Tidbits From the World

I was having lunch at a noodle restaurant when one guy came in and started staring at me. At first, I thought he was just being curious. Maybe he was intrigued to see a foreigner eating Chinese food? And then, he came to me, sat on a chair at my table, took a piece of paper out of his pocket and started writting, calligraphy-style, something… He said he was a traditional doctor. Here’s what he wrote me (read vertically, from right to left):

祖 李 易 黄
传 志 聖 芪
针 奎 堂
灸        党
男56岁  参
女
……………土
……………白
不育症   术

Prescription: Membranous milk vetch root, dangshen, white atractyloid
Yisheng Clinic
Li Zhikui, 56 year-old
Acupuncture Master from generations gone by
Diagnosis: Infertility

I don’t know you but… by the way you sit and hold your chopsticks, I can tell that you’re sterile. Yes, shocking isn’t? You surely didn’t expect that, did you? Anyway, just call me, my friend.  I can help you. Here is my phone number: 1325997****

See you!
Bye.

The Chinese Government is offering scholarships to any foreigner with a good knowledge of the Chinese culture, history and language (HSK 7 or better).

The government offers to give 42,900 yuans a year, plus money for tuition fees and accomodation (at the University’s dormitory). 10 to 12 students will be selected for each Normal University in all of China. If you convert the scholarship money into USD, it doesn’t really seem impressive ($6260), however if you compare this amount of money in yuans in relation to the cost of living or the average yearly wages in China (about 元 30,000 in Xi’an, 元42789 in Shanghai, and 元44715 in Beijing), then you get a pretty interesting sum of money.

But there is a catch. You have to “promise” (that’s the word they use in the contract [承诺]) the Chinese government that upon graduation, you will spend at least two years teaching in a Confucius Institute in your country of origin.

If you don’t know what a Confucius Institute is, well, it’s pretty much the Chinese equivalent to Goethe Institutes or Alliance Française, where the views of the Chinese government are represented. They are its human face, its soft power. Therefore, the Chinese Government offers any qualified foreigner the possibility of signing a Pact with the Devil. You take His money and the good life that comes with it, and then for two years you have to work for Him, at the service of His international propaganda!

Well, if you are interested, I think this would be a great way to improve your Chinese (among other things, you will get to learn the Classics in their original versions, that is in Classical Chinese). I’d like to sign up, but I’m not qualified yet. It is a Master’s degree program, so you need to have at least a Bachelor’s degree to qualify.

By the way, Confucius Institutes have recently taken some heat from the Chinese press. People have accused them as being too expensive and useless. They are using the Chinese taxpayer’s money to finance their activities in more than 88 countries and territories in the world. Since the first establishment of a Confucius Institute abroad, in South Korea in 2004, 282 new institutes have been created as of April 2010. That’s around one new institute every week! How much does all this cost? Are they really reaching their goal of “spreading Chinese culture abroad”? Where does money for the scholarships come from? If you think about it, the best scholarship a Chinese student can hope for is about 5000 yuans a year (there are of course some rare exceptions). So, behind this 42,900 yuan scholarship there must be some hidden political will. After all, the Chinese government is not unique: as any other government in the world, they are acting in their own interest, and for their own image rather than for their people.

***

I have talked to one student who is doing the Master’s degree program right now and he told me that the way the contract (pictured above) is written is purposely vague in order to attract foreign students. The tuition fees are actually not completely included in the scholarship (some of them are paid by the government, but the rest is paid by the university itself, which takes its funds from… guess where… your scholarship). The dorm fees are also not included… So in the end, the scholarship is not actually 42,900 yuans a year, but 17,000 yuans… Or 1,700 yuans a month, ten months a year (in January and February, you don’t get anything).

But it’s still a good offer if you already have some money saved up in your bank account as a backup. Otherwise, you’re in for a frugal life.

And one last point that I want to make. The motive behind this scholarship is not all political, but also cross-cultural. There have been some cases of Chinese teachers abroad who would go through serious nervous breakdown or depression while working abroad at a Confucius Institute. The aim here is to train “foreigners” (or “locals” in their home country), who will help the Chinese teachers to better communicate with their students abroad. This should release some of the pressure these teachers get while working abroad. After all, the Chinese are not different from the Westerners who come to China to teach English. How many English teachers have fallen in temporary (or not) depression? They would probably like to have someone by their side who can understand them and advise them.

China is going through a phase of rapid changes… you hear about it in all the media, in newspapers, on the Internet, everywhere. Here are some of the pictures that I took in my first escapade around my neighborhood since I came back in China. A lot of skyscrapers are under construction and some buildings have been completed already. You can be the judge of China’s transformation, is it for better or for worse?

Behind this blue fence is a new neighborhood under construction. (A complete neighborhood being built at the same time!)  I visited it about six months ago, however without publishing the photos that I took there. I will try to find them back and post them here.

Real-estate investors are going to visit the neighborhood.

Click here below to see the remainder of this article (42 more photographs)

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Today I have no travel pictures to share, but instead here’s a very interesting observation that I made last week while studying Chinese:

This is a text that I had to study for my Chinese litterature class last week. It’s a short biography of Laoshe, an author from the beginning of the 20th Century. As I usually do when I read in Chinese, I looked up all the words, that I was not completely sure about the meaning, in a dictionary. And I stumbled upon that sentence:

1966年“文化大革命”开始后受到了残酷XX……

In 1966, after the start of the “Cultural Revolution”, he was the victim of cruel XX.

XX stands for the word that I didn’t know.

So, I looked up the word in my favorite online dictionary…

And this is what I got! The page was censored! So what could be that mysterious word that activates government censorship? – even in a dictionary… The unknown kindles the curiosity, so I used a proxy to bypass the censorship and I found out the meaning of the word…

And here it was… But why then was it censored? At first I thought it was just one of those keywords that the Great Firewall automatically blocks no matter which website uses them. So, I looked up the word again, this time in a French dictionary, and here’s what I got:

No censorship… the French dictionary worked without any problem. That was strange. So, if it wasn’t a matter of automatically censored keywords, then what was it?

After that, later in the same week, an other “illegal” word appeared in one of my texts: “色情”, litterally “color, feeling”. Again, the English dictionary would not show me any result without using a proxy, but the French dictionary worked without a hitch.

“Érotisme” (eroticism). Recently, the government started a campaign against pornography. Many pornographic sites were shut down or censored. I guess the word that is related to the concept of “pornography” has itself been put on the list of keywords to be censored by the Great Firewall!

That reminded of that dictionary that gave me the following definition for the word “Independence of Taiwan”: Proposition of a handful of people in Taiwan Province attempting to split Taiwan from China.

I try not to discuss too much about politics on this blog. I understand that some people get worked up really easily, especially on the Internet, over articles about China. But for those who don’t understand why I was surprised by this definition in my dictionary, it’s because the translation was very political and biased. Instead of only giving a translation for the word “台独”, a definition was added, thus giving a political bias to a document that is supposed to be neutral and apolitical, a dictionary.

Today’s entry is on my journey back to Xi’an from Montreal.

A very long journey, perhaps as long as this entry. A voyage where I lost the notion of time, and not only because I had seen the sun set only once while two days had passed, but also because of the jetlag; there is a time difference of 13 hours between Montreal and China, but I couldn’t remember if it was clockwise or counter-clockwise, so should I substract them from the 50 hours of the journey or add them? In short, I left my hometown monday morning at around 6 a.m., local time, and I arrived in Xi’an wednesday afternoon at around 1 p.m.

I chose to fly from New York and to get there by bus from Montreal. I chose this option for many reasons one being that I had found a very cheap flight that departed from New York, the other reason being that I wanted to visit New York a bit before going back to China, even if it were only for a couple of hours.

So I walked from my house to the nearest subway station.

And here is where my 15,000 km journey all started. I especially wanted to take the subway, so I could say later on that: “I took the subway to China!”. If you want to see the rest of my journey please click on the link right below. However, if you have a slow connection or computer you click at your own risks and perils, as this article contains as much as 65 photos!

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A 50 hour journey is awaiting me tomorrow… I’ll be heading back to China. I will first take a bus to New York, and from there I’ll fly to Shanghai from JFK airport, and then I’ll catch one last plane to Xi’an… This is gonna be a long journey; I’m already looking forward to my bed!

A couple of weeks ago, one of my coworkers took part in a music contest. His band was among several others taking part in the event. Last year another coworker performed in a concert too, and I was there to take photos. Click here to see the pictures.

So here are some of the pictures that I took of the concert. Some pictures are better than others, yours to comment them. I’m open to any advice concerning photography techniques, compositions or anything else. On this picture, the host is introducing my coworker’s band.

I took this photo with a flash, and corrected the colors using Photoshop. Because of the flash, I lost the colors coming from the spotlights above the scene.

Photo from the balcony at the back of the concert hall, which gives you a feel of the ambiance inside the room where about 200 people came to the call.

Red lights.

I prefer this composition, but the exposure was a little too long to my taste.

Ghislain, the singer and one of the guitarmen.

The spotlights were often changing colors.

A spectator rose his bottle of beer to support his colleague.

Then came the vote. Being a contest, the band with most votes won. It was not necessarily the best band that won the contest, but the band which brought along most friends! Unfortunately, Ghislain’s band didn’t win.

However disappointed he may have felt, Ghislain was still very happy to have had a chance to perform in front of as many as 200 people. It was the first time in his life that he performed in front of so many people. When will be the next time?

For those who visit my blog exclusively for the China pictures, don’t worry, even if I am currently in Montreal (for a short time anyway), I still have a lot of pictures of China and some unfinished articles that I just need to edit and publish! But today, I want to share a couple of pictures of Montreal, the second francophone city in importance in the world, after Paris, if we don’t include Kinshasa, the capital city of the Congo, where French isn’t the only official language.

In public places, atheists and believers battle against each other with slogans and advertisement. In this case, in the subway an ad paid for by a sceptical organization quotes Nietzsche, a German philosopher from the 19th century, the one who said “god is dead!“: “A strong belief only proves its strength, not the validity of the belief“. Another slogan that had been popular for a time for atheists and agnostics was “god probably doesn’t exist, so stop worrying and enjoy life“. That movement was started in London where such ads had been placed on double-decker buses. Believers respond to these attacks by giving out New Testaments in the subway or religious pamphlets.

In China I met a guy from Toronto who told me that each time he went to Montreal, he was bothered by the predominance of the Quebec flags that are everywhere to be seen, even on top or besides some government buildings. In comparison, Canadian flags are much rarer in Montreal than they are in other Canadian provinces, as I noticed in my short trip to Ottawa two years ago. On this photo, the Quebec flag flies on top of the Hydro-Québec headquarters, a company owned by the Quebec provincial government. The Quebec flag is not only the symbol of a province or a provincial government, but also that of Quebec nationalism, which explains this Torontonian’s irritation.

When I went downtown, I thought I was in China for all the construction sites I was seeing!

¸

A major difference between construction sites in Montreal and in China are the fences, which, in Montreal, are used only to mark the boundaries of the site, while in China they also serve the purpose of hiding the view from the construction. In Montreal and anywhere in the West, when there is a wall around a construction site, there is always a small hole where passers-by can take a peek into… I guess these holes were put as a result of accidents involving curious people wanting to know what was going on behind the walls! In China there are no such holes… maybe people are less curious there.

Metro newspaper. One second before, the commuter behind was reading the newspaper over the shoulder of the person in front of him… but I was not fast enough to capture the moment, unfortunately.

My ex-classmates from when I was a student at the university. Most of them have graduated already. I could recognize many faces on the photos… some of them I had forgotten already, but I was happy to see again. However, some people are still mysteriously missing…

A concert that will be the topic of a future post.

Each time I am back in Quebec, I eat at least one poutine. It’s like a ritual! But I definitely need to find a restaurant where they serve healthier poutines (if there exists such a thing). The French fries had been fried for too long so they turned dark brown, which means that they contained many carcinogenic substances as well as trans fats… Conversely, the gravy and the cheese were both delicious. That kind of food is pleasant to eat, but once you finish, you are left with a strange aftertaste in your throat. It’s as if you had just eaten a handful of raw fat that was finding its way through your oesophagus to your stomach… once a year is enough! Mc Donald’s poutines are much better. But they are way too expensive and too small.

Pizza… a “vegetarian” slice. Black and green olives, green pepper, tomatoes and mushrooms.

In the mornings I enjoy not being in China so I can avoid eating baozi/jiaozi (dumplings), jiamos (chinese sandwiches) or drinking bean milk… here I eat cereals with blueberries, raisins, almonds, soja seeds and milk… all mixed with a drop of maple syrup as the sweetener! mmm very good! Both healthy and tasty. I don’t miss beef dumplings yet!

I’m back in Montreal, very far from Xi’an and China. As always, since my journey in Latin America in 2007, I am putting up here an article about my way-back journey, full with pictures of each place that I visited. This time, I traveled by plane and I was blessed with clear skies all the way to Montreal. I took some very beautiful pictures of astonishing sceneries from the top of the world! So, here it is: my return journey to Montreal from Xi’an:

The night before departure, I bid farewell to some friends.

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