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Fu Lai

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Posts posted by Fu Lai

  1. Taiwan's Independence, from the Chinese Perspective

    in The Middle Kingdom - 中国

    Posted

    Ah heck, they are just shoring up the loose ends they have regarding their rightful territory... many think this is aggressive but IMO it's not. Yeah, with the USA track record it is understandable that most Asian countries want them to keep out of their hair, except for the money of course. :) Plainly said, the USA does not like that China is regaining their place as the leading country in the world, despite what all the Western powers have done to the Orient. Seems the USA also does not like the way they are doing it, without bombs.

  3. Taiwan's Independence, from the Chinese Perspective

    in The Middle Kingdom - 中国

    Posted

    It is an unknown border between China and India, not India's border. India and China had less than 100 people there, hardly "ready to go to war". That reads like a Western smear on China. The two superpowers worked it out quickly and peacefully, not drone bomb dropping like the West likes.

     

    You mean like crossing over India's border and setting up a garrison post until India is about ready to go to war then pulling back? This is not peaceful negotiations to settle a border dispute. It's being the neighborhood bully.

  4. Most Americans positive on China

    in Stateside

    Posted · Edited by Fu Lai (see edit history)

    http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/attachement/jpg/site181/20130607/0260924d8601131bbfb009.jpg

    More Americans see China as either an ally or at least friendly toward the United States, according to a Gallup survey released on the eve of a historic presidential summit in California.

     

    A total of 55 percent of Americans surveyed between June 1 and 4 described China as either a US ally (11 percent) or a nation friendly to the US (44 percent). On the negative side, 40 percent of respondents saw China as either unfriendly (26 percent) or an enemy (14 percent).

     

    Polling firm Gallup Inc has asked the same question in annual surveys since 2000 to gauge Americans' view of a country that increasingly competes with the United States economically and is taking a more prominent role in global affairs.

     

    This year's poll continues a generally positive trend in public attitudes toward China, apart from a sharply negative turn in 2001 after a Chinese fighter jet collided with a US Navy surveillance plane over the South China Sea. The US plane made an emergency landing on China's Hainan Island, but the central government in Beijing detained the American crew for 12 days before releasing them.

     

    As Presidents Xi Jinping and Barack Obama begin an informal two-day summit on Friday, their countries face an unprecedented level of economic interdependence, but also high-stakes tensions. Disputes over alleged cyberhacking, unfair trade practices and the nuclear ambitions of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea have strained diplomatic ties.

     

    Respondents in the survey released on Thursday were slightly more negative on China than in Gallup's annual World Affairs poll in February. In that poll, people were asked if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of various countries, including China. A total of 43 expressed a favorable view (35 percent "mostly favorable" plus 8 percent "very favorable"), while 52 percent regarded China negatively (35 percent "mostly unfavorable" plus 17 percent "very unfavorable").

     

    According to the latest Gallup survey, younger Americans and people who identify themselves as Democrats are much more likely to see China as a US ally than are older Americans and self-identified Republicans.

     

    Jerome Cohen, a law professor at New York University and a leading Western scholar on China's legal system, said earlier that it is good to see most Americans are in favor of friendly ties with China, considering that both nations have no formal alliance.

     

    "China is certainly not an enemy of the United States, and the US is not an enemy of China. But there are some people in both nations who think that the two countries are enemies or will become enemies. They are a minority. It is for the rest of us to prove that they are wrong," he said.

     

    Cohen feels that China's economic progress is a good thing. "We benefited from China's economic development. But we are a country that is increasingly divided. I think that's a dangerous situation. We have to educate our people more," he says.

     

    Although age differences in public attitudes toward China have been consistent in recent years of the survey, Gallup said, Democrats' more-positive views on China aren't necessarily the norm. Some polls over the past 13 years have found no meaningful differences between the two major US political parties.

     

    The United Kingdom and Canada ranked highest among those surveyed, with at least 60 percent identifying those countries as US allies and most of the rest describing them as friendly but not allies. Americans also see Israel, Japan, Mexico and India more positively than China, with between 25 percent and 46 percent describing each of these countries as "allies".

     

    Compared to other countries mentioned in the June 1-4 poll, China was in a middle group, along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Russia. About half of respondents viewed those countries positively, relatively few saw them as US allies and relatively few view them as enemies.

     

    Iran and the DPRK were most frequently cited in the survey as enemies of the US, with most other respondents calling those countries unfriendly.

     

    Gallup surveyed a random sample of 1,529 adults, age 18 or older, living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, in interviews conducted by landline or cellular phones. The survey's margin of error is 3 percentage points.

     

    Chen Weihua contributed to this story.

     

    josephboris@chinadailyusa.com

  5. Too good to be true?

    in Expats

    Posted

    Some people in this topic were talking about taking bets if I was to get married on my fist trip. Lets say if it did happen, when I'm back in the states and file for the K3 visa, would I be able to add her to my tax at the end of the year 2013?

     

    She has mentioned that she wants to change her name. I thought if she still lived in China, that she could change her passport and ID card before I file the K3 so everything matches.

     

    Just a thought, not a plan.

     

    Thanks

     

    You proposed to her?

  12. Qomolangma - because it's there

    in The Middle Kingdom - 中国

    Posted · Edited by Randy W (see edit history)

    Wealthier seek epiphany from holy mountain

     

    180373dafaf21310a68920.jpg

    Mountaineers climb towards the pinnacle helping the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping retake the height of Qomolangma in May 2005. The Tibetan mountain climbing expedition members climbed the 14 highest mountains, more than 8,000 meters high in 14 years. [Photo/Xinhua]

     

    Quote

    Six decades after humans first conquered Mount Qomolangma, a pioneering Tibetan mountaineer has told how he is helping booming numbers of China's nouveau rich to scale earth's highest mountain.

    Having personally stood at the top of the world in 2003 and 2008, 45-year-old Nyima Tsering now runs a training camp that aims to help non-professional Chinese climbers reach the 8,844-meter-high peak of the mountain otherwise known as Everest.

    "In the past, Mt Qomolangma could only be reached by professional teams, but now more and more ordinary Chinese wish to join us," says Nyima Tsering during an interview with Xinhua.

    Wednesday marked the 60th anniversary of human beings' first successful expedition to Mt Qomolangma, with New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay from Nepal reaching the summit on May 29, 1953.

    For much of the past six decades, scaling the snow-capped mountain on the Sino-Nepalese border has been an athletic feat and a demonstration of national strength due to the great difficulties and dangers it involved.

    But for Nyima Tsering and others in the new generation of Chinese summiteers, the mountain is also becoming a longed-for destination and a source of enlightenment for ordinary people.

    "The older Chinese mountaineers challenged the peak with a strong sense of a mission to glorify the nation, but to me, climbing the mountain is just part of my life," says Nyima Tsering, who is also head of the Tibetan Mountaineering Team.

    Since establishing the camp in 1999, he has trained 40 local farmers into professional guides, who have led more than 200 expeditions to the summit.

    Unlike others who regarded the ascendance to the summit as a victory of the human spirit over nature, Nyima Tsering says he always holds Mt Qomolangma in awe and veneration, and the feeling has not changed despite advances in equipment that have made the climb easier.

    "We've prepared electric drills for digging footholds in our latest attempt to reach the peak this year, but I could not convince myself to use them -- Mt Qomolangma never speaks, but we know it has feelings," he says.

    This reverence is now shared by his clients, many of whom are successful entrepreneurs. After making their fortunes amid China's transformation into a market economy, some of them arrived at the mountain in search of new life goals, according to Nyima Tsering.

    "The trips to Mt Qomolangma gave them new ideas on life -- they became slimmer and thriftier, and they realized they had previously demanded too much from nature, " he says. "To climb the mountain, one only needs a few things, and fame and fortune are not among them."

    The first Chinese team reached the summit in 1960, when the country was struggling to build a socialist society out of grinding poverty, a legacy of the civil war.

    The nation basked in glory on May 8, 2008, when a team of Chinese mountaineers took the Olympic flame to Mt Qomolangma in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics Games, which was deemed a demonstration of China's economic and social achievements over the years.

    But Nyima Tsering and other younger Chinese mountaineers believe the greater significance of the activity is to make modern people reflect on themselves and their relations with the nature.

    "The feeling has been growing within me all these years that mountains have life, and that we should not attempt to overpower nature, but instead we should respect and live in harmony with it, " he explains.

    "Mountaineering forces us to face our true self -- the mountain sees us equally as humans, and it makes no difference whether you're a boss or a celebrity," according to Xu Huan, who joined the Mountaineering Association of Peking University in 1996.

    Xu says many of her co-climbers at the association left enviable jobs in their forties and resumed mountaineering or hiking to rethink their lives.

    "They are asking whether, apart from pursuing wealth, are there any other higher meanings to life?" Xu says.

  13. Using PayPal to transfer money

    in Communications, Planes, Shipping & Money

    Posted

    So would my wife would create her own PayPal account and link it to her BOC UnionPay ATM account?

     

    Then I would send her money from my PayPal account and it would be deposited into her BOC account.

     

    Is that how this works?

     

    Squonk, we had a bunch of problems linking the Paypal mastercard to the China bank. So I set up a USA bank account, got a Paypal mastercard linked to it and Paypal allows you to have extra card as well which I ordered for her with the correct name for her. I keep the account stocked with ca$h which she can get at any ATM in China and she uses the card at tons of places, same as cash.

  17. Another Potential Skirmish?

    in The Middle Kingdom - 中国

    Posted · Edited by Fu Lai (see edit history)

    .

    Seems like there's no room for any military bluster from China over this one

     

    Arctic Council looks beyond icy circle

     

    The Arctic Council granted six countries including China, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Singapore permanent observer status at its eighth ministerial meeting in Kiruna, Sweden on May 15.

    . . .

    The inclusion of six permanent observers suggests that the Arctic nations have recognized that issues like climate change, ecological protection, usage of shipping routes and resource development in the Arctic region can no longer be reserved to a small group of Arctic countries.

     

    They have acknowledged that Arctic governance in the future should be more inclusive and open, creating more room for non-Arctic countries to participate. This is a quite laudable move.

     

    However, some possible bottlenecks that may confine the Arctic Council were also shown in the Kiruna meeting. One urgent problem is how to achieve sound interaction between observers and the eight Arctic countries and thus enable the observers to play a constructive role.

     

    The meeting issued a new manual that will govern the activities and roles of the observers. They are only allowed to participate in subordinate bodies of the Arctic Council such as the working groups, task forces and expert groups, and their position will be terminated if they conduct activities in violation of the tenets of the Arctic Council.

     

    The stipulation that observers only have limited rights in the council may frustrate their enthusiasm to provide public goods like capital and technology for Arctic governance.

     

    China's military bluster???

     

    The Arctic Council members are:

    Canada

    Kingdom of Denmark

    Finland

    Iceland

    Norway

    Russian Federation

    Sweden

    United States of America

     

    These so-called "arctic states" are a crock and China should not be "subordinate" among these "arctic countries", many which do nothing to promote the environment.

  24. PBS.org Independent Lens - Seeking Asian Female

    in Culture & Language Discussion

    Posted

     

    .

    Steven speaks up - thanks to Greg in the Facebook Nanning and China forum

     

    Steven of Seeking Asian Female Talks about Online Dating, “Asian Fetish,” and Relationship Advice

    Steven emailed us about his reaction to seeing himself on the silver screen, his perspective on the problematic term “yellow fever,” and his advice on keeping a marriage strong.

     

     

    By the end of May 2009 we came to the USA, and on August 22 we got married. So as a couple we’ve been together six years, and as a married couple it will be four years in August.

     

    . . .

     

    My searching was thorough and my vetting process took time. I did a lot of communication back and forth with many people and some seemed very nice while others were not in the running. With emails you can find out quite rapidly the character and level of education of the writer and her intent. But I was pragmatic and practical in my approach I thought.

     

    When I finally connected with Sandy we communicated every night through emails and web cam, and photo exchanges. We knew about each other’s families long before we even met. You may laugh when I say communication because the movie shows us having a difficult time. But it only became difficult when there were some serious differences or arguments. And while it appears in the film that we were always that way, truthfully that was not the case. We get along wonderfully well, we have great chemistry.

     

    . . .

     

    I volunteered for this film (without pay) for the sake of Art. I gave it all the open honesty I could. So it was with some surprise that I found the emphasis on creepiness.

     

    . . .

     

    I was hoping to show that an everyday guy can find love and purpose from a connection to an everyday woman on the other side of the earth. That a solution to my invisibility and diminished choice in my own country is at hand with the modern tools of the internet.

     

    That even a schlub such as me can find a soulmate with some diligence and desire with these tools.

     

     

     

     

    "I had never thought about it before until 10 years after the disastrous end of my second marriage. I avoided any romance for that period. Then I saw my son find a beautiful Japanese girlfriend whom he later married. They seemed so happy and looked so nice together. She was very polite and amiable but definitely not a subservient type. She was a powerful go-getter for sure, with strong opinions, and high standards, and a sense of purpose.

     

    I thought maybe this might be a new and better direction for my life as well. So I diligently searched for ones I might have chemistry with. Each nationality seems to have a personality of its own. Early on in my search and communications I discovered that the Chinese style of communication was what I enjoyed most.'

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