to help the victims of the sichuan earthquake, postcrossing is raising donations which will be sent to the red cross society of china. as a bonus, we will send a set postcards to the first 100 people who donate over 15 US dolars or 10 euros.

the postcards are part of a set called “no man’s view” by chinese photographer phoebe jin who kindly offered the packs to postcrossing. “no man’s view” is a collection of 25 photographic postcards, with images in black and white or muted colors, taken in china and abroad.

all help is appreciated. thank you!

during today’s chinese class, 2:30pmish:

me - teacher, can we stop a bit? i’m feeling dizzy.
heidi - me too, strange.

a little silence followed, while we realized that the whole apartment on 31st floor was gently swaying back and forth.

heidi - is it an earthquake?
me - hum, you’re probably right.

scary mixed feelings: the urgency of getting cover and feeling safe ground, the panic of being too high to reach safe ground quickly, the fear of the building just collapsing on us (i don’t think many of the buildings in shanghai would resist a serious earthquake).

so after a bit of hesitation, we got our shoes on, ran downstairs and rested a bit in the park until we felt calmer… and eavesdropped on passerby’s who seemed to have either felt it too and seen the buildings moving - or not felt it at all.

i ended up canceling the rest of the class because afterwards i didn’t feel too safe up there and took a taxi towards a coffeeshop on nanjing. the driver had heard about the earthquake on the radio, but didn’t feel anything and proceeded to reassure me that in shanghai, earthquakes were very rare.

good.

description on the back:

It’s amazing to me that a society which has mastered the concept of fire is capable of making a film this bad.

Too insipidly, cloyingly cutesy to be edge, too crass, juvenile and vulgar to be cute, and not funny enough to be either. Additionally, there is not one single iota of genuine wit, emotion, or originality in even one frame of this odious film.

It’s as if someone took “At first sight”, “Daredevil”, “My big fat greek wedding” and “Bend it like Beckham” (among others) and threw them in a blender. Worse than that the film is insulting to every group it portrays: blind people, Italian-American, African-American, Indian-Americans, limousine drivers, therapists. Even the portrayal of prostitutes is somehow beneath the dignity of the profession.

The ludicrous, predictable plot would be easily forgivable. After all, this is a romantic comedy. We’re here to have fun and feel good.

what would your reaction be, if the movie you were about to pick had this (brilliant) synopsis? :D

“…those concerns about China’s human rights are legitimate and justified, but this is not the right time to over blow it into serious confrontation. …… to highlight these problems in the run up to the Olympics is inappropriate. It’s like on your daughter’s graduation ceremony, one of your friends tries to point out the fact that she is actually three months pregnant and doesn’t know who is the baby’s father.”

Great analogy! Unfortunately though, there are a whole bunch of people who are absolutely determined to use this moment to bring their concerns about Tibet, Darfur, human rights etc etc to the attention of the world. They see this as their only opportunity to exert pressure on Beijing and not only will laugh and point and catcall at your daughter, they’ll claim to have impregnated her themselves if it gets people to take notice.

again, from the time: blog.

Hmmmm……. I think for once, I’ll leave it to the Xinhua to say it for me. Here’s part of a recent editorial from China’s official news service:

“We are on our way to becoming a powerful country, and we should also learn to think like citizens of a big country. A strong country not only has a strong economy, but also a mature mentality. This includes the ability to take pressure in stride, and face difficulties in a rational way.”

seen on the Time: China blog. go ahead and read the whole post, for some insight on the “high emotions” running in china these days.

we’re fine, i’m calmer, so don’t worry. after some reasoning, i believe people in shanghai are more well informed than in other more rural places, not to mention simply too busy to be making any riots. and my window view of the beach themed carrefour assures me it is still in the same place.
i’ve read that the government has finally taken some action by enforcing restrictions to stop the access to sites that instigate riots and boycotts, as well as blocking sms that have sensible content.

finally.
how naive of them to let this anti-western sentiment spread this far on the eve of the olympic games (when thousands of foreigners are expected in china) and especially knowing that they went through a very similar situation with anti-japanese protests not so long ago.

shanghaiist published today the story of an american volunteer teacher that was attacked last sunday, when exiting carrefour on zhuzhou (hunan). below is the letter sent by one of his colleagues to the media:

Last night [Editor’s note: Sunday, Apr 20] around 7pm my friend was attacked by a mob of about 150 people outside the Carrefour in Zhuzhou, Hunan (near his placement site). When leaving Carrefour some of the crowd started shouting at him and he tried to say he didn’t have anything to do with the Olympics, but 3 men started to push him and then he was hit in the back of the head at least 3 times.
He started to run, and the mob chased him. He jumped into a cab, but the mob surrounded the car and started shaking and rocking it. The cab driver was shouting at him to get out. Then they started hitting the car. The crowd was shouting “kill him! kill the Frenchman.” He called the Field Director while in the back of the car. The cab driver abandon the car when he saw police coming.
Two police made there way though the mob and managed to drive the cab away. The Field Director alerted the Director Shu of the Hunan Department of Education. The police got him another cab and he took it from Zhuzhou to the field director’s home in Changsha. He spending the night here in Changsha and is likely leaving China as soon as possible.

[My colleague] is only 22, an American (not French), and a volunteer teacher. He graduated from Boston Collage less than 10 months ago. If he can be attacked anyone can be. The situation in central china is becoming much worse very quickly. James has been cut up pretty badly by the glass and the people trying to grab him.

I didn’t think the situation and protests were anything to worry about before now, but if the mob had gotten him outside of the cab he could have easily been killed.

Foreigners need to be more aware that this is a real danger and MUCH more careful around the protests here in central china.

Im also sending this letter to the embassy.
People need to be more much careful.

me too, i also hadn’t given these boycotts and protests much thought. now? honestly, as a caucasian-big-eyed-easy-to-spot foreigner, i feel threatened.

i find myself mentally rewinding stupid sentences in mandarin, such as “i’m not french, i’m portuguese, portugal gave macau to china, so we’re friends!”. as if i could tame the stupidity of a mob with my impressive mandarin skills. both sad and pathetic. *sigh*

here’s hoping the olympics come and go quickly. 125 days left.