the drummer.

After she achieved fame in the industry, people came to ask for her specifically. She says that Shanxi Province is the farthest she has been hired to wail. Four Mercedes came to pick her up.

Life
During a program at a TV station, the guest said that she made money off the dead and had abandoned her integrity for cash. Hu Xinglian was extremely embarrassed

For many years, Hu Xinglian lived alone with only a pet dog as company.

She says that the hardest thing was the loneliness after going home. All she wanted to do every day was to tire herself out so that by the time she came home she would fall asleep immediately.

She felt she owed a debt to her son and strove to make money in an attempt to make it up to him on a financial level. He now runs a performing arts company and she is able to provide some financial assistance.

She has been divorced for fifteen or sixteen years. She remarried once, but her son fought with that man so she divorced again.

Zhu Yili says that when he was filming his documentary, he found that Hu Xinglian’s neighbors had practically no interaction with her at all. Hu used to live in an old home with a courtyard, and colleagues and acquaintances lived in the surrounding area. But no one had any interaction with her.

Hu says that she frequently sees people looking at her strangely, with “an expression that follows you from afar. Even though they don’t say anything, you can still feel it.”

In 2006, a television station invited her to appear on a chat show. A guest said that she was making money off the dead, that she had abandoned her integrity for cash, and that she was disseminating feudal customs.

She was extremely embarrassed at the time, and does not like to remember it.

Zhang Jian and Jin Guorong say that in their industry, resentment is hard to avoid. When they get together, friends who come over to greet them will frequently find some excuse to leave immediately. “I know that they don’t want to sit near us.”

Reportedly, women make up the majority of wailers, and their husbands are usually in the same profession. Peng Ying says, “Few people find an outsider. This way, work is more convenient, and it minimizes some of the hassles.”

“People look down on us, but we don’t look down on ourselves,” says Jin Guorong. “When we perform, we call each other by respectful titles. For example, the MC will say, ‘Let’s invite Teacher so-and-so to perform the next item on the program’.”

There is mutual support among people in the profession. In 2002, the funeral performance industry in Chongqing held a gathering of more than a hundred musicians to commemorate a saxophonist who died in a car crash. Many of the people who came did not know the deceased. Most of the musicians were laid-off workers.

However, Hu Xinglian feels that so long as the bereaved approve, and so long as she can make money to support her family, she figures she is a success. “Nothing else matters.”

The Future
As the industry becomes more regulated and competition becomes more fierce, Hu Xinglian feels that the market will be harder to handle, and she worries about the future

Hu Xinglian’s mother, who has coronary disease, has depended upon her for support for many years. Her mother says that Hu’s work is not easy. When she goes out, people sometimes praise Hu’s singing, and she feels proud.

Hu and her son are not on particularly good terms. She feels he does not understand her or respect her. She complains that he never comes to see her. She worries that there will be no one to look after her when she gets old.

Her son is a little offended. He says that he does in fact understand the difficulty of his mother’s job. He thinks she has a poor temper, and perhaps she has seen too many disrespectful children during her long time in that line of work, something that has led to her worries.

Jin Guorong, the professional wailer from Chengdu, does not have those worries. She says that her fifteen-year-old daughter understands her. When she wails, her daughter cries alongside her if she is present, and she knows that her mother does not have it easy.

In 2008, Hu Xinglian bought a 90 square meter apartment and had her mother move in with her.

Zhu Yili says that Hu is one of the top wailers, and that her fame and media attention (she cuts out clippings and adds them to the first page of her program listing as promotional material) sometimes can bring her 10,000 RMB a month.

But Hu says that her income is less than that, just 5,000-6,000 RMB. She says that she cannot afford old-age insurance and cannot meet medical insurance payments.

Hu worries about the future. She thinks that the market is becoming more and more difficult to navigate.

The funeral performance industry reportedly started to take off in Chongqing and Sichuan around 1995. In 1992, the city of Chongqing imposed a ban on fireworks, which left funerals lacking an important “ceremonial feel” and led indirectly to the rise of funeral performances. According to Chongqing media, the industry had nearly 100,000 practitioners at its height.

By 2002, Chongqing issued the Regulations on Management of Funeral Services, which did not permit bands to perform within the urban area. Urban funerals could be held in funeral halls (安乐堂, or “Halls of Comfort”) that were set up in each administrative district.

Hu says that this had a huge effect on the profession and led to the breakup of many bands. Subsequently, the industry was pushed to the margins, at the edge of the city or in rural towns and villages. In 2004, Hu considered partnering with a funeral hall, so she took the documentary and relevant media reports with her to offer her services. She would have to put up a 120,000 deposit, which she was unable to, “so I had to give up.”

Hu says that she once did 30 performances a month, but now does only 20.

She and Jin Guorong both face pressure from a contracting market that is receiving a continued influx of able new singers and dancers.

They both say that they have thought about switching professions, but they do not know what else they can do apart from carrying on.

Links and Sources

• The Beijing News (Chinese): The Joys and Sorrows of a Professional Wailer, Part I, Part II
• West China Metropolis Daily via Sina (Chinese): Female Lu Zhixin in Chengdu: wailing brings “filial results”
• City Life (渝州服务导报) via QQ (Chinese): Chongqing’s “Lu Zhixin”: the secrets of local professional wailers

Tags: funerals, The Beijing News

This article is from Danwei.org

Modern Express, July 23, 2010

Typhoons and flooding in the south are on many Chinese newspapers front pages today. The Modern Express, a regional paper owned by Xinhua and published in Zhejiang, reports that a five-storey high tree fell over in Nanjing, while in Changzhou a three-storey building collapsed. Other papers cover flooding and heavy rains along the Yangtze on their front pages.

The top headline of the paper is the government announcement of the next big gathering of the Party: the Fifth Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee will take place in Beijing in October. The aim of the meeting is to discuss China's 12th Five-Year Program (2011-2015).

New Life Post, July 22, 2010

Not a single newspaper has the Dalian oil spill in a prominent place on the front page, although yesterday, the Kunming newspaper New Life Post featured one of the by-now famous photos of two men drowning in the oil slick. One was rescued, the other died.

Most of the Beijing newspapers today front with a story on Beijing's population reaching the 20 million mark, of whom city officials say 12.4 million have a Beijing residence permit (hukou) while 7.26 million are migrants who have been in the city for more than half a year.

Links and Sources

• People's Daily: CPC Central Committee to convene plenary session on 2011-2015 development program (also report in Chinese)
• The China Daily: Beijing's population surges near 20 million

Tags: disasters, Modern Express, New Life Post, oil spill, population

This article is from Danwei.org

The poster for Aftershock. Source: China news

Today is the opening of Feng Xiaogang's Aftershock (唐山大地震), a tear-jerker of a movie, with the promoters hinting that there won't be a dry eye in the cinema.

Based on the big earthquake of Tangshan in 1976, Feng's wife Xu Fan plays a mother who has to choose which of her offsprings will live. The film is also the first I-MAX movie made out of the United States, and predicted to be a top box office smash.

The Liaoshen Evening News published an investigation into the commercial backing of the film, interviewing its producer on the Tangshan side, Yao Jianguo (姚建国):

The Tangshan side of the project expressed that it wanted to 'invite' first-rate directors from the mainland to direct the film, but as for how much capital to invest, they didn't have a full picture. At this point in time, the deputy director of the Film Bureau of SARFT, Zhang Hongsen (张宏森) gave Tangshan three different packages. They were:

• Invest 50 million yuan, use The Knot (云水谣) as the standard;
• Invest 1.2 hundred million yuan, use The Banquet (夜宴) as the standard;
• Invest 3 hundred million yuan, use The Day After Tomorrow and Red Cliff (赤壁) as the standard.

The team eventually chose the second offer. They had considered choosing Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige to direct the film, but when both directors were unavailable they turned to "Feng Xiaogang, who was good at using small characters to reflect real times, and made commercial New Year movies (贺岁电影)" based on the release of war movie The Assembly (集结号), which made him appear more serious.

At the end of the article there was a 'related links' section, which summed up the Chinese film industry in very plain terms:

High production rate: In one year China is able to make 500 films

Dong Gang (童刚), the director of the Film Bureau of SARFT, said that in the first half year this year China produced 288 films. This year the total production rate could reach 500. This figure is third in the world after India and America. (From Tianjin Daily)

Quite sad: The percentage of loss for Chinese films is 70%

The deputy manager of the big shot New Film Association, Gao Jun (高军), accepted an interview and said that most of the films in China are cutting a loss. This is true for the majority of the 20 films shown in June. For example, Love In Cosmos (摇摆de婚姻) stopped showing after not making 5 million yuan, Ocean Heaven (海洋天堂) will hardly make the 8 million yuan it spent on production, and it would be hard for Welcome to Shamatown (决战刹马镇) to make a profit on its 16 million yuan production and 8 million yuan running costs. "At the moment procedures should be taken to cool down the market." (From Dahe Daily)

Links and Sources

• Liaoshen Evening News via Xinmin (Chinese): Exposé on Aftershock: 60 million yuan government capital to promote Tangshan
• China Daily: Tangshan watches "Aftershock" with tears
• Earlier on Danwei: Boom times for Chinese film, but what comes next?, "What makes the most profit? Risk does." China Film Group CEO interview with Southern Weekly

Tags: Aftershock, IMAX

This article is from Danwei.org

Daily Sunshine, July 22, 2010

Song Shanmu’s (宋山木) detention period was extended one month while awaiting trial on a rape case for which he was arrested on May 21st. Song allegedly demanded a female employee to pose naked while he photographed her, and then used the photos as blackmail to force the employee to sleep with him.

Song Shanmu is the founder of Sun Moon Education Group, a multinational group training center with almost 300 branches in more than 20 cities including London and New York. Until recently, Song’s bearded grin could be seen on billboards around China.

Links and Sources

• ChinaSMACK: Sun Moon Education Group Founder Accused Of Rape
• Daily Sunshine (Chinese): Song Shanmu's detention extended one month

Tags: Daily Sunshine, rape, Song Shanmu

This article is from Danwei.org

July 1 marked the 89th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.

In this short video (viewable on Tudou), farmers take advantage of the Internet to accomplish an important project to mark the occasion. It has the feel of a viral ad done up in the style of a colorful piece of local news.

A transcript is below:

The past few years in our village, because of the party's good policies,
Every household has gotten rich.
July 1, the party's birthday, is nearly here,
Our village has decided on a special way
To offer birthday greetings to the party.

Everything from this part.
And everything from this part.

Our project requires the use of large quantities of reflective material.
In the past, you know, in such a short time,
Buying so much reflective material
Would be impossible.

But now there's 1688.com.
Everything is easy now.
By purchasing industrial material from 1688.com
Our project proceeded smoothly.

In the end, we finished before July 1.

[Earth image]: The Party's Policies are Yaxshi.

Yaxshi (or Yakexi 亚克西 in the Chinese transliteration) is a Uyghur word meaning "good" that came to prominence in a song-and-dance routine performed at this year's Spring Festival Gala (see China Geeks for more information).

So: is this video a viral ad for Alibaba (1688.com)? Apple? Google Maps? Or a parody of such viral ads that just happens to take a swipe at the image of simple farmers who love the party so much it hurts?

Tags: egao, spoofs, yakexi

This article is from Danwei.org

Yangtse Evening Post, July 21, 2010

Jiangsu's Yangtse Evening Post calls attention to the potential for rain in the evening. It also says that rain lowers temperatures by 10 degrees centigrade. However, tomorrow brings another hot day. The photo itself was actually taken the day before at Nanjing Xinjiekou at 3:40pm.

Main news items are listed on the side column:

• The first showing of Aftershock (the film about the 1976 Tangshan earthquake by Feng Xiaogang) is at 12 midnight tonight.
• Actor Sun Honglei sues an imitation biography.
• A white baby girl is born to a black couple.

Another interesting headline is related to the ongoing Bawang Group Chinese herbal shampoo scandal. The license for the product is shared with a product called Litao anti-hair loss shampoo (丽涛防脱洗发液), a product that had already expired, according to the State Food and Drug Administration website.

The original report, made by a National Business Daily journalist, also interviewed someone who works inside the Administration:

The main reason that the Administration can't "officially approve" the product is because they can't verify its special ability. In the fax published by the Bawang Group stating its original license it really did say that "the Ministry of Health did not organize the verification of the abilities of the product, and this license doesn't not recognize the effect that the product claims to have.

In other words, Bawang Group's shampoos, which claim that it could turn hair black using only natural herbal ingredients, were not approved by the relevant State bodies to begin with. In other myth-busting news, an article in China Entrepreneur Magazine calls into question Bawang's claim that it is a 'golden family of Chinese medicine with one hundred years of history' (百年的'中药世家'). One reason: the company was set up in 1989, according to the article.

Links and Sources

• Yangste Evening Post (Chinese): Bawang 'borrows' license number from Litao
• China Entrepreneur Magazine (Chinese): Bawang's 'golden Chinese medicine family' status in doubt

Tags: Bawang, Chinese medicine, Nanjing, rain, Yangtse Evening Post

This article is from Danwei.org

The CCTV program that follows the evening Network News (新闻联播), Topics in Focus (焦点访谈), recently discussed the shocking phenomenon of bar hostesses, or 'sex industry workers,' wearing military uniforms.

The program was an investigation into the use of '07-issued uniform' (07式军服) among civilians, a practice that is illegal. It was exposed, according to Topics in Focus, in April this year, when some dodgy-looking bosses were discovered wearing the '07-issued uniform.' They turned out to be purchasing the clothes, putting name tags on them, and giving them to their staff to wear.

Another trade utilizing the uniforms is the sex industry. Bar hostesses were filmed in a show wearing military gear from the air force, navy, and army.

On July 12, a post on the iFeng forum shows stills from a parade in Dongguan, where ladies of the industry pose in nurse and army uniforms.

Links and Sources

• OhMyMedia! via Izaobao: Sex workers wear '07-issued uniform' to greet guests
• iFeng forums: Hard to believe! In broad daylight, a hotel in Dongguan show off hostesses
• Chongqing Evening News via Sina (Chinese): Topics in Focus exposé: hookers greet clients in military uniforms
• Earlier on Danwei: Dodgy CCTV journalism and map clampdown

Tags: CCTV, Dongguan, military, sex work, uniform

This article is from Danwei.org

Daily Sunshine, July 20, 2010

There's not much that's sunny about the front page of today's Daily Sunshine:

Jia Baoyu is angry: Yu Xiaotong (于小彤), who plays the young Baoyu on the new TV adaptation of The Dream of Red Mansions, got into a scuffle with a spectator at a promotional event held in Suzhou. The paper quotes the spectator:

During the event, Director Li mentioned repeatedly how this adaptation is faithful to the original, and she trumpeted how this is the most complete adaptation of Red Mansions ever filmed. I've loved Red Mansions for years, and I couldn't hold back the truth: "Li Shaohong, you've sullied a classic!" Then the Yu Xiaotong, who plays the young Baoyu, who had come out a hundred meters, suddenly turned around and grabbed my collar: "What's that? Say it again" and then the hit me. I was about to reason with him, but then a group from the crew came out and surrounded me, supposedly to mediate but in actuality to "escort" Yu Xiaotong from the scene and away from the photographers.

However, the emcee of the event tells a different story:

Chen Yongzhou says...as it was about to conclude, a man in glasses stood atop a rock and shouted crude language, "the basic meaning was that Li Shaohong had sullied a classic, and the production team should get lost." This angered "young Baoyu," who charged forward to argue with that audience member. "The staff quickly came up to intercede, and from my vantage point I didn't see any shoving," Chen Yongzhou said. "At the time, I wondered whether this had all been arranged by someone."

Vegetable prices rise again: The CPI increased 3.8% in June; the price of vegetables, fruit, and nuts in Shenzhen rose anywhere from 12.4% to 19.8%.

Guangzhou to continue restricting traffic: On July 18, the city tried out a traffic reduction policy in preparation for the Asian Games: cars with license plates ending in an odd digit are only allowed to drive on odd-numbered days; even digits are allowed on even-numbered days. Over the course of nine hours on the first day of the trial, the city issued 6,352 tickets to violators, 70% of whom were from outside of Guangzhou. Many Shenzhen drivers arrived in Guangzhou unaware that their cars would be ticketed.

Floods in Sichuan: The old town of Guang'an in Sichuan Province is underwater. Flood waters have reached the Three Gorges Dam.

Shanghai Volkswagen General Manager killed in auto accident: Liu Jian and three other high-ranking managers of the automaker were killed near Jiuquan, Gansu Province, on Saturday when their car collided with a truck. Neither vehicle had license plates.

Links and Sources

• Daily Sunshine (Chinese): Young Baoyu gets mad
• Xinhua: Shanghai Volkswagen General Manager dies in car accident

Tags: Daily Sunshine, Red Mansions

This article is from Danwei.org