rogerluli

http://www.chinacarforums.com/forum/showth...3493&page=2

Now here is something one can really sink their teeth into...

I'll just add about the living in a totalitarian state question...We plan to live in China continuously for 5 years and then return for vacations afterward...Would I ever consider renouncing my American citizenship so that I could become a PRCC??? I do not even want my wife to return there to live without the protections of US citizenship...

Ai Weiwei's blog comment is based on the June 4, 1989 Massacre but it is really about much more...It is about living in a totalitarian state... Why would I buy houses in such a place??? I'm in it for the money...

One day in a 5000 year + history, forgotten no, most important maybe not. tradegy yes. every country has them. B)

Let us forget about June 4th, forget this ordinary day. Life has taught us, under totalitarianism, every day is the same. Every day in a totalitarian society is one day, there is no ¡®other day¡¯, no ¡®yesterday¡¯ or ¡®tomorrow¡¯. We no longer need partial truth, we don¡¯t need partial justice or partial fairness. Without freedom of speech, without freedom of news, without freedom of elections, we are not people, we do not need to remember. Lacking the right to remember, we choose to forget. Let us forget every instance of persecution, every instance of humiliation; every massacre and every cover-up, every lie, every time we are pushed down, every death. Forget every moment of suffering, then forget every moment of forgetting. This is all just so that they, like ¡®men of honor¡¯, might ridicule us. Forget those soldiers who fired on civilians, those students whose bodies were crushed by the treads of tanks, the whistle and scream of bullets and blood on big streets and in the alleyways; a city and a Square without tears. Forget the interminable lies, the rulers hoping everyone has forgotten, forget their cowardess, their evil and ineptitude. We must forget, for they must be forgotten. Only when they¡¯ve been forgotten can [we] exist. For the sake of existing, let us forget. http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2009/06/ai-we...-let-us-forget/

Yuck, yuck, yuck...I fooled you on this one good buddy...Yacheng is the sleepiest little burg imaginable and yet it's only 40 km west of Sanya...I just love this video... See if you can spot the cop sitting down eating doughnuts until he realizes he's on candid camera and starts making his rounds... okay, well there is a tourist site next to it called Yazhou Gucheng. A youtube link? youtube is blocked in china, and accessing it through a proxy takes forever! just out of curiousity, is your wife a US citizen now, and you're back living in China? Nope we're still in the US...Laopo is SUPPOSED to be studying for the citizenship thinmgie but I haven't actually observed her cracking the book... I have just a hair over 4 years to go until retirement and then we'll see you on Hainan...

Ah people are always saying to me "Roger why do you want to live in sleepy little towns like Yuxi and Qionghai when you could be stylin' in places like Guangzhou or Beijing"...HAHA you think nothing ever happens in these places...Check this out... http://i41.tinypic.com/214npd2.jpg A 20 kg African tortoise that has grown from just .25 kg in just 4 years. The critter is a pet of a family in Qionghai although I wonder when its' the right size for soup... But seriously on the big town vs small town thinmngie...It's like my buddy HD said to me the other day when we were out walking around his pond... "I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion"...That HD sure has a way with words...

Yuck, yuck, yuck...I fooled you on this one good buddy...Yacheng is the sleepiest little burg imaginable and yet it's only 40 km west of Sanya...I just love this video... See if you can spot the cop sitting down eating doughnuts until he realizes he's on candid camera and starts making his rounds...

Now just why would I care to click that link? Could it possibly be something I'd be interested in? I'm not curious enough to try it. If I may be permitted to interpret the Don's meaning... Too many people just post a link and think that's a thread... Whaddya mean I've done that too??? But seriously a link is ever so much more effective if you tell us something about what's going on... In this case both the title and the link told us...ZIP... So many fewer people are going to bother to look at it even if it was something really good... Good threads require some work from the threader... B)

Actually Roger I read the account in China Daily on May 21 and it was featured online as one of the top stories that day. I look at China Daily online every morning. What I find interesting too...in addition to your comments ... is the link in the Australian version that the riots somehow are related to possible protests over upcoming anniversary of Tinnemmann Square .... Evidently Nanjing was a center of protest in 1989 also...

Howdy Cuz...Gude to see you back or half back or whatever... But seriously would you be willing to tell my wife how rich I am???

And pretty soon (2010) we're gonna' get the choo-choo... and then the plane... But the wife reports that there still is not one single big modern supermarket... I keep telling her that with the pace of development there that there will probably be several before we are living there in 4 years...When we first started looking at Qionghai in 2005 there was one lonesome housing development listed on Soufun...When we bought our first place in 2006 there were seven...today there are more than 50 spread over the area from the hot springs area in the western part of Qionghai to the coast at Boao in the east... Say there Waingro... B) What do y'all know about Yacheng???

Everyone can only hope this attitude spreads...(from the China Daily article) "The fact that the area of urban construction has become a hotbed of corruption involving government officials is a clear pointer to the reason why local government leaders are so enthusiastic in urban construction projects. Though it is the third largest economy, China is still a developing country, and our per capita GDP is still far behind many developed countries. There is no reason for us to demolish buildings or bridges or any other structure still in sound quality just for the sake of building new ones. Even if our fast growing economy makes our country the richest in the world in the future, we will have no reason to squander our money on unnecessary construction projects. Frugality has been a virtue in our tradition. It is of even more importance to be thrifty now when sustainable development has been made the basis for the country's development."

I couldn't agree more to both points...It doesn't take long in reading Chinese netizen's comments to realize how unhappy they are with the endemic corruption of many local officials...Imagine how much greater a country China would be if everyone felt they were governed in a fair and impartial manner... As to the differences in the stories...I found The Australian version first and then had to dig to find the account on China Daily...So yes they do seem to take a hard line against this kind of thuggery but they are not going out of their way to point it out...

We watched a feature about this on Chinese TV...You feel that sometimes the death penalty is not quite enough... http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-05...ent_7934209.htm

Wowa things are sure hot in Nanjing these days...Violent protests are as thick as fleas on a hound dog...Now it's the TRAFFIC POLICE getting into the act...In case you didn't know being a member of the traffic police in China is simply a license to be an extortionist... Officers sacked after violent street protestBy Hu Yinan (China Daily) Updated: 2009-05-22 10:02 Comments(5) PrintMailThree traffic police assistants have been sacked after they sparked a mass protest in which one thousand people poured onto the streets and officers were pelted with bricks. The incident began in Baiyin city, Gansu province, between traffic police and a cyclist who officials say "failed to stop" at a red light around noon. According to an anonymous eyewitness, the traffic police and their assistants "pulled Zhang Bing off his bike and beat him until blood was all over his face." Zhang only quarreled with the police when they tried to take him away to wash off the blood, the source said on China News Net. In the Baiyin government's version of events, Zhang is a jobless 21-year-old who "agitated the crowd by jumping onto a police car, claiming to be a student who had been beaten by the officers". As a crowd of up to 1,000 gathered and more police arrived, a confrontation between protesters and police broke out. Ten officers and government officials were injured by brick-throwing protestors, the government said. After that, "about 200 protesters surrounded the county government building", according to the official story, which says the crowd did not disperse until midnight.

Ops wait... now city authorities are back-pedaling on the whole idea of a RIOT in their burg... Just didn't happen... Nanjing denies report of protest(China Daily) Updated: 2009-05-21 08:06 Comments(0) PrintMail Authorities in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, denied yesterday that university students had been victimized by "chengguan", or urban management officers, who were enforcing orders against sidewalk stalls. "No university student was setting up sidewalk stalls on Monday night in the square (in Jiangning district)," the city's publicity security bureau said in a statement to China Daily. Hundreds of students were reported to have protested following an incident on Monday night in which the "chengguan" allegedly attacked women university students who set up sidewalk stalls in the square. The statement said no one was beaten or verbally abused. "Some of the students had mistakenly thought that two people escorted from the scene by officers were students, which led to students and citizens forming a crowd," it said. China Daily

And the "Official" version... Nanjing confrontation Officers from the urban management corps of Nanjing, capital city of Jiangsu province, are in the spotlight after causing the city's largest university unrest in years. The officers, whose identity in recent years has been synonymous with brutality against the poor and often unregistered street vendors, allegedly attacked a group of students who set up sidewalk stalls in the city's Jiangning district on Monday about 6pm. Claiming a female student was injured in the incident, thousands of outraged students from the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics took to the streets and cut off traffic for nearly five hours. The students carried slogans in both Chinese and English claiming to protest through Gandhian "nonviolent noncooperation", and used cellphone cameras to take photos which were uploaded and widely circulated across online forums. The photos showed students approach dozens of traffic and riot police with signs reading "help vulnerable social groups and construct a harmonious society" - a vow of the central government since 2004. The line of riot police, who arrived on scene at about 9 pm, was at one point broken through by protestors, according to eyewitnesses who recalled the incident online on early Tuesday. The stalemate ended at close to 11 pm, when the students gradually began to leave, witnesses say. But Nanjing police, in a statement to China Daily, denied students set up stalls on Monday night in the square, or that anyone was beaten or verbally abused. (China Daily 05/22/2009 page4)

http://socialistworld.net/eng/2009/05/2001.html Sounds like another case of China's infamous URBAN MANAGEMENT thugs beating up some student vendors who were trying to make some money to pay for their education...

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...88-2703,00.html

Was this an actual quote form a government official? If that was an American official, they would be out on their butts for such a comment. I'd love for that official to have an "engineering accident". After all, they are just a "common" city official. it was a sarcastic comment from a chinese netcitizen.... in my experience chinese people are aware that the government and really rich do not put too much value on a person's life ... they did not just discover this ... they have known it for years ... and not just this current governement Quite so... And people seem to be waking up to the fact that they shouldn't have to put up with it any more... Well, some people anyway. From what I see and here I think they are very much like us in USA .. they see many things they disagree with and would like to change but you cannot "fight city hall" ... nor can you fight a political system that gives you no choice (China) or little choice ... I don't think this compares to the US. If an official was quoted here with the same type of statement, the media would be relentless causing pressure from the public to be removed from office. If they were an elected official, they would have a hell of a time getting re-elected. Jim it was a sarcastic comment from a Chinese netizen...There were many such comments following the article...It seems that in China most citizens feel that honest public official is an oxymoron...

Was this an actual quote form a government official? If that was an American official, they would be out on their butts for such a comment. I'd love for that official to have an "engineering accident". After all, they are just a "common" city official. it was a sarcastic comment from a chinese netcitizen.... in my experience chinese people are aware that the government and really rich do not put too much value on a person's life ... they did not just discover this ... they have known it for years ... and not just this current governement Quite so... And people seem to be waking up to the fact that they shouldn't have to put up with it any more...

I'm sorry Dave but we are kicking your butt 766 - 701...GO BADGERS!!!

Zhangjiajie in Hunan is very nice with spectacular rock formations. But none of these places is going to rate as "quiet"...There are afterall 1.3 billion people in China and everybody who can afford it loves to travel...