As some readers may be aware, new measures restricting foreign content online in China (or “Administrative Regulations for Online Publishing Services”) are dropping March 10 – today. Over at China Law Blog, Steve Dickinson has answers to most of the major players and questions, but we felt obliged to follow up with Steve on a couple of local matters – for, you know, local people.

BJC: How will the rules affect the “expat rags” – English-language listings magazines — usually published in legally grayish partnership with a Chinese firm that has a proper “kanhao” (publishing license)?

SD: Foreign ownership of a print publication (e.g., That’s Shanghai, That’s Beijing, Redstar, City Weekend, Time Out, etc.) is illegal. All these magazines are owned and published by Chinese nationals and are subject to the standard PRC censorship rules. That is why they are so boring.

I am not aware of any foreign-oriented magazines that are published by foreign nationals. If such magazines exist, they are illegal and the publisher is subject to serious criminal sanction. However, I don’t know a printer in China who would take the risk, so I doubt that any such magazines exist that have any serious circulation. [Ed’s note: I know a few do exist but with tiny circulations and usually in Tier-3 type cities]

BJC: What about foreign-hosted websites that mainly focus on China-based content… like Beijing Cream? 

SD: All such websites are illegal in China. However, China does not exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction. Instead, China has created the Great Firewall by which it selectively blocks the sites that it decides are objectionable, based on criteria no one really understands. All activities of such websites within China are illegal and participants in such activities (reporters) are subject to either being sanctioned, jailed, or deported. This happens for the foreign political websites that are written in the Chinese language. I have not heard of anyone getting sanctioned for writing for a general interest English-language foreign website. It does, however, remain a possibility. This vague threat of a visit from the government serves to chill the expression of opinion. It is cheap and effective and widely used in single-party Leninist dictatorships.

So there you have it. You’ll still be able to flick through City Weekend and Shanghaiist while waiting for feckless friends to arrive late… for the immediate future. But you never know. Thanks to Steve Dickinson of Harris Moure for the help. (Image via)

The Naisbitts with Ken and Tenniel Chu at the world’s largest golf resort, where the seminar took place

Kneeling over the toilet at the clubhouse of the “largest golf course in the world,” I’m furiously vomiting gray liquid. It is, most likely, the result of dodgy alcohol from the previous night; then again, it might be the 90-minute speech I just heard from the husband-and-wife American “futurists” as they remorselessly praised China again and again and again. Hard to tell.

I’ve nothing particularly against Westerners that end up as apologists for the Chinese government. I can see how it happens, even indulged in some myself. In my early mid-twenties years in China, my teaching days, students would occasionally disarm me by asking my thoughts on China’s political system. I would stutter that things were probably getting better… China was unique… complicated… it was easy to criticize. Mine was a shitty answer, informed by a misplaced blend of politeness, sincerity and fear of being shot; while I believed that the arc of the universe was long and full of bastards, I hoped it might also bend toward justice. But that was 2008 – the heady days of that great modernizer and moderate comrade, President Hu Jintao.

Still, there are apologists. And there are Apologists.

I doubt many readers will be that familiar with John Naisbitt, or his 1980s Megatrends franchise. But back when it was “Morning in America,” Naisbitt’s book Megatrends (1982) sold the best part of 14 million copies and was widely hailed as having predicted “the Information Age.” Now this aging visionary is embedded in China, and I was eager to see his predictions for an Asian-Pacific century.

In hindsight, I’d have been better off staying at home, reading straight from the Communist Party copybook (you know what they say: starve a cold, feed a fever, Xinhua a hangover).

John and Doris Naisbitt

Sitting in the bowels of a huge, illegal golf resort, situated just outside Guangdong’s fourth most famous city (sorry Foshan – I have you marked as five), Naisbitt, 86, with his younger Austrian wife and co-author, Doris, went through a list of central office memes – “hostile” Western media (a constant refrain); the decline of the West; the inevitable rise of China; its meritocratic leadership; the ineffable glory of the Chinese Dream.

The latter was particularly harped on, probably due to its close association with President Xi Jinping. Apparently, it’s like the American Dream but Chinese, so quite unique. At the no-fee seminar, entitled The Global Game Change Talks China, I further learned that Xi’s latest edict to build a “New Silk Road” was a monumental task of a kind never before conceived, and perhaps never again. Forget about the old Silk Road – the Naisbitts compared Xi’s one to the moon landings. Three times.

All this was ostensibly in aid of the couple’s latest book, Global Game Change: How the Global Southern Belt Will Reshape Our World, published last January (Chinese only, alas). But it’s difficult for me to give you a proper appraisal of the book’s central thesis here. Rather than iterating this global transformation in any practical terms, the Naisbitts simply cloved to tired Party maxims: the most specific takeaway was that the “Global Southern Belt” – a term previously unfamiliar to this news buff, but roughly equating to Africa, South America, and China – is going to completely change the way the world works, because that is where the major economic growth lies; not in Europe or North America. The theory could be a lot more sophisticated than that, and probably is, but nothing in the seminar suggested so.

What Naisbitt did emphasize, though, were his credentials.“The Financial Times said I did not get even a single thing wrong,” Naisbitt noted at several points, referring to the original Megatrends. But 1982 was a long time ago. Since then, his career has had two main phases.

First, dining out on Megatrends. Spin-offs include Reinventing the Corporation: Transforming Your Job and Your Company for the New Information Society (1985); Megatrends 2000: Ten New Directions for the 1990s (1990); Global Paradox: The Bigger the World Economy, the More Powerful its Smallest Players (1994); and Megatrends Asia: Eight Asian Megatrends That Are Reshaping Our World (1996).

From 1996, Naisbitt entered Phase Two: China. According to Naisbitt legend, on meeting a fawning President Jiang Zemin…

I said: “President Jiang, Taiwan is a small story. But it tells it very well. China has a big story; it’s a pity it’s being told poorly.”

President Jiang thought for a moment and said: Why don’t you tell this story?

Naisbitt eagerly took up Jiang’s offer, and performed about as badly as it’s possible to do. China’s Megatrends dropped in 2010 and was soundly thrashed by reviewers both in China and abroad (“Its depth is even less than an educated staff at the lowest level of the propaganda department,” noted one Chinese reviewer; another observed: “To put it plainly, it is propaganda. There is no intellectual value in it.”) Naisbitt subsequently dropped off the English-language map, but has kept his mainland publisher busy with 2012’s Innovation in China: The Chengdu Triangle and, latterly, Global Game Change.

A universal criticism of China’s Megatrends was its piss-poor research methods (as one reviewer noted, “[the Naisbitts] hired dozens of students and instructed them to comb provincial [state] newspapers… Using this pile of ‘objective facts’ to understand China in a new way”). When asked about his research on Global Game Change this time, Naisbitt gives a vigorous response: “Talking to people. That is the way to do it. Get in on the ground and actually talk to people. It’s more visceral. We have spoken with hundreds of people in China from all over the place.” In which case, where is the variety of opinion, the diversity, the doubt? Why does everything from their lips sound like a Communist Party self-help tape?

Asked by a Hong Kong journalist about the city’s place in the world after the Occupy Central movement of 2014, Doris smoothly interjected before John could respond: “Hong Kongers have got to learn to push, but not push too much.” She then switched topics to emphasize the importance that China “tells the world of its beauty,” and how much of the world, for example, was not even aware of the pure, natural beauty of the city she was talking in right now.

I glanced around, making sure of my surroundings: a second, probably third-tier city that barely existed 40 years ago, utterly devoid or depreciated of any natural beauty at all. Later she told another exasperated interviewer, “The likes of what China is going through now is more significant than the Reformation.”

For as long as China has fumbled at “telling its story,” there has been a fawning foreigner willing to try his hand, accepting its coin while turning a blind eye. From Edgar Snow via Robert Kuhn to more recent let-us-welcome-our-new-masters evangelists, such as Martin Jacques and his bargain-basement Marxist colleague John Ross, the formula is the same – access in exchange for acquiescence. Having established the Naisbitt Institute in Tianjin, and been largely ridiculed outside Chinese media for his output since, Naisbitt is perhaps the granddaddy of them all. But what does it profit a man, etc.?

That is what I wonder as Naisbitt, who makes his way to the podium with obvious care and difficulty, winds down his talk. Apparently, he has other engagements in other cities to come – where he gets the energy from is anybody’s guess. Although he has the beard and former build of a Victorian polar explorer, Naisbitt looks faintly exhausted at the meet-and-greet after. He asks if I have read his latest book, and I politely answer that my Chinese reading is not up to scratch. “Don’t worry, we have that problem too,” he kindly tells me, and, for a moment, it sounds a little like he hasn’t read his own book. (I briefly imagine Naisbitt being told by some mid-ranking official what is going on with his next book, how much he’ll be paid, what the talking points are, as he politely nods away and looks forward to lunch.)

Blandishments from those within the system are part of the game. When an economic aide to the leadership told the Wall Street Journal at Davos that, “China is blessed with the strong and long-term focused leadership of President Xi Jinping, the best leader in the world,” the reaction is to snort. But there’s also a wince at the evident requirement for the wise but wretched official, forced to spout such dismal obsequies. No such charity can be afforded to the foreign water-carrier, however, whose motives, devoid of political or ideological imperative, are typically base.

The thing is, Naisbitt must on some level believe everything he says. What else could possibly possess a man of that age to spend his twilight years as a lickspittle attraction, wheeled around various Chinese backwaters bombastically mouthing propaganda? But I wonder who else does – surely not the propaganda chieftains, who have so little confidence in what they’re saying that they fall over foreign mouthpieces to speak on their behalf? On the way out, I ask a straitlaced journalist from Shenzhen Daily what she thought of the whole thing. “Too pro-China,” she replied. “Boring… The government will like it.”

The author is an itinerant filmmaker in South China. Additional reporting by BJC editor-at-large RFH.

Before I saw Tom Olden’s video, I heard reactions to it. It was described as a “leap off the deep end” with an “ISIS vibe,” featuring a “headless girl in the background chopping carrots on an ironing board… PUA-style ‘burns’ on manhood, and, of course, that Jigsaw voice.” That’s crazy, I thought. Does the carrot represent neutered sexuality? Is the headless woman some self-aware avowal of misogyny? And what of the knife, that weapon-turned-tool of domesticity, scything away? Is the video menacing or ironic?

Then I watched, and… exactly. Yes.

In case you missed it, last week we published Alec Ash’s funny and incisive review of Olden’s memoir, Shanghai Cocktales, to precipitate this video. Ash’s review was not particularly positive, but it was humorous, had a killer ending, and it was an honest-by-God review — from a frequent contributor to The Los Angeles Review of Books, no less — so on the balance I expected Olden to have been happy.

Was he?

Cue the tape.

Video on Tudou for those without VPNs

I keep picturing, for no particular reason, an incensed F. Scott Fitzgerald underneath a keffiyeh branded with block letters TRIMALCHIO IN WEST EGG telling the camera, Greetings, H.L. Mencken. Greetings, Chicago Tribune, and I think the world would have been a happier, more enlightened place had that happened.

“Perhaps the idea of cuckoldry excites you, no?” he offers.

“An Iranian man and I Chinese-finger-trapped a prostitute, for fuck’s sake!”

“Or do you in fact revel in cuckoldry?”

“Peter Hessler may not have a penis, but I do,” Fitzgerald — unable to know his penis would become a subject of fascination to Ernest Hemingway in the doomed author’s famous memoir — growls.

These are not the lines of a sane man. Said RFH, who edited Ash’s review, “I half-expected to see Alec tied to some elaborate Bateman-esque torture device at the end and being told he’s ‘going to play a game.’” But watch the video again, and pay attention to the progression of tone, notably from lighthearted to angry, and you’ll notice a half-rack of internal logic, I daresay order, a semblance of forethought. It begins with a concession (“Although we don’t see eye to eye, I see the humor in your writing”) and a self-deprecating joke (“You label my book’s title as a ‘shitty 2am pun.’ It was 3am when I decided on this title, Alec”) before the speaker becomes irritated, then irritating, defensive, and nearly angry (the Iranian-Chinese-finger-trapping line is spiked with ire, otherwise it could have been an uproarious punchline). Finally, in the latter stages, the message becomes muddled while sentences elongate like a bad hangover, as if Olden has been tricked yet again into a water-cooler homily with his subconscious, giving us, “I like to make educated choices. For instance, her breasts could be larger, but I’m still impressed with what she’s doing with this push-up bra, so I think I’ll give it a go.” In two minutes, Olden encapsulates 16 years of China life: cheer rotted into cynicism, resignation, and one long interminable howl at the unknowable realities which afflict our existence. Do you just fuck anything? Are you above sexuality?

On the whole, for all its unsoundness, the video is not the work of an inveterate drunk with “the subtlety and ear for language of a horny, deaf-blind goat” — Ash might have been slightly harsh in his assessment there. Olden’s quip, “Sure, I could write my own version of Rob Gifford’s China Road” is somewhat brilliant; and to be fair to goats, they’re goddamn hilarious. I’d also venture the horny lute-playing caprine demigod Pan could scarce do self-actualization better than, “I embrace my hunger for sexual excitement. I embrace my darker side.” No, Olden strikes me as a fun-enough barfly, a harmless middle-aged male who had either the fortune or misfortune of living in turn-of-the-century China — which was exactly like fin de siècle Paris, only without the quality of art. I’m fine with Olden’s response. I’m fine with Shanghai Cocktales. It’s given us all a week’s worth of amusement, topped by this video, which will probably give us a half-week’s worth more.

Then let us never speak of it again.

SHANGHAI COCKTALES (A Memoir)

It’s one of the gifts of China that there’s something to write about on every street corner. It’s one of the curses of China that expats keep writing about themselves instead.

That’s not to say there isn’t rich material in it. Somewhere outside the Fourth Ring Road, a nondescript borderline-alcoholic English teacher might be polishing off the manuscript of the China equivalent to The Sun Also Rises. Escape, reinvention, exoticism, disillusionment – it’s all there for a novelist or memoirist, plus baijiu, smog and as many happy endings as you can afford. There’s definitely a way to do it right, make it funny, and say something meaningful about how us foreigners (with nowhere else in particular to go) engage with China, or don’t. There’s also a way to do it wrong, and come across as a goon who can’t write his way out of a paper bag.

By now you should be getting an idea of what kind of a review this is going to be.

As a writerly sort and interested party, I occasionally read books which are memoirs – sometimes thinly veiled as fiction – of the expat in question’s China years. Some are entertaining, others as interesting as a concrete overpass. Many have weird hang-ups about sex. Most feature heavy drinking as a centrepiece. Almost all can be summed up in a single sentence: “Look at this crazy wacky time I’m having in China!” But I’ve never seen one which combines all of the things I hate in China writing between two covers until I read the self-published Shanghai Cocktales: A Memoir by Tom Olden.

Can we dwell on that title for a moment? Shanghai Cocktales. It sounds like some “friend” of Olden’s dared him to write a book based around that single, shitty 2am pun. I’m sure it sounded funny after five rounds at his local, but Olden woke up the next morning and still went with it. The chapters are called “Cocktale One,” “Cocktale Two,” and so on until you wish you were dead or drinking that sixth cocktail. Tom Olden (a pseudonym) has all the subtlety and ear for language of a horny, deaf-blind goat. If he ran this blog, it would no doubt be called Beijing Spunk.

The plot is more or less a blow-by-blow dirge of Olden’s nights out, sexual conquests and job interviews in Shanghai from his arrival as a twenty something year-old in 1999 (“the year of the Rabbit”, thanks for that) until now. It’s billed as a memoir but reads like bad fiction. The second sentence begins “As the only white male on a half-full flight, I gratefully enjoyed the extra attention the nubile air hostesses gave me,” and goes downhill from there. I would happily write off that half-full flight as collateral damage if the plane had only crashed and spared us the rest.

Promotional image for ‘Shanghai Cocktales’

At the airport, Olden meets his mate Alex, who wows him by giving an address in Chinese to their taxi driver. (“‘Whadde’fuck?’” … “‘You speak Chinese? Fuck me!’” … “‘Ching-chong, ching-chong, you’re the man.’”) There’s also some artful exposition when Alex quizzes Olden about why he left everything to come to China and asks about a girl called Marie. “‘She’s over and out. Bitch!’”, comes the reply. (“If it hadn’t been for her,” Olden delusionally muses later,“I could have spent my entire time on campus banging freshmen.”) It’s frequently revealed that Olden has “nightmares where I would wake up, bathed in cold sweat, panting from seeing Marie and Kurt in joyous copulation.” I’m on Team Kurt.

It’s not just snappy comebacks and scintillating interior monologue that Olden puts in italics. It’s every sentence he thinks is clever. On local eating habits: “How the fuck can they eat cold fish for breakfast?” On people he doesn’t like: “I’d party with anyone but her. Even French people.” On his soul-crushingly bland inner life: “You’re here now. In Shanghai. Ready for a new beginning.” His favourite refrain is “Whadde’fuck?” Sometimes he switches into italics for whole paragraphs, just for kicks. He also does that irritating thing where he writes the pinyin followed by the English (“‘Mei you wenti.’ No problem”) because ching-chong, ching-chong, he’s the man.

For someone who lived in China for sixteen years, it’s hard to believe how little of interest happened to Olden. He tries valiantly to keep things topical – the Belgrade embassy bombing, the Internet boom – but inevitably gets sucked back into the dull minutia of his sexpatscapades. In one meat market, he picks up a girl with the sparkling line “Hey – can I buy you a drink?” Her reply is “OK. First, toilet”, and I know how she feels. There are exactly two entertaining moments in the book – one where he is fleeced by the notorious teahouse scam into paying a huge dinner bill, the second where he is scammed by conmen posing as police when he’s with a prostitute. Finally, something worth cheering for.

Every woman Olden meets is immediately judged on her appearance. The idea persists among some foreigners – dare I say, especially in Shanghai? – that China is populated by porcelain dolls just waiting to jump into bed with them. Most of the time, it’s just run-of-the-mill Asian sexpot sophomoric dross, which isn’t worth quoting, although I kid you not that the first Chinese girl he runs into tells him he’s handsome and gives him an “exotic giggle.” Often it’s nastier, such as a bargirl who is “probably in her early thirties and had certainly been a pretty girl at some point in life, but now she looked pale and pinched, her slanted eyes rimmed by darkened circles.” I would give anything for a jacket shot of Olden so I could treat him the same.

Besides his alleged close encounters with Shanghai’s beauties, the rest of the book is Olden’s job interviews and miscellaneous score settling, which is all about as fun to read as drinking melamine from the can. He does the rounds of early city magazine websites and paints thinly veiled portraits of various friends and foes using false names. The climactic moment of the memoir is Olden landing a job that pays twelve thousand yuan a month, presumably vindicating him to all his enemies. There’s a whole paragraph about how boring a meeting was. To quote the master: Whadde’fuck?

If you’re a masochist, you can buy the book on Amazon, where there are thirteen customer reviews, all five stars, many of which overuse his full name in the same way. Something tells me the IP log would be revealing. I can’t imagine it sold like hot cakes, as half a year later he started giving it away for free on Twitter.

@Bueller @Bueller @Anyone… @Anyone?

I had an email exchange with Olden – he knows this review is coming – who wrote “I am aware that many people will not appreciate the story, but I wanted to tell it as it was.” He changed the names of people and companies, but everything else is accurate “as I remember it” (unspecified after how many drinks). The motivation to write the thing, he argued, was so that “when someone picks up the book 20-40 years from now, they’ll get a true picture of Shanghai in 1999.”

Curious about this mysterious auteur (Olden’s author bio says he “grew up in a small fishing village outside of Malmo, Sweden”), I asked some friends in Shanghai and we did a half-hearted human flesh search. Eventually, with the help of RFH, I tracked down someone who knows him and was in Shanghai over the same period. “It’s representative of the mindset of foreigners in China in that era,” he told me. “It’s reprehensible drivel, but unfortunately it’s the best record we’ve got.”

You might wonder – I certainly am – why I’m bothering to do a hatchet job on a self-published book with a fundamentally unlikeable narrator that no one except a few of Olden’s remaining mates will read. It’s not the first piece of grot to be written by an LBH (Loser Back Home) who got shanghai’ed into China and thinks his story is unique, and it won’t be the last. Worse books and blogs have been written. As to the offensive sexist stuff, he’s just a minnow in the slipstream of trouts like China Bounder, Robert Black and Isham Cook.

Part of it, I’ll confess, is that writing this is one way to claw some enjoyment back from the hours lost reading the bloody thing. But more than that, it’s because with every tone-deaf sentence I’m reminded of what we might be missing. Again, The Sun Also Rises was also narcissistic foreigners drinking all day. Here’s Hemingway: “You know what’s the trouble with you? You’re an expatriate. … You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You’re an expatriate. You hang around cafés.” And here’s Olden, via one of his dolls: “‘Many, many fun in Shanghaijj,’ she lashed on, shaking her head sideways. ‘Yo come anytime and we take care o’yo. Good time. Ayi-yaah. Many fun. Many, many fun…’”

Mostly, I’m reviewing this book because Olden told me that, after sixteen years, he is leaving China in a few months. I want to leave him a memento to remember us by. To borrow his own italicised phrase about a girl he doesn’t take a shine to: “You cannot let bitches like that go without a slap.”

Alec Ash is a writer and journalist in Beijing, and editor of the Anthill. Information and purchasing details of Shanghai Cocktales are on Facebook or Amazon (includes video). For a much more charitable take on this memoir, the Kirkus Review says it “gives readers plenty to think about.”

UPDATE, 6/4, 12:30 am: here’s our response to Tom Olden’s official response to Alec Ash’s review.

The author, trying to look academic

A year after leaving China and five years after publishing his first book (China Cuckoo: How I Lost a Fortune and Found a Life in China), Mark Kitto has a follow-up, That’s China, technically a prequel that traces the beginning of his That’s magazine franchise and looks underneath the fingernail of Chinese publishing. Kitto wrote the following column for Prospect, republished here with the author’s permission — with a freshly appended postscript.

From 2008 to 2012, I wrote a column for Prospect called China Café about life on a Chinese mountain, Moganshan, near Shanghai. In 2013 I left China, having written a final sign-off article, You’ll Never be Chinese. My basic argument was: “The Communist Party has destroyed civil society, the education system sucks, and there will be a major upheaval, economic and social, very soon, so I’m off.” Once it was published, I found somewhere more congenial to live, the coast of North Norfolk, which has been my UK base for most of my life.

I’ve been home now for 18 months, one month for every year I lived in China, and I am beginning to understand China again in a way I had forgotten. I have returned to the China Dream. It’s all around me, even in Norfolk. Young people tell me with breathless excitement how they are studying Mandarin at school or have a trip to China planned for their gap year. Can I help with language practice, travel advice, an introduction to an internship, a job in the mountain-top coffee shop which my Chinese wife Joanna still runs from Norfolk?

Then there are the adult dreamers. The parents pushing the children at me, the local businesses wanting to “break into the China market,” the businesses being courted by Chinese investors, the Norfolk attractions wanting to pull in Chinese tourists.

Most awkward are the conversations with the people in charge of the attractions. They’ve read about tourist boom from China and want a share of it, but Norfolk has no duty-free shopping village, no iconic British landmark and when the royal family are here, they hide. I don’t think there will be a flood of Chinese tourists coming this way any time soon.

The business people are more realistic. I’ve met several who’ve had their fingers burnt in China. They enjoy hearing how I had mine chopped off and stir-fried. It makes them feel better. Those still engaged or committed to China are more taciturn. They fall into a strange silence when I ask them how they are getting on.

The worst dreamer — the dream-makers — are the mainstream news media and the government. Soon after I returned home in 2013, the Education Minister Elizabeth Truss visited China and raved about the superiority of the Chinese education system—the same oppressive, creativity-stifling system that drove my family back to the UK. Thanks to her being a local Norfolk MP, and local schools reportedly in a dire state, the coverage was extensive. Yet my children have been transformed since they left the Chinese system and entered the British/Norfolk one.

In China they spent the entire 12-hour school day at their desks, ate their meals at them, and took tests, and mock tests, and revised for tests. It was not an education. They were learning how to pass exams. They suffered mentally and physically. My son’s mild learning “problem” went undiscovered.

Here in Norfolk they have blossomed. They enjoy school. My son’s problem has been identified and dealt with. Where he used to hate reading, he now wants to show off his skill. The pair of them have discovered team sports, and love them. (The Communist Party of China does not like teams, other than their own.)

While sections of the UK media are at last beginning to ponder the potential downturn in the Chinese economy — the repercussions of which no-one dares quantify with any accuracy, if that were possible — still the government and most of the media talk up the “China Dream,” a phrase coined by President Xi Jinping. According to one report, British investment in China is due to quadruple. China invests more in the UK than any other EU country, according to the government. The British establishment think we are marching with Mao’s legacy towards some sort of economic Shangri-La.

Combining education, investment, and the dream — the word was in the title of the piece — all in one, I read with horror a recent article in The Telegraph by Anthony Seldon, the Master of Wellington College, describing what “fun” it was to open British branded schools in China, how America was on the way down, China up, and we should all, like him, be learning Mandarin.

Now I understand why I used to meet so many outsiders trying to get into China, as I had once done myself — a very different China, before the modern Party ruined its chances, 30 years ago. They all believe in the dream. And having spent so long there myself, working with one of the most efficient propaganda — dream-peddling — machines in the world, I have been reminded that telling people what to think is not a political practice exclusive to totalitarian states. Democratic ones do it well too, perhaps even better.

When one of the most respected educators in the country admits to being a window-staring daydreamer perhaps I should think twice about bringing my children home for school after all. At least back in China there was no point staring out of the window. The air was so polluted you couldn’t see anything.

I’m due to give a lecture on “Doing business in China” at the end of this month. I joke it will be one word long: “Don’t.” Of course it won’t be. The students have been given my book to read so I hope they’ll have some questions. But it will be tempting to round up five minutes early and tell them: “My final word on doing business in China: turn to that window, look outside, and start dreaming.”

~

POSTSCRIPT for BJC:

Not that I wasn’t hoping it would be, but the feedback to the lecture, duly delivered to eight (mostly interested) undergrads on a business course BA, was along the lines of: “Well that was different.”

Transpires that the previous nine lectures (I was given the prime slot of the tenth and final one, quite by chance) were the more usual and upbeat “we must all engage with China and this is how and it’ll be a challenge but don’t worry I’m going to tell you how to avoid all the bad stuff and the best way to do that is ignore it and get on with giving you the China Dream because that’s what you’re here for…”

As ever, and as I wrote in the article above, the British media were a handy teaching aid. A couple of days before the lecture the Telegraph ran a story titled, “It’s time for the world to adjust to China’s global ambition,” whose main peg was the “longest bridge in the world… across the Yangtze Delta.” Apparently the Yangtze Delta is 102 miles wide. It wasn’t when I drove over it in 2013 on my way home to the UK. A modicum of research reveals the “bridge” is in fact a particular stretch of the elevated viaduct above the rice paddy on the Beijing to Shanghai gaotie. And we all know why the gaotie is elevated. It’s because the government is terrified of the peasants whose land it would have to otherwise requisition and all the social instability that might follow. Hence the vast additional expense of sticking the entire Chinese rail network on top of concrete pillars.

(Next up in the ever-reliable Telegraph: On 13 April a hilarious piece of puffery about the Shanghai stock exchange ending with the words: “As they say in China, it will make for interesting times.” They don’t say that in China. The author is misquoting, as do countless other Western journalists: “May you live in uninteresting times.” Uninteresting is safe. Idiots.)

I could write a regular column about the latest tripe to be spouted by the British media about China. It’s regular and relentless, yet would soon become uninteresting.

Back to my students. They wrote nice thank-you emails. They still want to do business in China, but they say they will be more cautious, and better prepared. They will even recommend that I come and talk to the next year’s course. I appreciate that.

Seems like there is a market for China Reality, despite the efforts of the British establishment.

Mark Kitto’s newest book is That’s China, available on Amazon and select bookstores in Beijing and Shanghai (including The Bookworm and Garden Books).

Only a week ago we were lamenting the dearth of female presence at a UN Women’s event in Beijing; now comes an event that celebrates a plus size of it.

The Miss Plus Size International pageant, to be held this Saturday at a luxury hotel in downtown Beijing, isn’t a contest one would immediately associate with China, but – fuck it, it’s happening, and there’s nothing we can do about it. As 36-year-old contestant Anne Homu told Time Out, “There’s a lot of big-sized Chinese and maybe they’ll get confidence if they see us.”

The current lineup features plus-size (US size 12, UK size 16) entrants from the UK, Angola, Gabon, Egypt, India, Portugal, Rwanda, Greece, Russia, Samoa, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and the US — and one from China, “Baby Tiger.” Ditching the swimsuits, the 16 contestants will compete over four rounds — Fashion Casual Wear, Fashion Trouser Wear, Evening Gown, and Talent — to win a top prize of RMB 6,000.

Although beauty contests are seen back home as hip and vital as Donald Trump’s shriveled organs, this one’s about empowerment in a non-judgmental environment and all that jazz. “Curves are in!” the organizers say: “Larger women are often rejected by other beauty pageants and this Pageant is here to change the perception of the world.”

If you have 300 kuai to hand, were only planning to spend it on cheap drinks, and would like to have your perceptions changed, what are you waiting for?

POSTSCRIPT: “Miss Plus Size Beijing is a brain child of Dr Samantha Sibanda a Zimbabwean currently based in Beijing.”

The case bears strong similarities to a series of racially tinged assaults alleged to have recently occurred in several foreign-centric districts, including Sanlitun, Houhai and Wudaokou, in which foreign witnesses reported being attacked without provocation by local men carrying weapons and traveling in a vehicle. The incidents were widely reported on WeChat and discussed on local forums, such as Reddit, where many expressed concern about possible hate crimes.

Michael (left) takes an image of his injuries shortly after the attack

An Australian student, who asked to be referred to just by his first name, Michael – for fear of possible retaliation – was returning to his BLCU quarters at “around 2am” on 21 December with his Korean girlfriend, Christine, when he says the pair noticed a grey BMW parked ahead.

“We were about 200 meters away [from the university] when [the men inside] yelled out something… they came around in their car and stopped us at the gate,” Michael recalled. Aware of the rumors that a group of men were targeting foreigners with Chinese females, he confronted the gang in an attempt to defuse the situation, explaining: “My girlfriend’s Korean, not Chinese…”

Three men  then attacked him with bats and rods. “Once they started hitting me, I grabbed one of the bats and hit one of the Chinese guys back in the head” – an act he was to later regret –  “and then approached the other two guys… yelling at them to leave and they backed off. I smashed the bat in half,” explained the former rugby winger.

Before he could check the third man, Michael said, he got up and, as the trio approached again, both students decided to run for help but “As we almost got in the dorm, my girlfriend fell down,” and the men renewed their assault. Michael claimed he remembers little of what happened next but CCTV footage shows him being battered on the head, then disarming another of his metal rod.

Inside, a large amount of students (including “a lot of Russian guys”) assisted the pair while others called the police. “One of the attackers who I’d hit tried to come in… the Chinese had gone to their car again and tried to escape” but fortunately a quick-thinking Russian had removed the keys, according to witnesses. At this point, police arrived. A member of the gang accused the Russian of attacking them, and all four were detained.

One of the alleged assailants at the police station is said to have been a US citizen with Chinese parents (his face has been obscured as he has not been charged)

In a similar December incident, detailed over at the World of Chinese, a foreign student who requested anonymity told a reporter he was approached by a group of six or seven men in a “wagon” and carrying “metal sticks,” who questioned his companion’s ethnicity. “They started asking if my friend was Chinese,” he told the magazine. After being assaulted several times, the man handed over a small amount of money and made his escape.

The magazine spoke also to an eyewitness to “a separate incident in Wudaokou, who said that he saw ‘four Chinese holding bats chasing a black guy, shouting at him,’ along Zhanchunyuan West Road, at around 3 am the same morning.” The location of the latter incident is close (1-2km) to where the attack on Michael and his partner took place. Although extreme violence is rare, attacks on foreigners do occur in the nightspots of Beijing for a variety of reasons – examples from Sanlitun being not infrequent, and not necessarily involving Chinese.

Back at the police station, a bloodied Michael says he was threatened by one of the men (to wit: “I know where you guys live, I’m gonna come get you and stab you”) and endured racial slurs, and both he and his friends were accused of instigating the fight. The Russian was detained and later released the next day, while Michael received five stitches; his passport is now with police as the case continues.

“All three are now in jail,” said Michael. “However, if we can get more witnesses, they’ll serve a longer time in jail.” In legal terms, the men have been detained pending investigation. They can be held for up to 28 days without charge and should police decide to press charges, a case will be sent to the “procurator” for consideration. If the case is accepted, a trial will be set and the assailants can look forward to tackling China’s 99.1% conviction rate, instead of unarmed foreigners.

An image taken at the hospital shows Michael’s head wound, which required five stitches

Michael praised both university authorities and Wudaokou police, who he described as “helpful [and] good” but added that the embassy was “useless.” The investigation is ongoing and “slow.” One potential difficulty might be “the injury suffered to the other man, he was in hospital for a while and looks like he is permanently a bit deformed.” The man is alleged to be an American citizen, though both his parents are Chinese.

Readers who have any information about the case, know of any other incidents, or were themselves victims of one of a similar spate of attacks involving a grey BMW in the last two months are urged to contact Wudaokou police, or email us at the usual address (and we’ll pass your details on). Said Michael: “All I want is this not to happen again.”

You can follow the author of this piece @MrRFH on Twitter

Happy Halloween, everybody. For those of you wondering, the some-years-strong Beijing tradition of dressing up and riding Subway Line 2 on the weekend before Halloween will come to a close this year. Authorities are worried about the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit, so they don’t want their public transportation clogged with beer-guzzling foreigners doing weird shit and attracting crowds.

Reuters reports:

Beijing police have warned people they face arrest for wearing Halloween fancy dress on the subway as it may cause crowds to gather and create “trouble”, a state-run newspaper said on Friday, unveiling a list of APEC summit-related restrictions.

Specifically:

“Public transport police point out, please do not wear strange outfits in subway stations or in train carriages, which could easily cause a crowd to gather and create trouble,” [the Beijing News] said.

Police had the power to arrest those who “upset order”, the paper said.

“If the chaos is serious and causes a stampede or other public safety incident, the police will deal with it severely in accordance with the law.”

It’s a shame, because the PSB crashed the party last year and we got along pretty well. They rode a stop with us, asking politely that we leave at Dongsishitiao.

Those wishing to call the authorities’ bluff have our full endorsement, of course. Photos, stories, etc., please send our way. (More likely, you’ll be in costume and find yourself needing to use the subway; we’re pretty sure no one would mind, but if you notice anything out of the ordinary or noteworthy, let us know.)

Good news is, there’s still plenty to do this Halloween, and if you’re a slacker who needs some easy-to-make China-centric costume ideas, we have you covered. See if you can beat my DIY costume from 2008 (center):

Note: top image is from the Hong Kong subway.

- From our correspondent’s painful introduction to Beijing

I knelt at the top of the hospital escalator, partly from exhaustion, mostly out of surrender. My moans and cries recalled childhood Halloween nights spent puking up entire plastic jack-o-lanterns of candy. My tears blurred reality. Loud, distracted, exotic shapes and figures brushed past me, unimpressed by my misery, misery unlike any I’d felt before.

This wasn’t how I imagined my first week in China would go.

Five hours earlier I had woken up at 3 am to discover my right testicle swollen to softball size. I banged the wall and demanded ice, as if massaging ice cubes over my ball would cure everything. Tiffany, my hotel neighbor and co-worker, heard the howls and rushed over. I motioned toward my privates then shouted some variation of “Jesus fucking Christ, get some fucking ice NOW.” She returned five minutes later ice-less. My company’s welcome package failed to notify me that ice doesn’t exist in China.

Around a half-hour later I acknowledged my problem wasn’t going to shrink any time soon. We limped down countless hotel stairs, each step more painful than the last, until cool Beijing autumn air smacked us in the face. An ambulance blared its furious siren while early-birds set up their baozi stands. The EMTs lifted us aboard as I continued to mouth off about the hotel’s ice shortage. My left hand gripped Tiffany’s and my right hand held my tender ball as we whipped around congested hutongs. An eternity later some giggling nurses carted me into a Guomao-subway-station-crowded emergency room. Stretcher-bound patients decorated the otherwise colorless walls, family members wrestling for space to treat their sick.

Tiffany, a Chinese-Canadian, assumed translation duties. Her basic Chinese combined with my incessant whimpers somehow communicated the symptoms to the non-English-speaking hospital staff. The hospital required us to go through various checkpoints before seeing an actual doctor, each one followed by unbearable twenty-minute detours to the cashier’s counter.

With King Minos’s labyrinth complete, real assistance found us, albeit assistance without any privacy. Tiffany, along with a doctor and some complete strangers, watched me pull down my pants to reveal a monster, now triple its partner-in-crime’s size. I met Tiffany two months prior to this and had fantasized about dropping my pants in front of her under much different circumstances. However, as I laid sprawled out on a makeshift hospital bed with an old Chinese dude cupping my nut, I eliminated any outside chances of us ever hooking up.

I tried to interpret Tiffany and the doctor’s conversation but ran against an impossible language barrier. I waved my arms, screamed, clutched my head, and cursed — anything to make them recognize my agony. Tiffany, better known for her giggly, immature, and oftentimes bizarre personality, kept a straight face as she translated the doctor’s spot-check diagnosis while I yanked up my pants.

“He says you need to get the surgery now or you’re going to, like, you know, lose it. There’s a vein that, like, got twisted and your, you know, um, it’s dying. He says it will, like, die soon and that you’re lucky it hasn’t died already.”

Die? How do balls just die? I refused to believe it. This wasn’t serious, nothing a little ice couldn’t solve. These Chinese doctors just wanted to rob the clueless foreigner. I called my sole Beijing friend, Lisi, to get a second opinion. She listened to me choke through tears, then told me she was too busy to come right away but would make some calls.

An X-ray or three later confirmed the initial prognosis – to forgo surgery would doom my ball to a saggy, shrunken, deflated, prune-like existence. The surgery cost had a couple more zeroes than my bank account did, my live savings already depleted from the earlier check-ups. At a loss and with my back to the wall, I wandered through the hospital alone until pure fatigue brought me to my knees. Tiffany found me amongst the crowd at the top of the escalator, knelt down beside me, patted my shoulder, and lowered her head.

Then, at our lowest point, two angels descended to our hell on earth. Lisi’s reinforcements had arrived. They delivered us to the hospital’s spotless international building. Gefeng, the talkative angel, informed us that a friend of a friend’s uncle happened to be the hospital’s manager and could accelerate the process.

A while later, Lisi arrived and all but ordered Gefeng, her boyfriend at the time, to pay my surgery bill. I wonder if he would’ve paid had he known Lisi and I had met in Thailand the summer before and fallen in love. Of course, I still had a huge crush on her, and had come to China for her. The five of us moved into my cushy private room (equipped with flat-screen TVs, personal bathroom, and office) to discuss the surgery with the doctors. At this point the immeasurable pain I experienced earlier had faded a bit. The doctors claimed this could be attributed to my ball’s near demise. Time was ticking. Just before heading into surgery, the doctors informed me that my friend had a 50/50 chance of being saved. They then presented two options in the event my worst fear came true. Option one: keep it, although it would technically be dead. As time passed it would shrivel away, but at least I’d still have a pair. Option two: cut it and live out my remaining years as a uni-baller. My friends stared at me, waiting for a decision between shitty outcome number one and shitty outcome number two. My fingers formed scissors, the universal testicular amputation sign.

The nurses pushed me into the hallway, now moments away from knowing my ball’s fate. My eyes turned to my comrades, the necessary farewell speech ready to be released. Accustomed to the wallflower role in social situations, I despised being the center of attention. I cried, not from pain but from the unbelievable kindness these four people had shown me. Never one for words, I just smiled, stared up at the ceiling, and mumbled that I’d be OK and not to worry. Then the nurses rolled me away.

The surgery room’s malevolent lighting, icy cold temperature, and sprawling steel blankness duplicated a horror film torture chamber. Metal tools passed hands, fingers playing with my arm hair. Jokes lost in translation, lost in my desire to be anywhere else. Nurses chuckled through hygiene masks, the smell of rubber gloves and iodine now swimming through my nostrils. Cold hands organized my body into the pregnant-lady-in-labor position. As the anesthesiologist stabbed one epidural after another into my spine, I contemplated the tattoo inscribed inside my left bicep: “so it goes.” When I discovered Vonnegut in college I decided this three-word phrase encapsulated any life philosophy I may or may not have.

Life is wild. In less than 24 hours you can go from singing along with Frank Ocean’s “Thinking about you,” smiling ear-to-ear because the girl of your dreams agreed to accompany you to the Great Wall, all the way to being strapped to a hospital bed as strange Chinese guys saw your testicle in half.

So it goes.

I woke up hazy. A school of eyeballs stared down at me.

“Well?” I asked.

One surgeon flashed a smile. “I think you very happy.”

Chinglish never sounded better.

Bryce is a lifelong Washington Wizards fan living in Beijing.

John Ross (right), pictured in London

Last week, coverage of the embattled but peaceful pro-democracy rallies in Hong Kong earned the unsolicited though controversial criticism of one John Ross.

Ross, a British academic who describes himself as a “Senior Fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University,” took to Weibo (a Chinese Twitter) to accuse foreign media of being “too hypocritical.”

“In 150 years of British colonial rule in Hong Kong, they never permitted its people to elect their own governor, and the United States didn’t criticize the UK about it,” Ross wrote. In erecting this particularly withered straw man, of course, Ross utterly ignores the actual catalyst for these protests: the promises, originally brokered by the British, then later arguably broken by Beijing, for universal suffrage, as per the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ template agreed in 1984 between the UK and China.

Ross is obviously far too concerned with the hypocrisy of foreign governments to have any time for his own.

He proposes, for example, that the suffrage system now on the table in HK – three candidates, hand-picked by Beijing: Any color you like, so long as it’s red – is “much more democratic than the United Kingdom.” That’s presumably the same UK where calls for a referendum on Scottish independence were ruthlessly censored, its leaders crushed, journalists and activists imprisoned, and where the streets of Dundee and Glasgow are now lined with friendly, tear-gas wielding soldiers to preserve Scotland’s freedoms. To put things in perspective, in 2013 the Economic Intelligence Unit used actual data to rank countries by democracy, placing Hong Kong at 65 out of 165, with a score of 6.42, making it a “flawed democracy” (the UK is 16. China? 143).

Ross doesn’t – yet – enjoy the profitable pro-Party punditry platforms of his fellow foreign cheerleaders, such as Martin Jacques or meritocratist Daniel Bell, but nevertheless is intent on filling the mould of “foreign stooge of a Chinese dictator… manipulated by those who found him useful,” like US constitutional scholar Frank Goodnow before him.  Clearly he believes there’s still gold up in those hills.

So when the “former director of London’s Economic and Business Policy to ex-Mayor Ken Livingstone,” was approached this summer by Chinese tabloid the Global Times (GT) for a profile about foreign China Watchers, he was, no doubt, expecting a nice soap-job.

After all, GT is a state-owned affiliate of People’s Daily, and its Chinese edition (whose bug-eyed editorials the English edition faithfully reproduces) is particularly known for its “nationalist” bent.

Ross, meanwhile, is a loyal toady of the new world order. The Marxist economist is so committed to serving the people that, back in 2004, he gracefully accepted a massive salary of £110,000 – more than the then-Mayor of New York – as one of “Red” Ken Livingstone’s closest crony-advisors. (The post was not advertised, which might have struck even Tony Blair as rather non-egalitarian.)*

Ross and GT would seem natural bedfellows.

Unfortunately, the paper’s reporter went off (Ross’s) script to deliver an actual piece of journalism: a long article about various overseas admirers of the Communist Party – often known as “Panda Huggers” – such as Ross and Martin Jacques, and entitled “Our Friends in the West.”

The cached article as it originally appeared

Within hours of this going online – and being enthusiastically shared among Twitter’s China hands – Ross was on the line to complain. Demonstrating his commitment to Party values by attempting to get the young journalist in trouble, Ross demanded immediate expunging of negative comments about himself. “I am well used to expect such articles by people such as the Southern Media Group,” Ross fumed, “but it was a great surprise to see it in Global Times.”

The reasons for Ross’s rage became abundantly clear: “This article attacks and attempts to discredit me by the typical methods of suppression of information and selective quotation,” he wrote (our emphases). Ross then demanded that several lines be removed – aka “suppression of information” – to make way for pre-approved remarks, supplied by him, inserted in their stead… a.k.a. “selective quotation” (!)

The article originally noted that – in Ross’s own words – he had been criticized by “British right wing [sic] writer Nick Cohen”:

Original text containing criticism of Ross as first written in the Guardian

This passage was excised at an unknown date, after publication, to be replaced with a glowing passage that displays a complete volte face in both facts and tone:

The new passage now features praise from former BBC chairman Gavyn Davies

Of Cohen, all reference had vanished like a dissident in the night (apparently, “Cohen has no knowledge of economics,” as Ross fumed in his e-mail). Also missing:

The original contained a scathing reference to Ross’ tireless work in the state-media sector, now deleted

Not content with neutering these small jabs, the overweening Ross then had an entire 90-word paragraph inserted, in which he demonstrates that he has, at least, apparently as much grasp of modern Chinese history as Cohen purportedly has of economics:

According to Ross, who simply ignores the entire periods of 1949-1976 and 1989-1992,  individual entrepreneurship is now the standard of measurement for a state’s human-rights record

Meanwhile, the fawning comments about Ross from his boss at the Chongyang Institute – a state-backed “think tank” run by a former hack from the Chinese edition of People’s Daily, Wang Wen – were unsurprisingly left untouched. The article, once a spiky piece of journalism, had effectively become a standard fluff piece larded with dripping encomia to Ross – all under the byline of a “senior reporter” who was powerless to prevent it.

Although he was indeed interviewed for the article, Ross concluded his email of complaint by remarking that he was “astonished that Global Times should publish such an attack on myself… without giving [me] any chance to reply to these attacks.”

Well, now we do have Ross’s reply:  In the form of the professional harassment of a female journalist at a state-owned paper, a shrill demand for heavy-handed censorship, and the wholesale manipulation of someone else’s work to further his own agenda. The difference is, we’re not the slightest bit astonished.

p.s.

@akaDashan Please learn colloquial Chinese idioms that even the State Grid understands as no such weibo exists

— John Ross (@JohnRoss43) October 8, 2014

*While in position under Livingstone, Ross enjoyed 12 foreign jamborees in just three years, according to WorkersLiberty.org. But his finest hour came after Livingstone was defeated by Tory candidate Boris Johnson in the bitterly contested 2012 London mayoral elections.

Ross lost his incumbency – a hazard of democracy to the humble public servant-crony – but threatened Johnson with the use of “m’learned friends.” The justification? Before rejoining the ranks of the common man, Mayor Livingstone had slipped a new “unfair dismissal” rule in, which allowed political appointees the same redundancy rights as, well, chimney sweeps and nurses. Well – almost the same. Ross got a thoroughly socialist settlement, in the region of £200,000. Bottles of Karl Marx champagne all round!

You can follow the author on Twitter @MrRFH

A dispatch from Hong Kong, where life – parties, business — continues as usual… with one high-profile exception.

It’s Day 8 of Occupy Central, or Umbrella Revolution, if you will. A few nights ago I was enjoying a nice steak dinner at La Vache! in the heart of Soho district when the conversation steered itself to the events happening only a few blocks away. As the wine flowed, so did the opinions of the dinner guests.

In case you haven’t heard, tensions are high here in Hong Kong. You feel it on the streets, at dinner tables, and of course on Facebook. The protests kicked off Sunday, September 28, when tear gas exploded, protesters covered their faces with makeshift masks and continued to hold their ground using the only tools they had, sheer numbers, umbrellas, and dare I say maybe a bit of force?… Monday morning came and the crowds dwindled, as peaceful protesters reported to work. As the 6 o’clock bell struck, protesters flooded back to the streets and Occupy Central was yet again in full swing. Rinse and repeat on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday saw public holidays here in Hong Kong and reportedly the largest number of protesters, who expanded their hold — Central, Admiralty, Causeway Bay, and Mong Kok had all been occupied. The city was forced to cancel its annual National Day fireworks.

Roads are emptier and the typical wait time at the cross-harbor tunnel is nonexistent, which is nice. The mass transit railway “MTR,” on the other hand, is getting a constant level of insane traffic, usually only seen on Fridays at 6 pm. Those wanting to be part of the action travel via MTR, as all major occupy zones are close to subway stations. Most of the city is still accessible, though some people are experiencing difficulty in maintaining their normal routines. Some schools have been forced to cancel activities, while many business owners are feeling the pressure to think ahead, as rent is due at the end of the month. And let’s not forget our outspoken Hong Kong taxi drivers, who now complain about a slowdown in business.

Outside of occupy zones, city life continues best that it can. The local watering holes in Lan Kwai Fong (Central) are filled with the usual rowdy expats and local ladies doing their best to navigate the steep terrain as they wobble in their four-inch red bottom heels. Shopping malls and restaurants in Tsim Sha Tsui (Kowloon) are full, and though I don’t have access to their financials, it appears it’s business as usual. On Thursday Hong Kong hosted the ever-trendy “Run For Your Lives” zombie race with thousands of people, which ended with a packed after-party including an outdoor concert and live DJs.

As the police sit back and allow the peaceful protesters to carry on, a new wave of Hong Kongers have hit the streets – the “blue ribbons,” who are protesting the protesters. Mong Kok, typically known as one of the more violent parts of the city, where in my earlier days I had been chased from a local karaoke bar in a classic case of a friend speaking to the wrong girl, has seen some of the most physical clashes of pro- and anti-government protesters recently. No surprise.

A group of masked men, who looked eerily similar to the yellow ribbons (the Occupy protesters) fighting on the front lines of Admiralty, also approached the Causeway Bay area and started ripping down barricades in an attempt to take back the streets. “Shame on those cowards for covering their face,” “it was a peaceful protest until they came,” and “where are the police now to stop the violence” are common Facebook status updates by my proud yellow-ribbon-supporting friends. If the police haven’t been overworked enough, they now have a new duty they’re destined to fail at – protecting anti-government protesters. Rumors are swirling that these blue ribbons are merely paid thugs, possibly from the Triad, ordered to create chaos so the police can come in and shut the whole thing down. To top it off, women are reportedly being sexually harassed in the confrontations. Sickening.

At this point, who knows what to believe. I’m no different from most people who’ve settled here and call Hong Kong a second home: I believe in equality and I want to live in a world where we all have a say in choosing the leaders who represent us. But I also understand the perspective of those who have built Hong Kong to where it is today, in spite of a previous generation of colonialists, and shudder at the thought of all that work being undone. So, is the student-led protest the right move for Hong Kong at this time? What about sitting back and doing nothing?

One dinner guest felt strongly that by not participating in the protests, you must be a blue ribbon supporter… maybe a bit strong, but it made me think, what is the other option? If not now, when?

Another friend recommended that the yellow ribbons consolidate to one occupy zone — this would help bring order back to the city and ideally end the violence.

A local friend stuck to his guns and commented that everyone just needs to go home. “You can’t win against Beijing, you’ve made your point, now go home.”

The unfortunate reality is, Hong Kong people are fighting Hong Kong people, and it’s hurting the city. Violence is not the answer, but is blocking the streets and shutting down our city? To end our dinner, we held a final glass of red in the air and yelled “yám bùi” (飲杯, cheers) and toasted to friendship, however divided we were.

At the end of the day, I’m really thankful to live in Hong Kong. I don’t want to see the city take the biggest loss, which I fear is the only outcome — everyone in Hong Kong will lose.

Neil is a Cantonese-speaking Canadian Expat who’s lived in Hong Kong for seven years.

Er… what?

Described by one excited attendee as “the stupidest, most Z-list thing ever… a fake award ceremony with fake red carpet,” the “expat Oscars” (as no one is calling it) was hosted by this nubile pair:

On the right is Mark Regan, a “Weatherman Anchor” at CCTV. (Mark’s previous role was “Import / Export Manager at Beijing W&G Trading Co,” so TV was the obvious next step.) His co-host is Shenzhen TV’s Yue Xu.

Other expat luminaries going viral on the interwebs are “uprising actor Greg Schroeder” (video apparently exists)

Greg, tell us about your uprising

“Mr. Albania Rolando Lekja”

So, you’re Mr. Albania – or your first name is Albania? It’s confusing

“Well-known actor Ludi Lin” (whose credits include The Shannon Entrophy)

When Ludi proposes, you say YES (or you don’t get your hand back)

And Frank from This is Sanlitun, who apparently turned up in character. Awesome do-rag.

Did you know Frank’s real name is Chris?

Our source told us, “Everyone seemed nice ­– it was all just a little bit sad.” And how. No Cao Cao; not even Carlos Ottery? Saaaaad.

Were you a guest at the Expats in Chinese Film and TV Awards? Did you win an award? Please do not get in contact with us.

Editor’s note: Empires of the Deep, with a budget exceeding $100 million, was supposed to be China’s Avatar. But as our correspondent, Dale Irons, found out on set, this extravagant 3-D epic was plagued from the beginning by incompetence and misfortune — to say nothing of dangerous working conditions, a rampaging horse, and the tide. Five years after production began, there’s little reason to believe this film will ever see a big-screen release.

This is Part 2 of Dale’s two-part diary from the set of what might be China’s most expensive — and worst — movie ever. Catch up with Part 1 here, in which our correspondent fibs his way into a role before realizing he’d be forced to cut off his locks to play a merman. -RFH

~

As promised, the day of reckoning has finally come. I had managed to avoid my appointment with the razor for almost three weeks but couldn’t hide any longer. I would be reborn as a merman.

This is when things genuinely turned ugly. The eight or so merman extras were told to be ready by 4:30 am in order to get to the studio for make-up. Our previous night’s shooting had only left us in bed by 2 am, so we were more than a little tired. We arrived and put on our rubber suit for the first time. Not the most comfortable thing, but the novelty of becoming some type of mermaid soldier was exciting for about an hour. Perhaps unsurprisingly to anyone who’s observed how lowly Chinese employees are often asked to don ill-fitting costumes, the suit proved baggy around the neck, arms and legs. Their solution was to glue the suit to our skin, starting with the legs.

After they had finished gluing my hands, I began to experience some minor irritation. I examined the bottles they were using and, sure enough, found a large warning in bold caps: Avoid contact with skin.” By the time they’d finished affixing a fin to my naked scalp, my entire body was experiencing a mild burning sensation. My scalp, freshly denuded and exposed to the elements for the first time in years, was undergoing God knows what culture shock: I could picture the toxics pouring like Viking raiders through my vulnerable pores and into my bloodstream.

By the time the face make-up had been completed, it was 9 am. We emerged into the studio to find not a single member of the crew present. It wasn’t for another seven hours that shooting finally began at 4 pm; I was told to “get used to it.”

The filming itself took 30 minutes, before it was time to remove our suits and accessories. Some type of alcohol was used for the avoid-contact-with-skin glue. My head fin wasn’t done with me: it left an angry, horseshoe-shaped mark behind. I was told not to “worry.”

We arrived home around 2 am again only told to be ready to get fishy again at 4 am.

After a few weeks of this nonsense, we set off to film somewhere in a cave. Only it wasn’t so much a cave as an abandoned quarry. Given China’s safety record with mining, this didn’t feel like the most safety-conscious shoot, but, hell, I was no longer being doused daily in toxic glue, so I went along with it.

Back in my curly wig and acting helpless, I noticed that every single crew member was wearing a hard hat. Every. Single. One. Except us — neither the pirates (our enemies!) nor my fellow villagers had been offered any means of keeping our precious skulls safe.

I’d already been marked down as a troublemaker, so when the pirates settled down to a feast at a picnic table, and we were chained to a wall, I said nothing. Then in came the horse again (that bloody horse); I was surprised it didn’t have a hard hat on, too. The animal had somehow been instructed to jump over the feasting table. After several failed attempts, I was glad to be bald, chained to the wall and persona non grata, rather than in the path of those hooves — which were under the command of local personnel who clearly had no concern if anyone else died or had their bones crushed.

Then, with a sudden almighty crash, the reason for all those helmets became apparent. A chunk of rock, around a meter across, came crashing down from somewhere on high and landed, destroying a spotlight. The cry went up immediately from the crew: “Don’t worry!”

Yet someone clearly was worried, because after a few more days, eventually even our crew of Jackass rejects were wondering whether the disused quarry was just too dangerous a work environment. As extras we were simply expendable. It was now the depths of winter; the conditions could not have been worse. The last thing we heard was that they would return in spring to finish the quarry shooting.

By this time, my hair was beginning to grow back, except for around the site of the horseshoe welt on my scalp. “If you don’t like it, go back to Beijing,” the casting director would now snap at my every approach. I was no longer viewed as an annoying gadfly but an actual menace to production. My complaints had annoyed just about everyone on set and my inappropriate amusement at the storyline and script hadn’t done me any favors either.

[Ed.’s note: the original script was written by the film’s main cheerleader and wallet, 43-year-old supposed "billionaire mogul" Jon Jiang. By 2010, it had gone through “40 drafts with the help of 10 Hollywood screenwriters,” according to the New York Times]

By this time, we’d relocated to Fujian province: namely, a small town called Qinyu, which you may have seen sometimes on the news in recent years for its infamous, deadly floods. Our hotel had spared no expense with a large red “big character” banner to welcome the production. Other than the aforementioned flooding problem, not much happens in Qinyu, so the Empires shoot was big news in the town. The locals, led to believe they would catch a glimpse of some famous actors, had already begun loitering around the hotel in clusters. How wrong they were: Cao Cao hadn’t even turned up yet.

[Ed.'s note: Stars would be in short supply, anyway. After numerous Hollywood actors turned down roles, the lead went to Italian actress Monica Bellucci. Belluci pulled out and was replaced by Bond girl Olga Kurylenko: she remains the headliner. Rest of the cast, including Angry Villager, here.]

So it wasn’t for another week that filming would begin, this time on the beach. This was a welcome change from the dullness of the studio and the dangers of the quarry. The whole scene was essentially an invasion: mermen emerging from the water and running along the beach till someone told them to stop.

Unfortunately, the shoot was marred by a daily Act of God no one could possibly have ever envisaged: the tide. We would arrive in the morning; the usual confusion would mean we began filming in the afternoon, and then the twin enemies of fading natural light and the rising tide would wreak havoc upon every plan for that day. We would literally film for a maximum of one or two hours each day. The extent to which the quotidian twin events of sunset and tide plagued filming – events you could literally set your watch by — was far worse than any pirate raid, mermen invasion, or maritime war.

By now, we must have been at least three months behind schedule. Actors and crew were threatening to leave daily, due to not being paid and the production running way over schedule. The director at the time, Jonathan Lawrence, had clearly had enough.

[Ed.'s note: Lawrence was shortly to leave the shoot. After five months’ filming in difficult conditions (“aside from slippery wet rocks in pouring rain, this included a cave that was falling apart and dangerous crushing equipment,” according to an “anonymous source” quoted in a sci-fi blog), his contract expired and somehow did not meet the requirements for renewal. Lawrence’s exit followed the earlier walkout of the singularly named director Pitof, of Catwoman infamy (Catwoman for Chrissake!), along with the sideways promotion of Empire Strikes Back and Robocop 2’s Irvin Kershner from director to executive producer, which didn’t stop him from eventually bouncing, either. IMDB now lists two directors, Michael French -- who we’ve never heard of but has something called Heart of a Dragon to his cinematic credit -- and Scott Miller (ditto; did camera work on 2000’s Bus Driver’s Union).]

Meanwhile, the stunt director was frustrated at dealing with a plethora of unprofessional action experts like myself. Like the troubled underwater productions of Titanic and Waterworld, everything seemed to be turning into an expensive disaster movie.

On what felt like Day 236, we were informed that the empire would be marching up a neighboring mountain in order to film a line-up scene. The minibus twisted and turned up the dangerous winding paths with the blaring horn as the sole safety device. Upon reaching the summit, we donned our fish suits, although this time I refused to apply their glue to my neck due to a rash. This seemed to go unnoticed (the make-up artists had had enough of my non-stop bitching by this point).

We were to stand in a row as the camera swooped over in a horizontal line, much like a football team during the national anthem. Things seem to go rather smoothly.

On the descent, though, I overheard a phone call where my name was repeated several times, accompanied by troubled groans from the recipient. Back at the hotel, word soon went round that I was in the soup.

The problem? That damn glue again.

On reviewing the day’s footage, my bare neck had been spotted by the crew. I was not given a chance to argue my point, or even point to my rash. The verdict was already in: “Tomorrow you go back to Beijing!” The empire had finally struck back.

My dismissal, while humiliating, had probably been a long time coming. My stunt acting and fight scenes had been lackluster to say the least: It had taken ten takes for me to simply fall from a rooftop on wires. I had failed to fire plastic arrows at imaginary targets. I couldn’t even look mean on camera. A week before, I had armed my fellow mermen with BB guns we found at a nearby toy store and recreated scenes from The Matrix in the hotel corridors. By a tragic and unforeseen accident, the casting director had gotten himself caught in the crossfire. My card was marked.

On the train home, though, I was smiling. All said and done, it was damn good fun and I would do it all over again. As one blogger, who seemed to have some impressive behind-the scenes access, optimistically noted in 2010: “Empires of the Deep is planned as the first of a trilogy [and] scheduled for a 2011 release. Hopefully, it will rise above accusations of resource mismanagement, financial issues, poor production decisions, corner-cutting, inexperienced extras and the other problems.”

I couldn’t agree less. Fingers crossed that the movie does live up (or down) to all the hype — after all, not many people can say they starred in the worst movie ever made; even fewer can say they were from sacked from it.

According to Douban, Empires of the Deep was rescheduled for an August 2013 release. It never happened. The latest IMDB update, from October 2013, lists it as under post-production.

Part 1 of Dale Irons’s account is here.

Editor’s note: Empires of the Deep is a much-delayed 3-D epic film that seems destined to disappear forever — for various unexplained but guessable reasons. Neither the film — known rather generously as “China’s Avatar,” starring Bond girl Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) – nor the full story may ever be officially released. The New York Times profiled the film as far back as 2010, reporting a summer 2011 release. Much later, word on Douban had it that that this supposed USD$150 million flick — financed by real estate mogul Jon Jiang — was slated for cinemas around August 2013. That date has clearly come and gone with no sign of the maritime epic’s splashdown.

It’s now been five years — an appropriate anniversary — so, tired of waiting, we here publish the “production diaries” of a young Australian-British man, Dale Irons, who found himself back in 2009, for various reasons, on the set of allegedly the most expensive Chinese film ever made — and possibly the worst. Big words? Read for yourself. -RFH

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It all began with a distant classified ad calling for extras for a big-budget Hollywood-style movie about mermaids, or some such shit.

Desperate for cash and willing to sell any pride (and later, any bodily harm) at whatever price to keep me away from a room full of screaming, irritating spoilt brats, this former English teacher took down the address and time. I’d seen Splash with my mother once back in the day, so I was positively swimming with confidence: oh yeah.

Arriving at the audition at Beijing’s The Place [Ed.’s note: This is a ritzy strip mall actually called The Place] I rendezvoused with my old high-school chum, Ryan. We had moved to Harbin from Australia together in 2006, but unlike my own, unaccomplished self, he was managing a rather large nightclub, which he never ceased to shut up about. (Maybe that’s a bit harsh: give me a few drinks and I’ll bore you to tears with my so-called “near-death experiences” in that notorious Dongbei city.)

It became apparent rather quickly that I was at a cattle market for agents, with four or five frantically trying to grab their merchandise to make it clear which livestock they were representing.

The confused herd, about 80 souls in all, was eventually ready to be presented to the casting director, who we’ll call Chen; his rented office was awash with mysterious sea scenes, maritime props, and strange figurines.

Chen, who looked somewhat goblin-like himself, made a speech that at least 80 percent of us did not remotely understand. His assistant proceeded to dramatically reduce this into a few short, welcoming sentences, and then it was down to business.

Chen asked anyone with acting experience to raise their hands and fill out an application form. I had exactly zero background on set; I raised my hand. Filling the form, I populated my resume with fictional commercials, every Australian film we could remember, a TV series in which I was the lead, and thank God IMDB was blocked in China at that time.

After a brief reading, we were asked if we had any “fighting or action experience.” Yes: tons. For my friend — built like a tank with a voice so deep he was actually able to bass you out of a conversation — this wasn’t actually so far from the truth, although the acting was mostly of the “fucking and fighting” variety, in assorted bars and clubs. With my shoulder-length hair and somewhat effete manner, I cringed at the thought of a demonstration of such skills. Luckily, they took my word for it.

After our turn in front of a camera, we were told we would be contacted in a few days if we were successful. The huddle of agents warned their potential stars that we must mention their names if we were successful.

That same night, we went out to dinner to ponder our potential career shift. Around9 pm, Ryan’s phone rang. It was the agent: we had not been successful. Disappointed, we continued to drink. Thirty minutes later, my phone rang. It was Chen’s assistant: we had been successful. We were going to be “featured extras.” And, yes, our faithful agent had unfortunately been cut out of the deal.

After signing a six-month contract, we were told to pack enough belongings for the entirety of the contract and be at Fuxingmen subway at 3 pm a week later.

I flung some crap in a rucksack and was ready to set off for a city we had never heard of, somewhere in Hebei, to film a movie we had no idea about, by a director we’d never heard of, in a language we didn’t understand. It seemed like it would be a fairly typical China adventure.

Arriving at the shoot’s chosen hotel, a basic number, we were invited to relax for an hour before visiting the casting director’s room to hear who we’d be playing.

During the audition, we’d been told that extras would either be mermen or pirates; that much we knew. The crucial part was that the merman role required a complete removal of all head hair. The pirates, meanwhile, would get to keep all theirs. On the elevator down, one of the ripped-off agents from earlier told me I looked like Johnny Depp and would certainly be cast as a pirate. (I look nothing like Johnny Depp, though a drunk Dutch girl once told me I reminded her of Adrian Brody.)

We assembled to await our filmic fate. After the Depp comment, I was confident I’d get to keep my shoulder-length hair and movie-star looks. Alas, as the pirates’ names were being read out, I realized mine was not among them. And after much arguing, moaning, whining, and outright bitching, my name still wasn’t among them: like it or not, I was going Full Mer.

On Day One of the shoot, I was roused from slumber by a rhythmic moaning to find my gorilla-sized pal curled around an unopened water barrel (I later discovered he’d inexplicably pilfered it from reception). The sight of his hairy back, glistening with beads of sweat, was almost harsher than the prospect of a full day’s shooting.

An early-morning minivan took us to the set, where I was introduced to our main role in the production: hanging around, waiting. Followed by more waiting, followed by sudden mass confusion, followed by further waiting. Eventually, the entire production crew gathered to point incense sticks in each nautical direction for good luck.

This was the first and only time when spirits were high.

For the first few weeks, the featured extras (including me) were tasked with playing what could best be described as Roman guards or Spartans in a village scene from 300. Much of the downtime waiting was thus spent kicking each other in the stomachs and shouting: “This is HEBEI!”

The set was populated by various poorly treated farm animals, plus some Russians who were bussed in daily. They were never the same Russians — so let’s hope no one pays too much attention to the blacksmith or butcher in the background.

My first close-up was simple: I had to confront the hero of the movie, who was demanding to be let through the town gates. “You shall not pass!” I told him bluntly and, to my money, theatrically. I was immediately informed that my lines would be dubbed, as I didn’t have a speaking-role contract; I wasn’t that surprised, except by the fact that they appeared to be taking the contracts seriously.

A week later came my first taste of some of the film’s continuity problems. I was informed that, as well as playing a village guard and a merman soldier, I would also be playing one of four helpless villagers who would be captured by the pirates. Wow, they really are getting their money’s worth, I thought.

Obviously, my face had already been captured on camera not letting any damn man pass, but it wasn’t until I was adorned in my Helpless Peasant robes and ready for action that someone else spotted that fact. The obvious solution, which I presented immediately, would simply be to recast me as a pirate — but the crew had other plans. The make-up team was called in to uglify me. I pondered the possibilities: prosthetic nose? A nasty, prominent scar? They decided on a curly wig — the perfect disguise.

For the first scene featuring the pirate raid, a wooden cage had been constructed, which was dragged in by a very unwilling and somewhat angry horse. The animal first came charging into the studio unheralded, and to the alarm of a crowd of Russian extras who had to scatter wildly. After a good half-hour spent calming the beast down, the crew told me to jump up and sit on top of the cage. My first taste of danger in the empire, and my fate was in the hands (or rather, hooves) of an untrained stallion. The cage gained momentum as the nag flew into the village, myself perched perilously atop. Cut. Phew. Danger over… Take two. Wait, what? It would take many more terrifying takes before the horse hit its mark and we were allowed down to live another day…

Continue to Part 2 of Dale’s diary on the set of Empires of the Deep, China’s most expensive — and possibly worst — movie.

Growing up, Driver Wang’s father thought him a momma’s boy. “Send him to play outside more,” he complained. “The kid needs to get into some scrapes.” Little did Wang Hu know, his son had been through six lifetimes of scrapes. He’d been castrated by a sorceress, strangled by a lover, beaten by roving pirates, and tortured by Red Guards. Yet in his current life as a Beijing taxi driver, Driver Wang is unaware of any of this — until, one day, a mysterious letter falls from his taxi’s visor.

Past lives are the focus of Susan Barker’s latest novel, The Incarnations, based in both modern-day and ancient China. Like the striking mosaic of sketches on the cover, Barker combines the romantic, the metaphysical, the occult, and the Occidental to construct a house-of-mirrors novel that is hard to put down. While it takes a few chapters to get into, one’s patience with its initial lethargy is rewarded once the plot picks up.

On the eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a taxi driver receives a series of letters, some of them describing long, elaborate stories, each one a supposed past life. Driver Wang’s current life, bland and fatiguing, is shaken by this periodic arrival of letters. Their mysterious author claims to be his eternal soulmate and determined incarnations biographer. “Who are you? you must be wondering. I am your soulmate,” reads the first letter. “I pity your poor wife, Driver Wang. What’s the bond of matrimony compared to the bond we have shared for over a thousand years?”

With this delightfully strange backdrop, Barker pieces together a mandalic novel, equal parts noir, suspense, and fantasy.

The letters begin to take on an anxious, almost threatening tone. They include long-winded, detailed accounts of two interwoven lives. The fourth letter tells of an imperial eunuch of the Tang Dynasty, castrated by his own sorceress mother for raping his sister, and of the eunuch’s bastard daughter who escapes a sacrificial ceremony and runs off to become an esteemed courtesan of a pleasure district. The letter after tells an equally involved story of two men whose town gets sieged by Mongol warriors, become slaves, and then lovers, while trudging through the Gobi Desert. In both tales, the letter-writer claims to be one of the two main characters; Driver Wang is meant to be the other.

These biographies are what kept me reading. Each is set during a perilous period in Chinese history: the Mongol invasions, the Opium Wars, the Cultural Revolution. In this sense, it is a historical novel, one grounded in past realities of the world. What is history though but a narrative interpreted by individual imaginations? Chinese history through Barker’s eyes, while remarkably gory and cruel, is, admittedly, thoroughly entertaining. The various colloquialisms and euphemisms used during the different time periods are particularly entertaining (such as “Riding the Unicorn Horn” in the concubine letter).

The biographies all follow the same layout: Wang’s incarnation and the letter-writer’s come together under remarkable circumstances; one sabotages the other in a fit of extraordinary passion. All of them end in a violent death.

They’re revealed in chronological order, from the Tang Dynasty, AD 632, all the way to the Cultural Revolution, 1966. Along the way Driver Wang possesses a variety of personalities: an esteemed eunuch, a facially scarred blacksmith turned Mongol slave, a duplicitous concubine, a waolai prisoner of Pearl Delta pirates, and a privileged student leader of the Cultural Revolution at the Anti-Capitalist School for Revolutionary Girls.

But the modern Wang’s story is also absorbing in its own right. He’s the emotionally neglected son of a powerful Ministry of Agriculture official and a socially deviant mother. In college he falls into a deep depression and is admitted to a psychiatric hospital for several months. There he meets a charismatic male prostitute and fellow patient named Zeng with whom he shares a brief but passionate love affair.

The Incarnations will be touted as a China novel, and in many ways, rightly so. It takes place entirely in China, and brings to life some of China’s most tumultuous moments. But unlike other China-based literature from laowai writers, Barker’s work doesn’t fall back on the Chinese-ness of it all. While not always perfectly erect, it stands fine on its own as a suspense/mystery novel. You don’t need to be a sinologist to enjoy this novel; all you need is to like good books.

Susan Barker is the author of three novels. Her latest, The Incarnations, is published by Doubleday and available on Amazon.

Brent Crane is a Beijing-based journalist. Follow him @bcamcrane.