Yet more evidence for Chinese people’s penchant for donning furry outfits has popped up on the web. However, tastes have evolved somewhat and people are no long content with just imitating pandas.

Two members of staff at Chengdu Zoo, southwest China, recently wore tiger costumes and took part in a safety drill aimed at teaching staff what to do should a tiger ever escape its cage one day.

The men in tiger costumes skulked about menacingly (or as about as menacing as one can be when wearing a Tigger suit) on two feet

and prowled in bushes,

before being cornered, prodded with sticks

 and finally carried off on a stretcher in full view of bemused real tigers.

Obviously a human in a costume is far less dangerous, more compliant and predictable than a confused and angry 650 lb beast with claws and teeth that would make you weep/soil yourself.

So whether these tactics would actually be effective on a snarling live tiger, as opposed to a man in a Tigger costume remains to be seen…

Incisors, talons and sensibilities aside, it was obviously more of a publicity stunt than a proper training drill (surely…? Because don’t zoos have to evacuate visitors if a carnivorous animal escapes?) and actuallyan idea that was insprired by Japan’s Ueno Zoo.

Earlier this year at a Japanese zoo

(Photos from The Daily Mail and 163.c0m)

a)      Listen to music

b)      Play computer games

c)      Do some exercise 

d)     Hit inanimate objects

It would appear that the latter choice is more popular among students at Anhui University in Anhui province. According to Xinhua, Anhui University has just installed a relaxation room that is more psychiatric cell than recreation room.

There are no sofas, CD players or ping-pong tables, just padded walls and soft objects. Oh, and rods to pummel the objects with.

Students are ‘released’ into the relaxation room and allowed to open a can of whoopass on defenceless, vaguely human shaped soft objects.

It was too much for some

The press photos are somewhat reminiscent of Bandura et al’s infamous study with Bobo Dolls and angry tots…

Bandura observed kids who had witnessed an adult getting rough with a Bobo doll.

What the university is hoping to actually achieve with this room is still unclear. Higher test scores or more pacified students perhaps? Who knows… 

A quick picture snapped last night – I was trying not to freeze as I fiddled with my camera settings.

It turns out the snow was technology induced. Chinese meteorologists often seed the clouds with silver iodide to make it rain or snow via a process known as cloud seeding. It started in China during the Olympics to help clear away pollution.

It was carried out in October 2009 to bring forth rain, but it actually caused a large snow storm and winter fell down on Beijing a good month earlier than it should have done. 

Cloud seeding is done all over the world, first being used in the US in 1946. Of course, in a country where size really does matter, the largest cloud seeding system in the world is in China. Personally, I’m quite sure the long term consequences of playing Mother Nature will outweigh the short term benefits. We won’t know for sure whether it would have snowed in Beijing naturally or not. If it wouldn’t have, then they are effectively taking moisture out of the air that would have fallen as rain in another region. It’s sure to turn into a vicious cycle.

And anyway, all this controlling the weather and making it snow reminds me of:

Mr Freeze

There’s been a blip in my blogging again. About 10% was due to inertia (it’s addictive), about 15% was due to a manic workload and deadlines, and the remaining 75% can be attributed to the inconvenience of Wordpress being blocked and only accessible with a VPN.

Anyway, I came across this vampire themed bar tucked into a traditional Chinese hutong. The owner has a penchant for romantic vampire films and series like Twilight and The Vampire Diaries, and sees them as romantic creatures of the night, rather than narcissistic psychopaths or grotesque monsters.

I took some snaps:

The entrance to The V

The bar serves up 'blood group' cocktails

The bar also serves up a coffin shaped chocolate cake

Bar owner, Ye Jia

The V isn’t the only vampire-themed-bar-type-thing in Beijing, first came Vampire in Beijing.

A vampire-themed-bar-type-thing on Gulou Dongdajie (close to where The V is). Vampire in Beijing sells what appears to be blood, zombie blood and poison (Psst: actually it’s just fruit juice). The owner is more into old school vampire culture rather than the lovely-dovey stuff that’s come with the recent ressurgence.

Vampire in Beijing fruit juice vampire blood stall

China does have it’s own type of vampires, called Jiang shi 僵尸, which were made popular by Hong Kong vampire-kung fu flicks like Mr Vampire (watch it). Jiang shi hop, rather than walk, kill humans by sucking out their qi (not their blood). Their bodies continue decomposing after they’ve died and they’re not known to communicate verbally, making them more like zombies than vampires. They certainly aren’t accustomed to coping with complex emotions like love. 

A typical Jiangshi

The V, 42 Wudaoying Hutong, Beijing. 五道营胡同42号

Vampire in Beijing, 109-3 Gulou Dongdajie, Beijing.  鼓楼东大街109-3

The Ngram Viewer is a visualisation tool that acts like a literary time machine by letting you trace the usage of a word in books over the past five centuries. It’s pretty simply to use. You enter a word or phrase (up to five words), the tool displays a graph charting how frequently your term has appeared in books stored in the Google’s digital library over a certain period of time.

I ran ‘Orwellian’ throught the database. You can see that Orwellian started being used around 1948, just after publication of Orwell’s 1984. Use of the word rose steadily over the years, leveling off in the 70s and then rising sharply to a peak actually during 1984 and remaining more or less there for the next two decades.

You can enter multiple terms to compare their popularity. For example, China Hearsay input ‘Peking’ and ‘Beijing’.

Peking is the old English name for Beijing, which was thought to have originated with French missionaries and traders in the 16th century. There’s a general question mark hanging over where exactly the name ‘Peking’ came from as it’s pretty different to ‘Beijing’. Seeing as Cantonese was likely to be the first Chinese dialect that the traders came across, as most trade and contact with China occured in the south of the country, it’s thought that ‘Peking’ is the result of foreigners trying to prounounce the Cantonese for Beijing, Bak-ging, and failing. At some point in history, the name Peking became dated and was replaced by Beijing by English speakers. Here is what China Hearsay had to say about the graph:

Note the two most interesting data points during this period. The first is around 1949. You can see that the blue line (“Peking”) takes off at that point as English-language sources started talking a whole lot about what was going on in China after the PRC was founded.

The second comes around the mid-1970s when I believe the Chinese government itself started pushing use of “Beijing” by foreigners/English speakers. You can see how the red line (“Beijing”) takes off at that point.

Finally, it was sometime in the mid-1980s when use of “Beijing” in English surpassed that of “Peking” in the Google corpus of books. It would be interesting to know whether usage in the mainstream media followed the same general pattern or switched over to “Beijing” earlier/later.

Interesting stuff. It was also during the mid-80s that China really started to enforce its official name on all flights, sea routes and official documents written in English. Whether English speakers should use Peking or Beijing when talking about the Chinese capital is still debated today .

Seeing as it was a slow day at work, I spent most of the day playing around with the gadget and throwing about more China related words. The graph produced for variations of Chairman Mao’s name is fairly interesting and probably follows a similar explanation to the Peking/Beijing graph above. However, I was surprised to see Mao Zedong surpass Chairman Mao in usage and to see interest in Mao peak again in the mid-90s.

I wish I had more insight regarding why the Chairman Mao line looks like a cat. The word for cat is also mao猫, but pronounced in the first tone, whereas mao毛 is pronounced in the second tone. The connection between Chairman Mao and cats has been noted before, but is still rather mysterious…

Pandas was another obvious choice. I just thought, ‘Oh what the hey, I have two consecutive panda posts, why not do another one and make it a panda hat trick, then stop talking about pandas?’ 

The graph does reflect the representation of pandas in the collective consciousness of the west. Just 150 years ago westerners had never seen or heard of a panda. That all changed around the 1860s when a Armand David, a French priest and part time zoologist, was first shown a cute, but dead panda in China. He returned home with the fur of this “most excellent black-and-white bear” and this sparked interest in the panda in the west. In the 1930s there was a bout of pandamania after a panda named Su Lin was captured and taken to Chicago’s Brooklin zoo.

In the 50s and 60s pandamania picked up again as the panda emerged as a national treasure in China and political image in China. It became the face the WWF in 1961 and therefore an image for conservation world-wide.

In the 70s the panda line starts to climb again. This was a time when panda diplomacy was at it’s highest – China loaned many panda’s to zoos in western countries, marking  the PRC’s first cultural exchanged with the west. President Nixon was gifted with two pandas in 1972 and this prompted the UK Prime Minister, Edward Heath, to request a pair for London zoo in 1974.

From there on, the line shows a massive increase in panda popularity, possibly due to China playing an increasingly important role on the world stage and still using the panda as a mascot, as well an a huge increase in panda conservation and breeding in China and the ongoing collaboration between the Chinese government and the WWF.

So there we are, Chinese pop history visualised in abstract graph form - things always seem more important in graph form don’t they? Sure, the Ngram Viewer is not hugely scientific and unlikely to be entirely accurate as Google’s corpus only contains 4% of all the books ever written, but it’s fun if you’re a nerd, a bookworm or a history buff.

The image graced the front page of the December 17th copy of the Southeast Business and was picked up by Danwei. 

The text beside the photo reads: “That’s really dangerous, you know, dear?’

Initially I suspected that this was perhaps someone paying homage to the recent photos of researchers donning panda costumes (maybe he was on his way to a nature reserve to take a baby panda’s temperature) or that it was simply done to grab attention. However, according to the report who captured the image in Ningbo, the wearer simply donned the ridiculous outfit because he was cold.

“Mr. Wen, a 27-year-old from Anhui, has been working in Ningbo for five months. The panda suit is one he used last year in a promotional campaign for a Jiangsu-based business, and it cost him 400 yuan. He told the reporter that the weather was too cold, so he wore panda outfit, which was quite warm.”

Sure, it’s practical in one way, but it’s also fairly impratical  dangerous as well:

“The reporter reminded him, sure, it may be warm, but its visibility is poor, making it hard to see on either side, so it is far too dangerous!”

However, his excuse was probably just nonsense anyway. The evidence is mounting, and I think it is safe to assume that Chinese people just love to dress up as pandas whenever they get the chance.

'Chinese people dressed as giant pandas to celebrate the panda being chosen as one of the mascots of Beijing 2008 Olympics on November 11, 2005' - I'm sure there was a way to celebrate this that didn't involve people having to dress up as pandas and sticking their bodies out the top of moving vehicles.

On first glance, I thought they were photos from some weird Chinese reality TV show, but actually they are photos documenting an essential part of China’s ambitious strategy to reintroduce captive-bred Giant Pandas back into the wild. The researchers are arguing that for the baby panda to be successfully reintroduced into nature, no human influence must enter the cub’s environment, otherwise it may get too tame. A previously re-introduced panda named Xiang xiang was found dead just 10 months after being released in the wild, having been killed by other wild pandas.

So the researchers’ new strategy is to don panda suits when they take the captivity-born cubs for a medical examination, so that they do not get used to the human form.

What the baby panda makes of this is anybody’s guess. Perhaps the cub has picked up on the general stench of human or the fleshy human paw poking out from under the costume of its kidnapper, or maybe it hasn’t…

The poster was an army recruitment advert. The text says, 选择军营，无悔一生 – xuanze junying, wuhui yisheng – ‘Choose the army and your life will have no regrets,’ is basically what it means. It seems like the artist wasn’t convinced.

At a first glance it may seem like no big deal, ‘So what? Someone disrespects an army poster… Big deal.’ But in a country where the public still holds its military in such high regard; where the government celebrates its 60 year anniversary by staging the biggest military parade the world has ever seen;

Tanks holding nuclear weapons roll past The Forbidden City

and where tanks with armed guards were placed on the road in the run up to that military parade …

Photo taken at Dongsishitiao Subway, Beijing in September 2009 (for the weeks running up to the militar parade this tanks like this were stationed around the city).

… it’s a fairly unusual sight.

Censorship in China is frustrating to say the least. The government blocks any websites that it deems unsuitable for it’s citizens. One way the government censors the internet is by blocking sites entirely, such as youtube, facebook and twitter. Censorship in China is also based on keywords – if a website contains a black listed word, then the site automatically becomes blocked. Search terms that reference black listed words such as the Falun Gong movement and the protests in 1989; Tibet and independence; concepts related to democracy and political protest; and certain parts of the human anatomy… all result in web page that looks like this:

For some obscure reason, IMDB is blocked (again) on the mainland.

The blocking of the English language media is still less prevailant than the blocks imposed on Chinese language articles containing similar ‘harmful information.’ Chinese people are well aware of the blocks. And who wouldn’t be with helpful little characters like these guys to remind you?

Jingjing and Chacha are watching you.

The citizens of Shenzhen were lucky enough to have the chance to become acquainted with Jingjing 警警 and Chacha 察察 (when jing警 and cha察 are combined they create the word for ‘Police’ – jingcha 警察). The two cartoon characters were created to remind them not to search for sensitive information online. The local authorities clearly felt no need to disguise the characters by literally naming them, ‘Police,’ or ‘PoPo and Lice-Lice’ to make it sound cuter (a rhyming two syllable words is the a traditional way of expressing affection for children in China).

The Chinese government, places much stress on the need to create a “harmonious society”. However, the slogan has become internet slang to stand for censorship – to say “that website has been harmonized” is to say “that website has been censored”. Netizens in China occasionally rise up against the frustrating blocks using means that seem abstract to the average westerner. Earlier this year World of Warcraft fans pitched together and made an hour long film, using WoW in-game video, ridiculing the government’s attempt to ‘harmonize’ the internet in China in response to the forced installation of ‘Green Dam Youth Escort‘ software.  Netizens are also familiar with what technology to use in order to circumnavigate the censors and will use proxy servers and VPNs.

Whilest knowledge of these tool is widespread, there is less of an appetite for them than one might expect. A study carried out by Zuckerman et al, suggests that still only a very small proportion of netizens use VPNs and other software to circumnavingate censors in countries like China. The inconvenice of first finding and then logging onto a free English language vpn, which may also slow down their connection speed or make them drop offline periodically, and having friends using Chinese-language government-monitored alternatives to social networking sites may result in only a small number of netizens spending the time to navigate their way through the censors.

Recent comments from Google that ”the Chinese government is only becoming more entrenched in its attempts to control the internet,” make the future seem rather bleak. However, some rather unusual noise has been emited from with the CCP in the form of an open letter calling for an end to press censorship, with backing from the CCP Premier, Wen Jiabao (second in power to leader Hu Jintao). The letter was published online on October 11th. However, just like Wen Jiabao’s words on political reform and freedom of speech during a CNN interview, this letter didn’t reach many on the mainland and was subsequently ‘harmonized’. 

Wen Jiabao gets censored by the Central Propaganda Department

The irony of a member of the CCPs inner circle being repeatedly censored for speaking out about freedom of speech has not been lost on Chinese netizens, whose admiration for Premier Wen has now grown. It also suggests the power of Central Propaganda ‘Publicity’ Department (中共中央宣传部) in China if the CCP’s own premier can be silenced. For now only time will tell what the future holds for censorship in China.

I feel like this year we took advantage of the summer by taking some small hiking trips out into Beijing’s outskirts. The first one we took was to the well know Fragrant Hills 香山. More like mountains than hills, the Fragrant Hills are in all the guide books and most tourists in Beijing manage to make a visit. However, despite having been here nearly 2 years, I’d never been.

The park entrance

Although metropolitan Beijing is as flat as a pancake, the city boasts a fine range of mountains around its northern and western horizons. The Fragrant Hills mark the beginning of the Western Mountain range and are the closest to Beijing.

Originally built for the emperor in 1186, the park complex was given an upgrade in 1745 and expanded. And then in 1860 it was destroyed by British troops and then in 1900, it was destroyed by the Eight-Nation Alliance (of which Britain was a part of). Many of the relics that were destroyed have not been restored and are left as reminders of the humiliation at the hands of foreign powers.

Surviving archway to the Bright Temple

The Bright Temple was built in 1780 as a place for the 6th Panchen Lama to stay during his visits to Beijing. Obviously it was burned down a century later.

The outside of the Bright Temple

Although the outside of the temple appears fairly intact, the inside tells a different story.

The inside of the compound was burnt down and a European style mansion was erected inside.

This pagoda, however, seemed to be one of the few relics that didn’t get torched by British troops.

Zongjing Pagoda

We continued up the peak. It was a face-meltingly hot day and climbing the steps in the midday sun was pretty tough. We passed lots of half relics that had been destroyed over one hundred years ago

and reached the peak.

View on the peak

The relics that were destroyed are left as reminders of what a world conquering savages Britannia was in the 1800 and early 1900s. I was aware of the destruction caused during the Opium War, but not really the full extent. The knowledge I had was all gleamed from independent reading, rather than being something I was taught at school. 

Despite its sobering history, the park isn’t a depressing place and is a great place to flee to when you want to escape the congested and completely flat streets.

Faced with the prospect of having to walk down the knee shatteringly steep mountain, we bailed and took the open air cable car.

The sign warned us not to 'geff off' - here was also where a hidden camera snapped an unflattering picture of people the riding the cable car.

The road leading away from the park was dotted with food stalls and tourist shops, as well as adorable cats and dogs enjoying the late afternoon sun.