Greg.D.

That's a lot of people who are interested in marrying an American - with possible emigration.

Reminds me of how all that tea was wasted in Boston Harbor. Such a shame. Somebody should have put a stop to it. Messy, messy, messy.

I think it helps put worker immigrants' kids in local schools without paying?

"There will be some differences in the cooperation between the two sides. As long as the two sides always grasp the mainstream of Sino-US economic and trade cooperation, mutual benefit and win-win, and always respect the dignity, sovereignty, and core interests of the other country, they will be able to overcome the difficulties in the advance and promote the development of Sino-US economic and trade relations under the new historical conditions for the benefit of Two countries and two peoples." I think the core interests of the western countries (non-communist, non-authoritarian) will now always include protection of IP and trade secrets, so things will not continue on as before. Seems to be some international momentum to force China to play by the rules ... let's see if the non-China countries can stick together on this.

Debt, debt, debt .... this can trigger a banking crisis. They've been talking about this for years, but have managed to delay the reckoning. Hoping for the best.

Except that the YouTube link still works?

Good stories. Please update if you figure out where your reservations went. I have booked Chinese hotels through trip advisor from the U.S. and it was uneventful. Hope the rest goes well!

I think that Op-ed was/is a little premature since nothing has been signed and no one outside of the room knows what the presumed agreement is. Still, he makes an interesting point: if Xi gets his way (and it seems he has), moderates in the policy making realm will be discredited going forward. And that means more of the same.

Well, good news that your normal EKG was restored. 6 months seems like a long time; I guess that is time to switch the med and then time to let the changes cause their effect. Wishing you further luck, Greg

If that's good, CONGRATULATIONS!

"Then known as Shuanghui Group, WH Group purchased Smithfield Foods in 2013 for $4.72 billion, more than its market value." The China Daily article doesn't say what the plan is but it may just be trying to out produce the virus, particularly in new farms in clean parts of the country. It can also be transmitted via feed which might explain a sudden desire for (clean) U.S. Soybean meal.

Worth reading that article. A primer on corruption.

China Has Lost Taiwan, and It Knows It So it is attacking democracy on the island from within. By Natasha Kassam Ms. Kassam is a former Australian diplomat. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/01/opinion/china-taiwan-election.html?searchResultPosition=1 “Not a chance,” the president’s tweet said, in Chinese characters. That was the message from Tsai Ing-wen, the leader of Taiwan, on Nov. 5, after the Chinese government announced a string of initiatives to lure Taiwanese companies and residents to the mainland. “Beijing’s new 26 measures are part of a greater effort to force a ‘one country, two systems’ model on #Taiwan,” Ms. Tsai’s tweet said, referring to the principle according to which Hong Kong — another territory Beijing eventually hopes to fully control — is supposed to be governed for now and its semiautonomy from Beijing guaranteed. “I want to be very clear: China’s attempts to influence our elections & push us to accept ‘one country, two systems’ will never succeed.” The protesters who have mobilized in Hong Kong for months say, in effect, that the principle is a lie. In Taiwan, the Chinese government’s objective has long been what it calls “peaceful reunification” — “reunification” even though Taiwan has never been under the jurisdiction or control of the People’s Republic of China or the Chinese Communist Party. To achieve that goal, Beijing has for years tried to simultaneously coax and coerce Taiwan’s adhesion with both the promise of economic benefits and military threats. Early this year, President Xi Jinping of China reiterated that “complete reunification” was a “historic task.” “We make no promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary means,” he added. Taiwan is gearing up for a presidential election in January. On Nov. 17, Ms. Tsai announced that the pro-independence William Lai Ching-te, a former prime minister, would be her running mate. On the same day, China sent an aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Strait. (In July, China had released its defense white paper, and it stated, “By sailing ships and flying aircraft around Taiwan, the armed forces send a stern warning to the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”) Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister, reacted by tweeting: “#PRC intends to intervene in #Taiwan’s elections. Voters won’t be intimidated! They’ll say NO to #China at the ballot box.” ........ Beijing, by flexing its muscle, seems to have succeeded only in pushing the Taiwanese away. A series of missile tests by the People’s Liberation Army in the lead-up to Taiwan’s March 1996 presidential election was designed to intimidate voters and turn them away from re-electing the nationalist Lee Teng-hui. One of his opponents, Chen Li-an, warned, “If you vote for Lee Teng-hui, you are choosing war.” Mr. Lee won comfortably over three other candidates, with 54 percent of the popular vote.

I like that: investigate the protestors and let the prosecutors be lenient; also investigate the police but, prior to even beginning such an investigation, lets all agree that their shall be no blame assigned to them or even finger pointing. Also, pro-beijing dude from the pro-beijing SCMP: you can protest against the government (it's not THEIR government: it was installed by the Communist Party) BECAUSE you LOVE your city. It sure gets awkward constantly finding words for why "it was good for us to have a revolution but it's not good for you to try it"

Special Report: How Hong Kong's greatest tycoon went from friend of China to punching bag HONG KONG (Reuters) - In January of 1993, an ambitious Chinese Communist Party boss, a 39-year-old official with chubby cheeks and a mop of black hair, visited Hong Kong. He was seeking out the city’s rich among the shimmering skyscrapers, hoping to secure investment in Fuzhou, the second-tier city he ran in mainland China. His name was Xi Jinping. That August, Xi received a guest back home. Hong Kong’s most famous tycoon, Li Ka-shing, known locally as “superman” for his business acumen, had come to town. A photograph from the event shows Xi grinning as he walked beside Li, who held a bouquet of flowers in his hand. In the background, a long banner hung with the message to “warmly welcome” Li Ka-shing. During those days, in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, Beijing was desperate to fire up a languishing economy. National leaders and provincial potentates were courting Li for his cash and the star power his name brought to development projects on the mainland. That time has passed. Xi is now the strongman leader of a rich and rising power that controls Hong Kong. Instead of feting the 91-year-old businessman, Beijing has harangued him for failing to deliver in the rebellious city. When the Party was looking for a chorus of influential voices to counter the protests that began this summer, Li offered only even-handed pleas for restraint. In an online video of comments he made at a monastery, Li asked that the leadership show “humanity” when dealing with young protesters. The response was brutal. The Party’s central legal affairs commission in Beijing publicly accused Li of “harboring criminality” and “watching Hong Kong slip into the abyss.” A pro-Beijing trade union leader in Hong Kong posted a Facebook item mocking him as the “king of cockroaches” with an image that pasted Li’s head atop a picture of a fat insect. ..... The vilification of the city’s preeminent capitalist was a rare public display of the new power dynamic, businessmen and analysts say. It sent a clear message that Li and his fellow Hong Kong tycoons must toe the line and unequivocally condemn the protests, which present the most serious challenge to Communist Party rule since Tiananmen. The now-scrapped legislation that sparked the recent unrest would have allowed for extraditions from Hong Kong to mainland China. It also provided an avenue for the seizure of assets, according to a statement by the Hong Kong Bar Association. That could have exposed the city’s tycoons to the same fate as wealthy mainlanders who have been stripped of assets in Xi’s anti-corruption drive.

Seems Xi Xiping is having a bad month. Probably even a bad year. His signature move of iron-fisted suppression of the people is doing poorly in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan (he's totally lost the good will that existed between the two) and who knows how it's doing in the country as a whole (his retro style is not unanimously loved in the circles of power there). You know Chinese don't talk about it and aren't allowed to talk about it; the nightly news is a string of images of military might (not a sign of confident strength). They can only manage to buy international alliances (have to say: he saw an opening so he stepped in). The following essay might be hard to open, so I will include what I can. A nice summary of all the ways it's going poorly for the party and stirring tribute to the power of liberty over cowed obedience. ------------------- Across China, the clocks are striking thirteen. The people of Hong Kong hear it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/across-china-the-clocks-are-striking-thirteen-the-people-of-hong-kong-hear-it/2019/11/26/4b40ede6-106c-11ea-b0fc-62cc38411ebb_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans By David Von Drehle Columnist November 26, 2019 at 5:19 PM EST “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” So George Orwell opened his novel “1984,” on a weird and chilling note. The reader wonders: Does anyone notice something wrong? Across China, clocks are striking thirteen. But unlike the sheeple of Orwell’s grim prophecy, thousands of freedom-loving Chinese are awakening to the ominous chime and rising against Big Brother. China’s communist government is increasingly brazen about creating a massive surveillance state, in which millions of cameras track every person’s whereabouts, every purchase is recorded in state databanks, every keystroke on the strictly controlled Chinese Internet is scrutinized. Powered by facial recognition software and other tools of artificial intelligence, this tireless web of watchers aims to control all that is done and said — even thought — inside the rapidly rising superpower. On Sunday, pro-democracy voters turned out in record numbers to oust communists from their local district councils. The regime of Xi Jinping had wagered that Hong Kong’s wealthy majority would be content to trade human rights for cold, hard cash in the form of business as usual in the high-rise office suites. Instead, despite the near-daily protests and violent clashes that have sent the city into a recession, they cast their ballots for more disruption. Why? Because they hear the clocks striking thirteen. Xi faces the most significant challenge of his power-grabbing career. Having moved to reassert the Communist Party’s dominion over a rapidly modernizing nation, he now sees China’s most modern territory fighting back. The protests in Hong Kong — and even more important, the pro-democracy landslide — vindicate the tattered faith that progress and freedom go hand-in-hand. It is a faith that strikes directly at the dark heart of one-party tyranny. For a government that prides itself on careful strategic steps, the extradition bill has been a bungle of epic proportion. Not only has the attempted overreach roused the people of Hong Kong; their example will be noted in Shanghai, Shenzhen and even Beijing itself. Moreover, years of progress toward the party’s cherished goal of the reabsorption of Taiwan has been derailed. Everywhere, people who might have resigned themselves to dictatorship now realize that liberty has more support than they had dared to hope. That awakening may shed light on the extraordinary leaks in recent days of secret government documents. The two troves, published by the New York Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, add up to one of the largest security breaches in Chinese Communist Party history. ...... These leaks let the outside world know that liberty has friends even inside the Chinese government. Some unknown number of officials with access to the dirty secrets of the ruling party is willing to risk their lives to resist Big Brother. The spirit of freedom is not limited to the Hong Kong frontier.

Beijing Was Confident Its Hong Kong Allies Would Win. After the Election, It Went Silent. BEIJING — The Chinese government seemed confident that its allies would prevail in the Hong Kong elections on Sunday. For a week, commentators wrote brassy pieces saying the Hong Kong public would go to the polls to “end social chaos and violence,” a vote against what they saw as rogues and radicals. Editors at state-run news outlets prepared stories that predicted withering losses for the protest movement. When it became clear early Monday that democracy advocates in the semiautonomous territory had won in a landslide, Beijing turned silent. The news media, for the most part, did not even report the election results. And Chinese officials directed their ire at a familiar foe: the United States. .... After the election loss, Chinese officials resorted to a favorite tactic by blaming the West, a nationalistic message that plays well to the masses at home. For months, officials have said the protests are the work of foreign “black hands” bent on fomenting an uprising in the former British colony. “Beijing knows very well that they lost the game in the election,” said Willy Lam, a political analyst who teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “Beijing had to blame somebody, so in this case it is blaming outside foreign forces, particularly in the United States, for interfering in the elections.” ... It didn’t matter that the elections on Sunday were for district councils, some of the least powerful positions in Hong Kong’s government. Like those in the pro-democracy camp, the Chinese media also appeared to position the vote as a referendum on the protests, albeit as a chance for the public to decry the violence and the pro-democracy movement. But the vote on Sunday severely undercut the government’s narrative. In a rebuke to Beijing, pro-democracy candidates captured 389 of 452 elected seats, far more than they had ever won. Beijing’s allies held just 58 seats, down from 300. It was a strong message from Hong Kong voters, with record turnout of 71 percent. .... The failure of the political establishment in Beijing to predict the outcome also raised questions about the party’s grasp of the political forces in Hong Kong. There are grumblings that Mr. Xi’s government has misread the grievances of the protesters and underestimated the depth of the anger in Hong Kong. Chinese state media has simultaneously argued that the frustrations have stemmed from economic issues like sky-high housing costs and depicted demonstrators as paid thugs. And those provocateurs, in Beijing’s view, didn’t have the broad support of the Hong Kong public. “They believed in their own propaganda,” said Wu Qiang, a political analyst in Beijing who is critical of the government. “They thought the situation would pivot and the public would support them.”

Stung by Hong Kong vote, China slams Reuters report on liaison office shake-up https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/stung-by-hong-kong-vote-china-slams-reuters-report-on-liaison-office-shake-up/2019/11/26/3a279e9a-1023-11ea-924c-b34d09bbc948_story.html BEIJING — China’s Communist Party admonished the Reuters news agency Tuesday over what the party called a “false report” about a move to replace the head of the government’s Hong Kong liaison office for failing to foresee the resounding defeat of the pro-Beijing establishment in local elections last weekend. Reuters reported Tuesday that the Chinese leadership had set up a crisis command center in a luxury villa on the outskirts of Shenzhen, on the mainland side of the border with Hong Kong, to deal with the long-running political unrest in the semiautonomous financial hub. The report said Beijing was considering replacing its most senior official stationed in Hong Kong, liaison office Director Wang Zhimin, because it was dissatisfied with his handling of the crisis. ......... The Foreign Ministry’s office in Hong Kong said Tuesday that it had lodged “solemn representations” with Reuters about the “false report.” It said it had urged the agency “to uphold a true, professional and responsible attitude, and immediately stop spreading false information.” The ministry has insisted throughout the six months of protests in Hong Kong that the unrest is an internal domestic matter and that China will never waver from the “one country, two systems” formula under which Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997. Under that framework, Hong Kong is supposed to enjoy a degree of autonomy and relative political freedom until 2047, but its residents are bristling at Beijing’s increasingly muscular control over the territory. Tensions burst into the open in June, when the Beijing-backed Hong Kong government moved to implement a law that would have allowed Hong Kongers to be extradited to the mainland. Hong Kong has a much stronger and more transparent rule of law than the mainland, and many residents feared that the proposal, which has since been scrapped, could be used to target Beijing’s critics. The Reuters report, which cited Chinese officials briefed on the discussions, said that Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other top officials have been receiving daily written briefings from the villa, named Bauhinia after the flower emblem of Hong Kong, bypassing the liaison office in Hong Kong. Embattled Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam had attended meetings there, according to the report, which could not be independently verified. China’s leaders appear increasingly vexed about how to deal with the unrest in Hong Kong, analysts say, as a months-long crackdown marked by thousands of arrests has only hardened public opinion against Beijing. Having repeatedly refused to offer concessions, Beijing finds itself with few options.

China sets up Hong Kong crisis center in mainland, considers replacing chief liaison https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-shenzhen-exclusive/exclusive-china-sets-up-hong-kong-crisis-center-in-mainland-considers-replacing-chief-liaison-idUSKBN1Y000P "The office has come in for criticism in Hong Kong and China for misjudging the situation in the city. “The Liaison Office has been mingling with the rich people and mainland elites in the city and isolated itself from the people,” a Chinese official said. “This needs to be changed.” The Liaison Office may face increased pressure after city voters delivered a resounding defeat to pro-Beijing parties in local district elections on Sunday. Pro-democracy candidates won over 80 percent of the seats, securing their first ever majority after running a campaign against Beijing’s perceived encroachments on Hong Kong’s liberties."

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/11/dark-side-chinese-dream/602113/ This is an excerpt from a new book: "A Woman Missing in the Mountains" A Chinese American woman searches for her missing sister in China, encountering the dark side of the country's economic rise. An interesting read about what sounds like a tough, resourceful woman desperately trying to get ahead and escape a small village life. One of many stories in this book: "The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys With the Hustlers and Rebelsnof the New China" https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781610398145 Excerpt: As we drove on, climbing into the mountains, Crystal filled me in on her family’s history. She’d grown up in the 1970s and ’80s on a farm, and was eight years older than Winnie. The family lived in a one-bedroom mud-brick house with a dirt floor and a grass roof. They relied on government rations, which weren’t enough to feed them all. Crystal’s mother couldn’t produce milk for Winnie, who as an infant suffered from calcium deficiency, which Crystal thinks affected her little sister’s intelligence. “She was kind of slow,” Crystal recalled. “She studied so hard, but she never got good scores.” Had the sisters been born a decade or two earlier, they would have probably remained in the countryside and lived similar, circumscribed lives under Mao Zedong’s socialist system. But economic reforms by Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, created something new: the opportunity to succeed and the chance to fail. Crystal moved to Harbin, the provincial capital, where she studied and became a nurse. Winnie left school at 16 and headed to Harbin as well, where she fell into the default profession for many uneducated migrant women―sex work.

The first article was about pneumonic plague, the recent one about bubonic plague. The Black Death was the bubonic manifestation ("buboes" on the skin). The plague causing bacterium has profliferated again recently on the outskirts of Denver in prairie dogs. It's not nothing to worry about; I definitely would avoid those areas if I had the chance. As long as you have carriers it will always be around. I would be more worried about rabies (which is also always out there and can move in more urban wildlife).

I read this section: "Later in the day, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, gave a press conference and, in chilling language, called the protesters the “enemy of the people.” She was voted into office by 777 people from the 1,200-person “Election Committee,” many of whose members are businesspeople with close ties to mainland China." In this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/11/escalating-violence-hong-kong-protests/601804/ and so many more pieces came together. In the end, it will be the 1% against the majority. Put the moneyed class literally in charge of the people and you will see them protect their moneyed interests against whatever Hong Kong Dream the people have. If the party uncharacteristically loses their patience, sure, they might intervene first. But never underestimate greed in the battle against any other human drive. And sorry, Chief Executive Lam, but uncle has no use for Christians. I wonder what your exit strategy is.

You are better off with vegetable transplants. You CAN start your own indoors but the requirement for strong light will be too much as they start to get tall and you can lose them to wilt and damping off. You can direct seed carrot and lettuce: you get a better carrot (not forked) and lettuce has a short growing season (don't plant the seed deep ... it needs light). I think you can plant cucumber and zucchini seeds ... probably melons, too. Cabbage has a long season and you should buy starter plants. Peppers need a longer season - buy starters. With respect to fall or winter watering: don't encourage growth in plants that are going into dormancy. I mean, keep them alive until then, but shutting down for the winter is what they do. Your county extension service might have some useful bulletins for gardening including telling you the last average date for a killing frost. Planting corn? Then you are a great friend to wildlife!

Winston, with his editorializing, screens a video some Chinese people made where they staged fake kidnappings in public. While onlookers' apathy is not surprising, it's still shocking. Most interesting comments: 1) the party is not really interested in encouraging person to person feelings of compassion, and 2) if you find your self being attacked in public, be ready to scream something like "down with the party!" and you will at least have a chance that the police will come running

I remember a couple (researchers) who brought over their 6 year old and 8 year old who had no English. First day in her new school, the 8 your old girl is raising her hand to answer every question in her math class ... only she didn't know the numbers in English. While not a story about Chinese kids relative math skills, I will always remember it as the spirit that kids can be fearless if you encourage them ahead of time, rather than instill a fear of failure in them. That was in Tucson where schools are ready to mainstream kids who can't speak English yet. Young kids (like 10 yo) can pick up the language very fast. By the end of the year, the kids were fluent and by the start of the next they had put them in a better suited school (taking all your classes in Spanish and English - bi-lingual school - wasn't what they were looking for). I wouldn't try to over plan or over think it ... but would talk to the school ahead of time. She won't be the first student there with little or no English.