• [126]  Friday Evening Horrors.  This is Friday after 5pm in Hong Kong and Saturday is October 1, the national holiday.  Of all the things that Hong Kong could have learned from the United States, I am glad that so far the government here has not resorted to the practice of saving the bad news for the weekend so that they will have longer time to die down when the work week begins on Monday.  I am reminded of this on account of the biography on Sir Richard Mottram who just became UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's top security and intelligence adviser.  The Guardian has this:

He was permanent secretary at the Department of Transport when, on September 11 2001, Jo Moore, an aide to Stephen Byers, then secretary of state, told officials in an email that it would be "a very good day" to "get out anything we want to bury". A few months later, in February 2002, Ms Moore and Martin Sixsmith, the department's director of communications, allegedly discussed whether the day of Princess Margaret's funeral would be a good time to release potentially damaging figures about the state of the railways.

It was subsequently announced that both Ms Moore and Mr Sixsmith had resigned. Mr Sixsmith denied this, and Mr Byers, who did later resign, gave a confusing account in the Commons about what had gone on. Sir Richard put it more succinctly. He is said to have told a colleague: "We're all fucked. I'm fucked. You're fucked. The whole department's fucked. It's been the biggest cock-up ever and we're all completely fucked."

All the same, Sir Richard Mottram is now the top security and intelligence adviser.  This is democracy for you, because you need the best people working for you to influence public opinion.  Nothing else matters, really.

• [125]  Counting the Number of Marchers.  (Common Dreams) MediaChannel reader Douglas Marshall reports:

"Instead of marching I decided to try to get an accurate count of the parade participants last Saturday. I stationed myself at the corner of H and 15th Streets, facing north. Standing with the police line blocking off the right turn off H Street so that marchers would continue on to the east on H Street, the designated parade route. My vigil started at 1:00 PM, before any marchers had arrived. The first marchers passed my line of vision at 1:15 PM and continued passing my line of vision until 4:45 PM, when the last ones passed by.

"It was my first try at crowd estimation but with extensive early experience in construction estimating, I had adequate, common-sense approximating skills to bring to bare. Using several different approximation techniques Saturday evening, I came up early on with several different figures as follows: 255,000, 216,000, 205,000, 193,000. Back home after a day to let it settle, I went back over the numbers and the whole procedure, and established for myself the most likely set of approximations to make allowances for the fact that some times there were only 5-6 marchers per second crossing my view. At other times, including marchers on the sidewalks there were 24-26 marchers per second.

"Allowing for only 5-6 marchers per second passing my line of vision for 1/10th of the time, 22 marchers per second passing my line of vision for 4/10ths of the times, and 14 marchers per second passing my line of vision for the remaining 5/10ths of the time, I arrived at what for me feels most comfortable: 210,000 marchers. [Interestingly enough, as I read this over now, I've just averaged the four first preliminary approximations; the average of the four is 217,000+." 

• [124]  Taiwan Poll Results.  (China Times)  This is a telephone survey of 1,104 presons in Taiwan conducted during September 27-29, and the subject is foreign policy.  The political self-identifications are 18.9% "pan-blue", 7.6% "pan-green" and 69.4% "independent."  These numbers may be at variance with voting patterns, but please remember this is self-identification and eventually an independent will have to vote one way or the other.
   
  On President Chen Shui-bian's performance during the foreign trip: 2.4% 'satisfied'; 23.5% 'somewhat satisfied', 11.8% 'so-so'; 14.9% 'somewhat dissatisfied'; 19.0% 'dissatisfied.'
   
  On the expense of NT$8.3 billion in foreign aid offered to Central American allies: 63.5% 'disagreed'; 9.1% 'agreed.'
   
  On which political party is better on foreign policy: 24.5% Nationalists; 5.8% Democratic Progressive Party; 42.1% no opinion.
   
  About the nine foreign trips made by President Chen Shui-bian during his five years in office: 18.9% 'necessary'; 51.1% 'too much, a waste of public funds'; 30% 'no opinion.'
   
• [123]  Bloody Television.  (6Park)  During September 10-15, a Hunan television station showed China's first reality television show titled Angels Love Beauty.  The subject?  Fourteen people selected from more than 1,000 applicants received cosmetic surgery such as breast enhancement, liposuction, nose jobs, etc.  The procedures were shown on television.  Blood was flowing liberally.  One viewer said: "After watching the broadcast, I had nightmares."  Yes, but what were the television audience ratings?
  

• [122]  What do you care?  Unlike most blogs, ESWN does not allow comments.  This was a deliberate decision after considering the allocation of my time.  Shall I spend my time doing spam patrol and troll managerment?  Or work on blog posts?  It was a no-brainer.  Still, if you want, you can send emails in.  99% of the emails will not be answered for the same reasons (and there are more than 1,000 messages in my Inbox right now waiting for disposal).  I do answer emails that have a rational basis.  Sometimes, I would tag on my own survey questions in my response.
   
  At first, I had imagined the target universe of ESWN to be the English-reading world outside of China.  After all, this site is presented in English.  Increasingly, I have found from Google and Technorati that I am linked from Chinese-language MSN SPACES sites and others.  So I have usually asked my correspondents from inside China: "Why should you care about ESWN?  This is by and large a translation blog, and you would have seen all the original materials already."
   
  I am pleased to say that the answers fall into the following lines: 
  (1) "In principle, I should have read the materials but it seems that you read a great deal more in a timely manner"; 
  (2) "I am interested in how someone else is looking at these things and what the outside world is thinking"; 
  (3) "While I can keep track of what is going on inside China, the reports on Hong Kong and Taiwan are fascinating because many of the sources are censored here"; 
  (4) "The selection in the Brief Comments section are unpredictable and surprising; they show what a strange world we live in";
  (5) "The recommended photos/reading shows me a completely different world out there"
   
  How do people in China find me?  Googling a specific subject or topic might be a reason.  But the most often stated specific answer is Danwei, especially when they go out of their way with a post like Don't mess with ESWN that has this endorsement: "The best English language blog about China, by far, is called ESWN, or East South West North."  Upon information and belief, Danwei is the most popular English-language blog from China.  With endorsements like that, I can't miss ...

• [121]  Pathological Liars.  Most people are not good at lying, because they lack practice (I can think of Nancy Kissel on the witness stand as an example).  But some politicians are very good at it because it is an important job skill.  In A Xinhua Reporter's Personal Notes, the reporter was stunned by an official staring him in the eye and telling a straight lie.  Perhaps the most often cited examplen of pathological lying is what Tucker Carlson had to say about Karen Hughes at Salon.com: 

"I heard that [on the campaign bus, Bush communications director] Karen Hughes accused me of lying. And so I called Karen and asked her why she was saying this, and she had this almost Orwellian rap that she laid on me about how things she'd heard -- that I watched her hear -- she in fact had never heard, and she'd never heard Bush use profanity ever. It was insane.  I've obviously been lied to a lot by campaign operatives, but the striking thing about the way she lied was she knew I knew she was lying, and she did it anyway. There is no word in English that captures that. It almost crosses over from bravado into mental illness. They get carried away, consultants do, in the heat of the campaign, they're really invested in this. A lot of times they really like the candidate. That's all conventional. But on some level, you think, there's a hint of recognition that there is reality -- even if they don't recognize reality exists -- there is an objective truth. With Karen you didn't get that sense at all."

Readers's contribution: Perhaps George Orwell had the clearest explanation for both the need and the art of pathological lying: "To tell lies and simultaneously sincerely believe in them; to forget all that when conveniently you don’t want to remember and, soon, when it returns to be necessary, to remove it from the forgetfulness only by the time that is advisable; to deny the existence of the objective reality without even for a moment letting to know that refused reality exists… all this is indispensable."

• [120]  A Lot More On The Masturbation VCD.  Just in today's Apple Daily alone, there were nine stories.  (Apple Daily)  The most dramatic one is Peng Chia-chia getting down on his knees in front of the media and said: "I don't have another 50 years.  I have a mother and I have three children to take care of.  Will everybody just let me go?" (「我沒有再一個五十年了，我有媽媽，還有三個小孩要養，大家放過我好不好？」).  Of course, all this does is to pour oil on fire.
  
  Here is the Apple Daily instant poll (automated telephone sample of 388 persons around Taiwan): Peng Chia-chia is afraid of revenge from the gansters and is therefore not telling the truth.  If he cooperates with the police, do you think the police have the ability to protect him?  Yes: 43%; No: 35%; Don't know/no opinion: 22%.

• [119]  Another Chinese Democracy Advocate In The News.  Okay, so I get abused for daring to translate The Tragicomedy of the Overseas Chinese Democratic Movement.  But the idea was that if you are squeaky clean, no one can touch you.  So is it my fault that Ni Yuxian (倪育賢), the Chairman of the Party for Democracy and Freedom in China, is in the news?  (ChineseNewsNet)  It is reported that Ni Yuxian was arrested by Suffolk County police on Long Island (NY, USA) for sexually abusing two underaged Chinese females.  Ni Yuxian is being charged with the crimes of "sexual misconduct" and "endangering welfare of child."  The family of the victims have told the prosecutor that they vehemently object to the reduction of the charges down from "rape."  Next question: Was Ni framed by the Suffolk County police who are in the pay of the Chinese Communists?  I report, you decide.

• [118]  Non-Simultaneous Translation.  From Next Week, there is this sign at La Maison de l'Orient at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Hong Kong.  If you read only English, you will find that the restaurant offers Lunch, Dinner and Private Rooms.  If you read only Chinese, you will find that the restaurant offers only Breakfast, Afternoon Tea and Late Night Snacks.  Perfect segregation by language?  No, the English readers seemed to be getting the better deal.  Such is the laziness in language ...
  

• [117]  The Masturbation VCD.  This is the biggest story in Taiwan right now.  No, it is not about the scuffling at the Legislature (see China Post), which everyone has no doubt seen numerous times in slow-motion analysis.  Here is the Apple Daily front page.  This is about a blackmail case over a video clip.
  
  It is difficult to pin down the details since there are multiple versions in circulation.  Here is the gist of my understanding (see, for example, China Times).  The entertainer/celebrity Peng Chia-chia (澎恰恰) was at a party.  While under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs, he masturbated (打手槍) over a woman.  The act was recorded by a mobile phone-camera.  The woman is alleged to be the niece of a gang boss.  Afterwards, there was an issue with compensation for the 'shame' inflicted on the woman, who had been intoxicated and unconscious at the time.  Peng tried to ask other gang bosses to intercede and eventually paid some money.  The reported amount varied from NT$3 to NT$90 million.  That is the gist of the matter.  But why did the reported money amount varied so much?
   
  The most common version (see China Times) was that Peng had negotiated for NT$20 million and he gave the money to an intermediary, the singer Bingo Guo.  However, Guo stuffed NT$17 million into his own pockets and passed along only NT$3 million.  The gang boss was insulted and sent men to beat up Bingo Guo.  He also told Peng to pay up.  When Peng told him that his intermediary had pocketed the money, the gang boss said "That's too bad, but I still want my money."  So eventually Peng had to come up with more money.  He also sought help from various gang bosses, a legislator (believed to be Ko Chun-hsiung (柯俊雄)) and reporters, and each one of them received 'tea money' to the amounts of millions for their efforts.  That was how the payment amounts ballooned. 
  
  The photo was taken at a press conference, during which Peng Chia-chia proclaimed that there is no sex VCD.  So what about the photographs shown in the magazine?  Oh, there is a masturbation VCD but it is not a VCD with sexual intercourse.
   
  P.S.  The masturbation video only lasts 5 minutes.  However, on the VCD, there were other Peng Chia-chia film clips, such as the vibrating car episode when he entered a car with a female salsa dancer and then the car bounced up and down for about 30 minutes.  When asked, the woman Liu Zhen (note: she is the person featured in the Apple Daily front page above) explained that they were just looking at a film script.

• [116]  Oranges Are Cheap.  Wee Whale Adventures directed me to the second TV ad for WTO MC6, and this one is about the price of oranges.  You can follow this link to watch the Real video.  The 30-second clip is in Cantonese, but there is an English-language transcript right next to it.  Great service!  Except the transcript is missing a crucial exchange at the end.  Here is the published transcript:

Man: What are we having for dinner tonight?
Lady: What do you expect with such a small shopping budget?
Man: Come on, we've got such a wide variety of inexpensive foods in Hong Kong. You can buy these oranges, for example, at a lower price here than in most parts of the world.
Lady: Really?
Man: Yes, because the goods enter Hong Kong without tariffs. If they didn't, our shopping bill would be higher.
Lady: I didn't realize ... ...
Man: So now you know.

After listening/watching the video, I translated the last three sentences as follows.

Man: Yes, because the goods enter Hong Kong without tariffs. If they didn't, our shopping bill would be higher.  (pause)  Or else how are you able to save so much private funds?
Lady: I haven't!
Man: More like you are not saving just a wee bit!

So this is about gender relationships in Hong Kong.  Traditionally, the husband is the principal wage earner and he gives the wife some money each month for housekeeping expenses.  Very often, the wife would secretly save some of the money for herself.  Why?  The economic power is unbalanced.  If and when the husband leaves the wife, she will be financially distressed.  So a smart woman will build up her own nestegg.  This cuts right to the inequality in marriages.

This WTO MC6 website is intended for residents and visitors.  It would not do to give the English-only users any ideas about imperfect gender relationships in Hong Kong.  Solution: Hit the delete key and make up something innocuous.  Question: At what point did they realize that they had such a problem?  Why was this not rejected at the concept stage?

• [115]  Dirty White Slut.  (Apple Daily)  In Taipei, there are free city maps distributed at the airport and hotels.  These maps are published once every three months, typically with singers on the front cover.  On this occasion, the featured singer was Vivian Hsu and she wore a t-shirt that read "Dirty White Slut."  The editorial staff did not pay attention to that.  After this was exposed in Hong Kong newspapers, the maps have been withdrawn from circulation.
  

• [114]  Yahoo! Boycott?.  I promised you that the previous posts Yahoo! and the case of Shi Tao and Yahoo! Sends Another Man To Jail would be unpopular and indeed the hate mail is pouring in.  Here, I will try to answer them collectively.
   
  I begin by explaining who I am.  I am employed by a £10 billion+ corporation for advertising/public relations/marketing research.  In terms of corporate culture, I am a total misfit. However, they have decide to keep me around for two reasons.  I am the start-up guy who can build a new business with next-to-zero investment of resources.  I am also the guy to salvage any endangered business.  Why?  Because I am dispassionate and remorseless.  I draw a straightline between our current situation and the ultimate business objective, and I will roll over everything and everyone in the way.  Corporate culture and etiquette mean nothing to me.  I don't care whom I offend in the corporate hierarchy, but I will get the job done.  In the end, the corporation acknowledges and appreciates that quality.  That is why I am still there.
   
  So now we come to the case of Yahoo! and Shi Tao.  We are where we are.  What is the end goal?  I regard the end goal as changing the behavior of the Chinese government, with respect to a case like Shi Tao.  The question is how to get there.
   
  But here is what I see will unfold if the current boytcott-Yahoo! campaign unfolds:
  - The western world pressures Yahoo! with a consumer boycott.  Yahoo! folds and says that it will refuse to comply with any request from the Chinese government.  The Chinese government will claim that Yahoo! is aiding and abetting criminal activities and ban all email from Yahoo.com.cn (as well as Yahoo.com and other local Yahoo! service) into China.
  ... you can insert any number of other transnational email services here.  
   
  The net effect is that any boycotted-and-surrendering service will be banned in China.  How hard is that to implement?  They wouldn't need any special Cisco hardware to do that.  Even I can write a piece of software that will automatically reject Yahoo.com.cn and other email services on any mail server.  
   
  Meanwhile, what will the Chinese users do?  They have just been shut out of Yahoo.com.cn, and so on.  So they will just have to go to Sohu.com, 263.com or whatever.  Those are Chinese email servers that will not be affected by any western boycott.  It is not as if the Chinese Internet users have no email services to choose from.
   
  What is the net effect?  It means JACK to people inside China.  All you have done is inconvenience them with respect to relocating and informing their contacts.  They will just hate whoever made this happen.  It may make the people outside who organized the boycotts very happy because they made a few corporations bend to their wills and therefore show that they have power and influence.  But so what?  As I said, I am the person who draws the straight line between the current position and the end goal.  In this case, there hasn't been an inch of movement towards the end goal.  If you only want to draw a straightline from here to Yahoo!, then this is just bone-headed, wrong-headed and air-headed.  The bad guys will be cheering you on!
   
  Frankly, I don't give a damn if Yahoo! lives or dies.  It is just another faceless globalized company that I cannot ever love.  
   
  But if I can put the challenge in more direct terms: How will a Yahoo! boycott change things inside China!?  Draw a roadmap for the uninitiated such as myself because the activists obviously know something that I don't.  I suggest that there is no such roadmap.  Meanwhile, I have not detected even a hint of interest about this inside China.  Remember that there are 100+ million Internet users inside China.  How many of them give a damn about the Yahoo! boycott?
   
  Footnotes: There are two technical arguments offered in which Yahoo! did not have to do what they did.  [Note: I will state that I don't have the detailed information and everyone else also acknowlege that they don't either.  And I am never comfortable when the grounds are so uncertain.  I will nevertheless tell you what I think in the absence of full information.] 
   
  (1) Assertion: The warrant was fulfilled by the Yahoo! (Hong Kong) Corporation which is located outside Hong Kong and therefore did not have to comply in theory.  With due respect, the domain name is yahoo.com.cn, so they must have a physical address inside China.  When the police showed up at that address, shall the representative say: "But we are registered in Hong Kong and we don't have to give you anything."  If so, then you must agree that I can register kiddiepron.com in the US through a corporation located in Vanunu (or some such) and never ever worry about US law enforcement getting on my case.  Look, if you are yahoo.com.cn, then you must yield the information.  If the police showed up at HSBC in Hong Kong for records on suspicion of fraud, can the bank claim to be registered in the Bahamas (which it is) and ignore the warrant?  If you don't like it, you can be just Yahoo.com and China cannot reach you except through Interpol.
   
  (2) Assertion: Yahoo! could have saved itself if it located its mail servers physically outside of China.  Here, I will invoke the recent case of Banco Delta Asia, which was the target of a run due to allegations of money laundering on behalf of North Korea.  If the Macau police had shown up and demanded all electronic mail data, shall the IT manager say, "But our mail servers are located in Vanunu and therefore we don't have to comply"?  If this works, then all corporations will rapidly re-locate their mail servers to Vanunu ASAP.  The physical location of the mail servers should not be a shield.  Look, if you are yahoo.com.cn, then you must yield the information.  If you don't like it, you can be just Yahoo.com and China cannot reach you except through Interpol.

• [113]  The Case of Guo Feixiong.  Here, I will cut away from my facetious mask and state the facts as they are known:
   
  - In The Taishi Village Elections - Part 1 (Chronology),  it was noted that the activist Guo Feixiong was 'disappeared' on September 13, 2005.
  - In a later note, some villagers released said that they saw Guo Feixiong in the custody of the Panyu public security bureau, and he was in really bad shape.
   
  You say "no biggie", but I say "BIGGIE."
   
  For evidence, you will have to consider what a person like Guo Feixiong has decided what his strategy might be.  We don't know what his current situation is, because he has not been allowed to see a lawyer.  But his strategy is likely to be the same as described in this previous astonishing post about him: The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Enemy.  There was no point in arguing with the Panyu public security bureau which had no basis for arresting him.  Everything that Guo did was guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the People's Republic of China.  So the only thing left is to refuse to cooperate and go on a hunger strike.  After all, he was dealing with low-level public security operatives who know that they could get into HEAP BIG TROUBLE if something untoward occurred under their watch.  
   
  I ask, Why should Guo Feixiong sustain permanent physical damages before they let him go?

• [112]  Male Body Sushi.  Last year, a restaurant in Kunming (Yunnan, China) offered the first 'girl body sushi' meal (女体盛, nyotaimori (eating sushi from a naked human plate)) (see China Daily).  How might one get even more publicity than that?  How about 'male body sushi (男体盛)?  Recently, CCTV carried a segment on 'male body sushi'.  But whereas the original restaurant service was a for-profit enterprise that got roundly criticized, the 'male body sushi' party is a somewhat different matter.
   
  The 'male body sushi' event took place in Chongqing, in June last year.  There were six female diners, four of whom worked for New Woman magazine, one was a wedding photographer and the other was the restaurant owner.  This was in fact a special event arranged for a magazine article.  (Beijing Youth Daily via Yahoo! News)  This is like action art: If men can demean the female body, then so too can women demean the male body.  The sexes may not be equal on account of this, but at least men can be reminded that the so-called male-chauvinist 'culture' that treats the female body like a 'container' contains much gender inequity.
   
  
   
  But the best of intentions can be misunderstood.  (Chongqing Evening News via Yahoo! News)  When CCTV broadcast the show on September 22, 2005, it was roundly condemned.  It was just too easy to regard this as a bad imitation of the commercial 'girl body sushi' enterprise.  And the 'male body sushi' drew even more resentment from the public, once again confirming the gender inequality.  So the 'male body sushi' drew the barbs against itself, rather than causing people to reflect and condemn 'girl body sushi.'
   
  [Blogger's comment: In the above, I have only tried to be the objective news translator.  Here, I am compelled to interject my personal opinion.  These pictures are repulsive to me.  I must be out of my mind to pay $US200 for this 'male body sushi' meal!  With due respect, this is just disgusting!  If you want to do piss your money away, you have my hearty approval (and my personal evaluation that you are a moron)l!]

• [111]  Li Ao vs. Yu Jie.  Diversity of opinions is good, so we've been told.  So I'm going to give your some diverse opinions in translation.
   
  From Yannan BBS (via Boxun), "Yu Jie is an independently spirited intellectual with a conscience; Li Ao is a lapdog scholar who has sold out his conscience to praise the authority.  On mainland China, Yu Jie criticized Mao Zedong and revealed the dark secrets of the Party; in Taiwan, Li Ao claims that the Party made China rich and powerful to reach a flourishing age just like the Han and Tang dynasties ..."
   
  (New Century Net)  "Mr. Li Ao has been jailed and his books have been banned.  Can such a person still get scolded and criticized?  I just wonder that if we don't support Li Ao, who can we support? ... Speaking of Li Ao, I want to mention Yu Jie in mainland China.  Based upon my reading experiences, their writings are at the third-rate level of the May Fourth era.  But based upon their influence, they are worthy of a place in the future "history of literature," just like Mr. Jin Yong and Ms. Qiong Yao are regarded as Hong Kong and Taiwan 'literary authors.'  If you are used to reading the usual kind of effete sentimentality of Jin Yong/Qiong Yao while you sit on the toilet seat, it is not a bad thing to read Yu Jie or Li Ao to clean out your poisoned intestines a bit."

• [110]  The 10,000 Signature Petition.  In The Case of Wang Binyu (王斌余), two exculpating factors were offered: (1) the murdered people deserved to die and (2) popular opinion supports the murderer.  The first factor calls for a close examination of the evidence, while the second factor is more troubling because it obviously creates a situation where the outcome depends on one's publicity campaign.  
   
  Here is a nationally prominent case in China (Express News via Yahoo! News): the killing of the leader of the Longxing Society (龙兴社) gang in Sihui, Guangdong province.  The leader of the gang was also a policeman.
   
  The three defendants were being persecuted by the gangsters-cum-police.  They saw that their only way out was to eliminate the head honcho.  On February 24, two of them got on a motorcycle with a shotgut, followed the gangster-policeman in his car and killed him with three shots to the head.  This much is not being disputed.  Instead, it is the extenuating factors that are being disputed.
   
  The defense lawyer first claimed that the defendants had no other recourse since they could not go to the police, who were also the gangsters.  Even the prosector agreed that there was a reasonable motive.  Besides, the defense lawyer argues, aren't the defendants doing society a huge favor by getting rid of the gang?  This gang had been operating for five years and would still be doing so if not for the shooting.  Therefore, the defendants must be credited as people's heroes.  The prosecutor objected to this line of argument, because the defendants only shot the gang leader, whereas it took the authorities to arrest another 28 members and smash it totally.
   
  And then the defense lawyer produced a document that was more than 50 pages long.  Each page had the names of many local citizens and their fingerprints in red ink to plead the court for leniency.  There were about 10,000 names altogether.  The verdict for the case is already known as 'guilty as charged' and the only issue is the sentence.  What weight should be given to 10,000 signatures?  Would it make a difference if there were 200,000? or 50?

• [109]  Headline News in Hong Kong.  On this day, what might the front page headline story be?  Typhoon Damrey?  Hurricane Rita?  Legco members going to China?  No.  Instead, the editors at five newspapers decided that it would be the story about the sudden death of a 49-year-old woman trying yoga exercises for the first time.  What was it that they collectively but independently saw here?  I discern three elements: first, the unexpected twist of fate for someone trying to do something healthy; second, the woman is reportedly wealthy; third, this took place at the large Planet Yoga centre in Wellington Street, Central, where many celebrities attend.
  
   
• [108]  Great Expectations.  So Li Ao gave some speeches.  You would think that one ought to read the speeches and then reflect, but your press is agenda-driven and will only look for what meets their needs.  Here is Foxy Yi Hu at South Morning China Post: 

Taiwanese writer-turned-legislator Li Ao again failed to raise sensitive political topics yesterday as he chatted online on the sixth day of his mainland tour.  Asked about his toned-down address to Tsinghua University on Friday, Mr Li evaded the question with an off-colour joke.  "Someone said you went from hard to soft in your speeches at Peking University and Tsinghua University," a reporter noted.  "He must be describing one of my organs," Mr Li said.

You come away with no idea what Li Ao actually said.  That is a pity, because he said some interesting things.  So I'll translate his characterization of Internet culture during the online chat (via Phoenix TV):

When I was a reserve army officer, the army bathrooms were filthy because the partition doors and walls had plenty of complaints written on them.  You can't bring them up normally, so you can only write them in the bathroom.  These days, people don't write them on bathroom doors; they write on the Internet instead.

• [107]  The Hatchet Man Confession.  In MSM in Hong Kong, I volunteered my services to take apart a presentation allegedly based upon 'scientific data.'  
   
  Here, I will offer you my professional credentials.  As told to Justin Mitchell in The Standard, I am the chief technical officer of KMR, the second largest media research organization in the world with revenues well in excess of US$1 billion.  In truth, I am semi-retired because I refuse to do any real work any more.  I've reached the stage in life when I will not endure slave wages and working hours (like the 20 hours per day I used to do for years).  So why does KMR keep me around?  Because I am their hatchet man.  Anytime when someone in one of the countries around the world has an issue with a competitor, I might be asked to do the hatchet job.  I would ask for the description of methodology of the competitor to be sent to me, and I would prepare the response that would devastate them within the user community.  That is my present job.  I am the hatchet man and I am very good.  I am cold, clinical and merciless.
   
  In my spare time, I keep the ESWN blog.  If you run across some 'scientific' study that offends your sensibility, please feel free to refer it to me.  It will be my PLEASURE to apply my hatchet to them.  Mind you, I do a very professional job and no one can complain afterwards.  In the case of MSM in Hong Kong, you cannot tell what my position on anal sex among men is, becaue it is not relevant.

• [106]  The Girl Jumped Off The Cliff.  Previously, I mentioned this case in passing at The Greatest Banquet Ever In Guangdong.  I would be remiss if I did not tell you the whole truth, because it touches on wealth inequality as well as gender discrmination in China.  This was what I wrote before: 

In Kansu province out in the western hinterlands, a farmer faced a dilemma.  This year, he has earned only 1,000 RMB.  He has two children, and their school fees will be 860 RMB each.  So he took two pieces of paper out, told his children that one had 'yes' and the other was blank, crumbled them and put them on the table for the children.  The daughter picked a blank paper, so her brother got to go to school.  Afterwards, the daughter made a meal for her brother, went out into the fields to work a bit and then she got up a cliff from which she jumped off.  Her words: "I won't be able to study anymore.  My only path out is closed.  I don't regret doing this."

The whole story was infinitely darker than that.  Everything above was accurate, but I have omitted something of critical importance.  Let me translate the details for you (Nanfang Metropolitan News via QQ):

At around noon on August 24, the family came back from work.  The father held two crumpled pieces of paper in his hands and told the children, "I don't have enough money.  One of you will go to school.  Whoever gets the one with the word will go.  The other one will have to wait until we harvest the potato crop."  But they all knew that "paying tuition later" means never.

The brother said that he refused to play.  If her sister has to drop out, so will he.  The sister told the father to pay the brother's tuition first and then hers will be owed to the school  She has seen several students in that situation.

But the parents had made up their minds to let the son go to school.  If both children refused to play, their plan would not succeed.  So the father told the children: "You go ahead and pick one anyway, just for fun."  He leaned over to the daughter, but he knew that both pieces of paper were blank.  At her father's insistence, the daughter picked one and found a blank.  She was stunned and her mind went blank.  The father picked up the paper, looked at it, said "There's nothing on it" and left the room with his wife.

The mother spoke to the reporter after the suicide attempt (note: the girl survived the fall).  "For rural villagers, boys are more important.  With better education, they can get out of the village.  But girls will always be married off to some other family."

I am at a loss for words.

• [105]  Reading Li Ao's Text.  I have told my readers time and again that I would only like to present them with the text without injecting my thoughts.  I assume that my readers are grown-ups who can make up their own minds.  They don't need me to tell them how to think.  They should not want me to reduce the text to two paragraphs that will fit their preconceived ideas.  
   
  So it was with Li Ao's Speech At Tsinghua University.  I said nothing.  But this speech was clearly very disruptive everywhere.  In the first speech, Li Ao's Speech At Beijing University, people spun heartily to their scripts.  Along came the second speech and they were at a loss.  Nothing that they said before made any sense anymore.  What now?  Of course, the first instinct is to refuse to look at the text itself, which is actually very interesting.  Instead, one attacks the speaker.  Thesis 1 (via ChineseNewsNet): His Tsinghua speech was pre-censored and he was pressured to conform.  That is obviously very wrong considering that the man had spent eight years of his life rotting in jail in order to speak freely and he does not need money at this age.  Nothing and nobody would stop him from speaking his mind.  Thesis 2 (via ChineseNewsNet, again): Li Ao gave a doctrinarian speech during which students fell asleep or were using mobile phones.  If so, why was he mobbed by fans in a near-riot afterwards?  It is time to forget the media hype and go back to read the text carefully.
   
  P.S.  Not that there was much media hype about the second speech.  Nothing so far from Associated Press, Reuters and New York Times, which covered the first speech with such glee.
   
  P.P.S.  But is this comment going to influence people?  Most readers will go directly to the translated pages.  I am entitled to express myself occasionally, but I make sure that it is an aside.

• [104]  The Stone Silence.  In Yahoo! Sends Another Man To Jail, I threw down the challenge:  " I expect stone silence to this post, because the world is enjoying Yahoo!-bashing too much."  Of course, I am over-emoting here.  I am glad to report that Chris Myrick at Asia Pundit placed the post on top of this daily roundup.  And SimonWorld proclaimed: "ESWN again rightly defends their actions."  Actually, I have no elation for the response.  On the whole, I would rather see someone come up with a way out of the 3-equally-unlikeable-options that I delineated.

• [103]  Media Ethics Again.  (Nanfang Daily)  On September 16, our reporter mets with three citizens who showed up digital film taken over the course of four days of a gang of robbers in Dongguan.  Between September 16 to 20, our reporter positioned himself to observe the gang surreptitiously.  Beginning 6am on September 20, the gang robbed three solo female pedestrians within one hour.  During one case, two robbers pushed a female to the ground, held her there and then took her handbag and mobile phone.  A man waiting for a bus was astonished, grabbed his luggage and left quickly.  None of the victims called the police.
  
  In the afternoon of September 20, our reporter went the Dongguan public security bureau to report, supplying the citizens' DV and our records on a VCD.  At 7am on September 22, more than one hundred plainclothes police officers arrested 28 suspected robbers, collecting three mobile phones, one switchblade and several hundred RMB of loot.
   
  This is replay of the issue brought up in the previous post A Case Study for Media Ethics.  Did the Nanfang Daily deliberately delay contacting the police because they wanted to get the material for this story first?  Another question: Why didn't the civilians go to the police themselves?

• [102]  The Greatest Banquet Ever In Guangdong.  The attractiveness of The Most Popular Forum Post Ever In China was to see how the nouveau riche got their just deserts.  (Express News via Sohu.com)  On September 2, Guinness invited a group of 500 social elite to attend what was described as the biggest and most upscale banquet ever in the history of the city of Guangzhou.  The name of the event was 珍嘗珍品高峰匯, the gourmet food tasting summit meeting.  The food was prepared by nine different top restaurants, one course per restaurant, and the banquet was held in a five-star hotel.  The value of the raw food material was estimated at 3,880 RMB per person.
   
  What was on offer?  Suckling pig with goose liver paté; bird's nest and pidgeon eggs; yellow-oil crabs; snow frogs; turtle soup with medicinal herbs; sea cucumber and venison; king abalone.  You can see the color photos at 6Park.
    
  How good was the food?  Several hundred of the guests ended up with active gastroenteritis and could not tell.  One couple had to use the bathroom more than twenty times each between 5am and 7am and ended up in the hospital getting saline solutions.  What happened?  It could be sabotage (e.g. someone putting laxatives in the food) or food poisoning (e.g. salmonella).  Another theory says that it is ancient Chinese wisdom to never ever serve abalone with venison in the same meal.
   
  (Nanfang Metropolitan News)  Meanwhile, on the opposite of the socio-economic scale and in Kansu province out in the western hinterlands, a farmer faced a dilemma.  This year, he has earned only 1,000 RMB.  He has two children, and their school fees will be 860 RMB each.  So he took two pieces of paper out, told his children that one had 'yes' and the other was blank, crumbled them and put them on the table for the children.  The daughter picked a blank paper, so her brother got to go to school.  Afterwards, the daughter made a meal for her brother, went out into the fields to work a bit and then she got up a cliff from which she jumped off.  Her words: "I won't be able to study anymore.  My only path out is closed.  I don't regret doing this."  860 RMB.
   
  (Nanfang Daily)  In Yunnan, a housewife was at wits' end over family finances.  Her husband is incapacitated by a stroke and she has two children and a mother-in-law to take care off.  She only makes several hundred RMB per year.  On June 28, her daughter found out that her exam marks would qualify her for university.  She despaired at the thought of finding the several thousand dollars per year to pay for fees.  At about 9am, August 1, she got up early, got the water and medicine for her mother-in-law, prepared the firewood and then committed suicide by hanging.  Her daughter said, "I would rather not qualify.  I would rather stay home forever and be a farmer.  I would rather none of this ever happened.  I let my mother down."

• [101]  Does the Super Rich Exist in China?  With respect to The Most Popular Forum Post Ever In China, I have been asked if the super rich really exists in China as described.  Personally, I doubt it.  Who owns a race horse in China?  Who owns a private jet to go around?
   
  In Chongqing Morning News (via Yahoo! News), there is a description of the exclusive Changan Club in Beijing.  The initiation fee is around 150,000 RMB and the annual fee is about 20,000 RMB.  The qualifications for a Chinese businessmen are: 45-55 males, top executive in a company with corporate assets in excess of 50 million RMB, cosmopolitan, preferrably English-speaking.  With due respect, these are the nouveau riche and not the super rich.
   
  The article also describes an exclusive apartment (贡院6号) valued at 40,000 RMB per square meter.  A mister Liu lives here.  It is said that Mister Liu likes to go to Yunnan and Guangdong, mostly to taste the local food.  Here is a quote: "Since Mr. Liu flies so often, a friend suggested to him to buy a private helicopter."  Eh, with due respect, commercial jets fly a lot faster and higher than private helicopters.  Mr. Liu isn't going to be able to fly in a private helicopter from Beijing to Yunnan on any regular basis ...
   
• [100]  The Qingtang Tide.  Tide waves are seen each year at the Qiantang River in Haining during the eighth month of the Lunar calendar, with the most violent tide reaching a height of nine metres.
  
  
   
• [099]  Nanny Is Not Pleased.  At Yannan forum, all mentions of The Case of Wang Binyu and The Taishi Village Elections have been removed.  
   
  Addendum:  Actually, the above appeared several days ago here.  Since then, this became a news item on Interfax.  Now, I find this annoying.  There are three things happening here: (1) the case of Wang Binyu; (2) the Taishi Village elections; (3) the deletion of the two topics from Yannan forum.  The third one made the western news but what about the first two?
   
  In the case of Wang Binyu, Google yields only one substantive western mainstream media report from Hamish MacDonald at Chinese riveted by tragic tale of worker exploitation (Sydney Morning Herald, September 24, 2005).  Now, this account is problematic.  Here is the description of the killings: 

  "Calling him a "dog", they slapped Binyu in the face and kicked him. Binyu brought out a folding fruit-knife and began a stabbing rampage that killed Wu Hua and three of his family members, shouting: "I no longer want to live."  Then he went to a bridge over the Yellow River, threw his knife into the water, washed the blood off his hands, and took a taxi to the nearest police station, where he turned himself in. In June a court sentenced him to death.

  Here is Nanfang Metropolitan News' account (which was translated in my post listed at the beginning of this comment):

  After four people were stabbed and fallen down, Wu Xinguo's wife came out to help the wounded Su Zhigang lay down by the wall but she too was chased by Wang and sustained stab wounds.  Wu Xinguo called the police on 110 from the shop next door.  When Wang Binyu saw Wu, he gave chase.  Several minutes later, Wang Binyu returned to the scene of the stabbing after losing Wu in the chase.  Then he began a second round of stabbing.  Afterwards he went to the Yellow River Bridge, threw the knife into the water, washed the blood on his hands and took a taxi cab to turn himself in at the nearest police station.

  One account fits manslaughter in self-defense but the other account is more like depraved indifference.  This is a really interesting story, and even China Daily/Xinhua had been describing it.  So how come this story rated below Yannan forum?

  In the case of the Taishi Village elections, the only substantive mainstream media report had come from Tim Johnson (Knight Ridder News).  More significantly, this is an ongoing case which I update in my post listed at the beginning of this comment.  Here is the latest development.  During the election of seven recall committee members, the seven nominated by the villagers themselves routed the seven nominated by the government.  Victory at hand?  Think again.  Five of the seven elected members have already resigned, possibly due to anonymous threatening phone calls, job retaliations, etc.  So how come this story rated below Yannan forum?

  And what about Yannan forum?  This is my favorite Chinese-language forum.  It is a class by itself, and I cannot really think of anything comparable in English because it covers scholarly discussions about history, sociology, education, law, media, current affairs, etc.  So two topics have just been removed from the forum.  This has happened before (as in the Shalan flood coverage), and it will happen again.  I look at the page today and here is a small selection of what is on the front page: the full text of Li Ao's Beijing University speech; a review of Li Ao's career; the full text of Zhang Yihuo's speech in Hong Kong on transborder literature; Chinese toilet culture; the diary of a Chinese woman in a cancer village; sidewalk regulations in New York City; daily budgeting issues for university students; special sections on the Xingzhu mine disaster; medical care reform; the Shaanbei oil field rights struggle; petition system reform; requiring real names on the Internet.  Yannan forum will be fine.

  By the way, there was a great piece at Yannan forum about Taishi village by a civilian reporter.  I will translate it when I find some time.  Wait, you ask, "Hasn't it been deleted from Yannan forum?"  Indeed, it has been.  I read it several days ago but I did not have time to translate it immediately.  So I saved a copy on my hard drive because I knew that I could not count on it being still there when I go back later.  Yes, this is silly and inconvenient, but we'll get by.

• [098]  The Value of University Education.  (Wenxue City)  In the city of Chongqing, China, according to the ads below, a regular female escort (born in 1982) charges 125 RMB per hour, but a female escort attending university (born in 1982) charges 250 RMB per hour.  There you have it.
  

• [097]  ESWN's Focus.  Occasionally, I am asked about what ESWN's focus is.  The general expectation is a simple geographical classification, such as Hong Kong, mainland China or Chinese Diaspora.  Physically, I am living in Hong Kong.  Increasingly, my focus is drifting towards mainland China.  The explanation is obvious on account of the demographic pressures.  Here is the reality in terms of population size:
  - 1,300 million in mainland China
  - 7 million in Hong Kong
  Where do you think a Chinese person should focus on?  Do you think Hong Kong can merrily live on its own without caring about what happens in China?  Whether I like it or not, anything and everything that happens in China will affect me, perhaps even more so than what happens here in Hong Kong.  So maybe ESWN is a Hong Kong blog for classificatory purposes, but it is a Chinese blog (without any qualifier of mainland, Hong Kong or whatever).

• [096]  The Hong Kong That You Don't Know.  The following was reported by the Next Week gossip columnist.  He was going through the website of the Foreign Service Institute of the US State Department, and he came across the Cultural Guide to Hong Kong.  There were some jaw-dropping information about the place.
  
  Here are the three excerpts:
  - "14-member Legislative Council"
  - "... many of the Hong Kong policemen speak English.  Those that do speak English wear red bands on their arms to distinguish themselves." (A police department spokesperson was contacted but he could give the date when that happened: "I'd have to go to the police museum and find out.")
  - "Jeans are appropriate for both genders, but it is generally only acceptable for men to wear shorts in public.  In any situation, it is wise for women to avoid wearing anything too low-cut."
   
  The web page was created in 2004, but some of the references were dated, including one book that was published in 1942.  The columnist sent an e-mail to the US Consulate in Hong Kong, and got a reply from Susan: "Thank you for your suggestion for the web site of the US Consulate in Hong Kong."  Let's see how fast that gets fixed.

• [095]  [Permalink]  Village Committee Work.  Lately, I have translated quite a bit on Chinese village reforms.  Here is a news story about how a village commitee was able to improve its finances and citizen morale, but not public morality.  (Huashangchenbao via Yahoo! News)  At 5:30pm, our newspaper hotline received a complaint about going-ons at Zhongjiahe village.  At 7:00pm, our reporter arrived at the courtyard of the village committee office and found a huge tent.  Our reporter paid 5 RMB to gain admission.  Once inside, he saw about ten rows of benches with more than 200 spectators already.  On the stage, five twenty-or-so-year-old women in bikinis were dancing and flirting with the men in the front row.  The reporter sat down. 
   
  Immediately, someone poked him in the back.  He turned around and saw a smiling old man who said, "You are blocking the line of sight of my grandson."  There was a seven-year-old boy there.  The reporter asked, "Should a little boy be watching this?"  Grandpa replied: "He can't do anything bad with it, eh?  Besides, what else is there for us to do at night?"
  
  P.S.  Ms. Wang who called the newspaper hotline received 30 RMB for the tip.

• [094]  Latin Americans Learning English.  At InMediaHK, Lingnan ponders why so few Latin Americans know English, which is the globalized lingua franca.  What are the hard facts about English-language capability in Latin America?  Hmmm.  I'm afraid that I am the main source.
   
  In 1998, I wrote in English-Language Learning In Latin America: "In the Los Medios y Mercados de Latinoamérica study, we found that 15.6% of Latin Americans between the ages of 12 and 64 describe themselves as being able to understand spoken English 'somewhat' or 'very well', and 14.4% of them describe themselves as being able to understand written English 'somewhat' or 'very well'."  Of these people, 64% said that they learned it from school, 24% by having lived abroad, 17% at work, 6% by speaking with friends, 5% by reading books, 5% by watching television and 3% by listening to audio tapes.  These are the straight numbers from a comprehensive pan-Latin American survey (minus Cuba, of course).
   
  In 2004, I addressed the issue again in Latin Americans Learn to Speak English.  In the TGI Latina survey of 54,692 persons in eight Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela), we found that 5.7% of the survey respondents said that they can speak English 'very well" and 21.5% said that they can speak 'some' English (note: this is a smaller and more affluent survey universe than the 18-country LMML study cited previously).  But the more disturbing story is when I broke down the incidences by socio-economic class.  My concluding sentence was this: "If there are economic benefits that accrue from mastery of the English language, they will fall to the elite again."  As usual, I am telling you the obvious and in sadness.

• [093]  A Paparazzi Story in Hong Kong.  In East Week, a reporter was trailing Golden Harvest boss Raymond Chow.  Mr. Chow is a long-time family friend, and that is why I took interest in the details.  Here is the story: "At 430pm, Raymond Chow was observed driven by his chauffeur from Kowlong Tong to Pacific Club at Ocean Terminal in Tsimshatsui.  Later, the chauffeur came out alone in the car and waited outside the Peninsula Hotel.  At this instant, the reporter had unknowingly fallen into a counter-surveillance move by Raymond Chow.  More than half an hour later, Raymond Chow finally stepped out of the Peninsula Hotel and entered the car, which continued through the West Harbor Crossing to turn on the expressway towards Central.  Then it slowed to a stop on the expressway and turned on its emergency light.  The reporter realized something was wrong but just went ahead and then got off at the IFC exit and stopped.  Minutes later, Raymond Chow's car came and then a police van raced to the scene.  The reporter was then interrogated.  Although the reporter was trapped, he still admired the wiliness of Raymond Chow."
   
  What is going on here?  Look, you are a billionaire and some strange car is following you around.  Can you spell 'kidnapping'?  Does the car have the word "Paparazzi" displayed?  
   
  I am also reminded of traffic rules in Baghdad -- any car that comes within 100-150 yards behind an American convoy will be shot at.  If only we have Baghdad rules (according to the American occupation forces), that should put some fear into paparazzis.

• [092]  Yet Another Example of Survey Abuse.  (Nangfang Daily)  Based upon a survey conducted in 31 cities on the ease of using public toilets, the best eight cities are: Mianyang, Mudanjiang, Yichang, Baoding, Tianjin, Baoji, Shenyang and Changsa.  The worst eight cities are: Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Zhengzhou, Dalian, Shanghai, Beijing, Lanzhou.  So there you have it.
   
  Yes, but let us look underneath the hood to see how the survey was conducted.  This was a multi-stage stratified probability sample using face-to-face personal interviews with 3,434 regular residents in 31 cities.  Fantastic, because the jargon is all there.  What is the problem here?  3,434 interviews across 31 cities means 3,414/31 = 111 interviews per city on the average.  What is the margin of error around those city-level survey estimates?  Suppose 50% of the respondents in one city think the waiting times are too long, but only 40% in another city think so.  With due respect, that 10% difference is not statistically significant at sample sizes of 111 each.  So maybe Shenzhen isn't really different from Lanzhou, eh?  This study might have given us some sense of the national priorities of the important issues (e.g. waiting time, cleanliness, etc) but it is not appropriate for inter-city comparisons.

• [091]  Media Reporters As Eyewitnesses To Crime.  In this previous post The Ruzhou Coal Mine Disasters, it was reported that hundreds of real and fake reporters showed up in Ruzhou to get paid NOT to report on the coal mine disasters there.  Since then, a government investigation has concluded that there is no basis for the report.  As a result, Henan Commercial Press has been suspended for thirty days while the reporter and the editor-on-duty are suspended from their jobs.  The problem was that the reporter did not have the original ledger and he did not make audio or video recordings.  So it boils down to his word against the vehement denials by the government officials.  Here is the troublesome fact -- there were supposed to be more than 400 bribe takers, some of whom are real reporters, including one from Xinhua.  Why doesn't even one of them have the courage and integrity to show up and validate the news report?

• [090]  A Question Of Survey Abuse.  Justin Mitchell writes about public opinion polling in Hong Kong for The Standard.  I was interviewed, but nothing with respect to this ESWN gig.  Instead, I was interviewed in my real-life job as the chief technical officer for KMR, the world's second-largest media research firm.  "If anyone were to call this number, my home number, it's a landline and it's listed in the book, there would be a problem.  Four people live there, three within the target universe of an adult. One is my mom who can't talk anymore. Another is a 79-year-old domestic helper who only speaks peasant dialect Shanghainese. So how's she going to do a interview about the chief executive? She has neither the verbal skills, knowledge nor interest.  A Filipina maid is the third person. What are you going to ask her?  I'm the fourth one. If you say you'll take 'anyone' who is willing to talk and I'm willing to talk, I'm that person. But it's misleading for polls to say they project the total adult population of Hong Kong. They don't."  And my readers should know that I have very peculiar ideas ...
   
  I am not the big player in this story.  The main men are Robert Chung and Michael DeGolyer, and they are the ones who uphold professional standards.  Thanks to Justin Mitchell for telling the story.  For a long time, what has been happening here is an obscenity to the professionals.
   
  P.S.  This was my third press interview of the month.  If only I could make a living out of giving interviews ...

• [089]  È Strano.  As Giuseppe Verdi wrote, it is strange.  I just posted The Real Story of Tianxian MM and then I checked Technorati to find Sun Bin: "I am sure ESWN will cover this soon."  Is this what my reputation is?  So be it.  I have no complaint.  After all, I'm just a media traviata.  Or would you rather that I tell you where the Chinese guided missiles pointed to Taiwan are located, or how much Taiwan should spend on procuring outdated American armaments?

• [088]  The Moral Lesson In A Beijing School Textbook.  (Legal Evening News via MediaInChina).  On January 20, 1980, an old man in the city of Changchun was hit by a bicycle and he let go of the money in his hands.  Pedestrians began 'grabbing' the money.  When everything was gathered and returned to him, the old man counted 5 extra RMB.  So someone had given him their own money.
   
  In 2005, fourth-grade elementary school students in Beijing read this particular story in their school textbooks.  A reporter interviewed a dozen school children and asked them what they thought.  They all thought about how "people should not take what does not belong to them" and the importance of being honest.  By the way, eight students thought the story was impossible.
   
  What is wrong?  That news story was a renowned fabrication, and those eight students were right.  A professor at the School of Journalism of the Chinese People's University said: "When the kids grow up, they may find out that the story used to educate them when they were young was fake.  That will have a direct impact on their values."

• [087]  Top Secret Military Information On The Internet.  (ChineseNewsNet)  (translated in summarized form) "Of the various theories about what caused Ching Cheong to be arrested, some people say that Ching Cheong liked to visit certain military-themed websites and look at what may seemed to be sensitive materials.  In truth, these websites are open to the public.  My friend said that Ching Cheong especially liked the military section at BackChina.com, and this friend downloaded two pages that claimed to be 'information on the main guided missiles of China.'  I saw and I was shocked, because it described the the guided missile testing ground and the various guided missles such as East Wind 1, East Wind 2, East Wind 3, East Wind 4, East Wind 15, East Wind 21 and so on.  The articles also listed the locations and inventory at several dozen guided missile bases around China, such as 'Guangdong's Meizhou guided missile base has 96 East Wind 15/East Wind 21 missles, Yunnan's Kunming guide missile base has 13 East Wind 5A strategic guided missiles and so on ...'  I have no idea if the above information is true or false.  I can only think that if this was one reason why Ching Cheong was arrested, then I hope the investigators understand that this is publicly available information on the Internet."

• [086]  Japanese and Dogs.  (Xinwenhuabao via Yahoo! News)  On September 18, the national day of infamy, a certain flooring sales store in Changchun, China, raised a banner that said: "Japanese and dogs not allowed inside."  Reviews were mixed.  A man walking with his 6-year-old daughter said: "While we should remember the day of infamy, this is not the right way.  It is exaggerated and misdirected.  Not only does it fail to exhibit patriotism, it actually makes people uncomfortable with this extremely narrow-minded emotionalism."
  
  The manager said that this was the ninth year in which he had done this on 9/18.  "I am not exaggerating even if I am somewhat extreme.  But this is how the warning message gets through better.  This generation must not forget and the next generation must not either, or else their suffering may be even worse.  My hometown is Dunhua.  Last summer, two Dunhua children were burned by chemical gas bombs left behind by the Japanese army."

• [085]  Hong Kong-Japan Collaboration.  In Ming Pao Weekly, there was a 1-page article about Hong Kong-Japanese collaborations in movie making.
  
  The special feature was the actress Yu Min (尤敏) who starred with the Japanese actor Akira Takarada (寶田明) in three big-budget movies, Night of HongKong, Star of Hong Kong and Hong Kong, Tokyo and Hawaii in 1963.  The late Yu Min was a family friend, known to us as Lulu.  Thinking back to those movies, it was an era in which no one would think a bit about a Japanese man and a Chinese woman falling in love.  Today, in the Internet era, there will be probably artillery barrages against the actress for being a Chinese traitor (漢奸) and a slut (淫婦).  How did we end up this way?  Was it the fault of the free-speech enabler, the Internet?  Was it just a gradual sea change of attitudes?  Or were there observable landmarks?  One landmark might be the short story Sayonara Goodbye (莎哟娜拉,再见) by the Taiwan writer Huang Chun-ming (黃春明).  Gone were the romantic stories between equals; instead, in the globalized economy, the Japanese men are the bosses while the Chinese women work as prostitutes and their men are the pimps.  It was not all dark, because the central character in Huang's story took revenge by intentionally mistranslating a conversation between the Japanese businessmen and a Chinese student.  So how much of the current Sino-Japanese relationship is the result of mistranslation?
   
  I'll admit here that I miss Lulu, because she had class.  Class?  That word does not apply to the likes of Sammy Cheng, Miriam Yeung, Cecilia Cheung and Gigi Leung of today.

• [084]  The Dartboard Princess.  (Ming Pao)  On the televised evening gala show of Hong Kong Disneyland, Joyce Zheng performed as Snow White in a song-and-dance routine.  Afterwards, the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority received more than 300 complaints.  Some said that the performance was "unsettling and disgusting" (令人不安、惡心) and that it "scared the kids" (嚇壞細路).  At the time, TVB countered by saying that it was those complaints that were unhealthy.
   
  Fast forward to yesterday's 3Weekly magazine.  In the central page, there is a full-sized poster of Joyce Zheng in her Snow White costume advertised to be used as a 'dartboard' target.
  
  The Equal Opportunties Commission said that this case does not appear to fall into their jurisdiction with respect to gender discrimination.  The Society for Truth and Light thinks this was deplorable.  Assistant professor Chung Kim-wah of the Department of Applied Social Studies at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University believes that this showed the media to be profit-driven in an unhealthy way, and that this incident showed that the media lacks self-restraint and professionalism.
   
  You want freedom of press and speech and you've got those freedoms.  Why are you whining?
   
  Follow-up:  (SCMP; September 29, 2005)  The more than 350 complaints made against celebrity offspring Joyce Cheng Yan-yee's appearance on television as Snow White at Disneyland's opening gala have been found unsubstantiated.  The Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (Tela) ruled late last week that the show was not "unsuitable for children" and did not "cause distress".   Since her appearance as Snow White in Hong Kong Disneyland's opening gala on September 11, which was broadcast on TVB Jade, Tela has received 363 complaints.  Tela's principal entertainment standards control officer (broadcasting) Rose May Li said all the complaints were very similar: Cheng pretending to be a princess was disturbing, unsuitable for children to watch and could mislead them. They said the show should have indicated that parental guidance was necessary.  "It seemed like complainants were focusing on the target [Cheng], instead of any violation of broadcasting laws," Ms Li said. 

• [083]  Mid-Autumn Festival Thoughts.  (About.com)  There is non-standard legend about the Mid-Autumn Festival: "On this day the 'Man in the Moon' was spotted at an inn, carrying a writing tablet. When questioned, he said he was recording the names of all the happy couples who were fated to marry and live happily forever after."
   
  (Ming Pao via Yahoo! News)  Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival, but Strait Times reporter Ching Cheong is currently detained as a spy in mainland China and cannot be with his family.  Through a fax to Ming Pao, his wife Mary Lau thanks the Ming Pao readers for your concern.  There is no news so far.  According to friends of Ching Cheong, he was arrested on April 22 and the maximum period of detention is 7 months, so that the court hearing must being in November or else he must be released.
   
• [082]  Music Piracy Adapts.  (The Sun via Yahoo! News)  In Hong Kong, the IFPI announced that it intends to file lawsuits against individual consumers who engage in illegal downloading via P2P (peer-to-peer) systems.  The reaction among netizens has been that they will forego P2P and go to mainland websites such as Baidu and others with MP3 search functions.  If you type in the name of an artist or a song, you will get hundreds of listings and it won't take more than 30 seconds to download a song via broadband.  According to Internet engineers, there is no hope in tracking down the users, especially since the search engine services do not supply or even have user information.
   
  Sinosplice points out that Baidu is being sued and it is vulnerable because it has just gone through an IPO.  So maybe the Baidu MP3 search service is dead.  There are dozens of other MP3 search services waiting in the wings.  Maybe they'll all be sued but remember that they don't do any downloading themselves.  Instead, there are thousands of downloading sites.  It is a lot harder to shut all of them down.
   
• [081]  A Shenyang Incident .  (Chongqing Evening News via Yahoo! News)  In Shenyang, around noontime, a group of people are gathered underneath an unfinished building.  Another man came up in a motorcycle and asked, "What are you looking at?"  "Don't you see the person up there?"  "Where?  I don't see anyone!  Where?"  "At around 10am, someone saw a woman climbing up and called the police."  The person was really far up and some people were using binoculars to look at her.  There was even a binoculars saleswoman in the crowd, drumming up business: "Brother, don't you want to see?  Buy a pair of binoculars!" 
   
  This would go on for some time.  Some people even brought easy seats and sat in the street.  Soon, it was past lunch hour.  A man said: "I'll have to go hungry.  I'm afraid that I won't see her jump if I leave even for a moment."  Another man went home and brought back a bottle of mineral water and some biscuits.
  
  At 4:45pm, two firemen went up and got the woman down.  At 5:00pm, traffic began to flow normally again.
   
• [080]  More Smuggled Goods From China To Taiwan.  (6Park)  Taiwan police reported intercepting a large batch of aphrodasiacs and diet medicine smuggled from China.  That is no surprise, but for the first time, they found fake virginal hymens.  According to Xinming Daily, these fake hymens were manufactured by a company in Jinan and there is even a proper certificate.  The police believe that these would be used by prostitutes to satisfy customers looking for virgins.  The contraption is basically a tissue pack which will release a blood-like liquid during intercourse.
   
  The product cost is NT$1.50 per piece, and the retail cost is NT$15 per piece.  At that kind of pricing, they need to sell tens of millions a year in order to make any meaningful amount of money.  There can't be that many virgins out there, eh?

• [079]  Wen Jiabao and Super Girl.  I have been looking for a particular photograph, but I can't find it.  When I Baidu the terms "Wen Jiabao"+"Super Girl", I get many stories about Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Zhongshan University and his 'random' encounter with Super Girl runner-up Zhou Bichang.  See, for example, Dayang Net via Yahoo! News.  These stories all tell about how Wen walked into one rehearsal room and asked a student to play a piece by Schubert.  Then in the second room, Zhou Bichang happened to be here and they shook hands.  Then Wen went to the concert hall to hear the student chorus sing from The Yellow River Cantata.  I am looking for the photo of the Wen-Zhou encounter and it is nowhere to be found.  Instead, there is this one with some other students.
  
  The fact that there is no photo is probably by design.  It will be up to you to think about why this should be so.  A deliberate attempt to distance Wen away from this decadent and vulgar television program?  Or the dog ate the photo of a historical moment?  As usual, I am clueless.

• [078]  Chen Shui-bian Faces The Music.  (Wenxue City)  In the the aftermath of a typhoon, President Chen Shui-bian visited the families of those who died in Hsin Chu.  As the master of ceremony intoned: "The president will offer flowers," one of the relatives said: 滚蛋，出去啦，你这些人，王八蛋(translation: Beat it!  Get out of here!  You people are turtle eggs!)  Another family member: "The twelve aboriginal tribes of Taiwan will stand up.  We the mountain people are stronger than typhoon Aere if we shout together.  Will Ms. Annette Lu please turn up the volume and tell us to migrate to Central/South America." 
  
  President Chen Shui-bian should be given credit for willing to risk being publicly chided.  That was old news, but it is current because it reminds us that not all presidents are made of such stern material.  Elizabeth Bumiller wrote in the New York Times: One prominent African-American supporter of Mr. Bush who is close to Karl Rove, the White House political chief, said the president did not go into the heart of New Orleans and meet with black victims on his first trip there, last Friday, because he knew that White House officials were "scared to death" of the reaction.  "If I'm Karl, do I want the visual of black people hollering at the president as if we're living in Rwanda?" said the supporter, who spoke only anonymously because he did not want to antagonize Mr. Rove.

• [077]  (Beijing News via Yahoo! News)  A survey of Beijing citizens listed the following six worse types of public misbehavior.
  - 81.6%: spitting and littering in public areas
  - 63.7%: affecting public health and safety through maintaining pets
  - 59.4%: booing, clapping, talking dirty, cursing during public performances
  - 57.4%: walking or driving without following traffic regulations
  - 57.4%: crowding onto public bus; not yielding seats
  - 54.4%: posting flyers and other promotional materials at bus stations and on streets
   
• [076]  Spelling Mistakes.  (Beijing Times via Yahoo! News)  In Zhaoyang district, Beijing, the public security ordered 400 signs installed in the community to warn people about pickpockets.  Yet, there were two mistakes in that one ad.  When told, the public security bureau said that the fault lies with the advertising company, which will have to correct all the signs.
  
  There were two mistakes: 热 instead of 装 and 装 instead of 袋.

• [075]  Horse Fart Culture in America.  I think that I have been hyping the role of the Fourth Estate (Media) in countervailing "horse fart culture."  What if it does not make a wee bit of difference in the most democratical country in the world?
   
  (MSNBC) Brian William: "I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS [President of the United States] drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions."

• [074]  Yet Another Mass Incident in China.  Speaking as a professional statistician, there is much that I don't like about the 74,000 figure often cited as the number of 'mass incidents' in China last year.  There is no explanation of the methodology or criteria of classification.  Who is collecting the information?  How is the reporting done?  What qualifies as a 'mass incident'?  I have found no explanation.  And I am very cynical about crime statistics, because I have seen what happens in the United States -- a mayor who wants to look good will change the reporting system in a flash.  Mysteriously, a murder can become 'unknown cause of death' because someone who died by gunshot could have committed suicide and then have someone else steal the gun.  So unless it is on videotape or witnessed by a dozen people, it may not be a homicide.
   
  I offer a test case.  Here are two photos from Xinzheng City, Henan Province (Henan Business News via 6Park).  Several tens of thousands of people showed up spontaneously together.  I ask, "Does this qualify as a mass incident in the books?"
  
  The reason why these people were on the streets was due to an incident on the night of June 25.  An elderly couple named Li ran a family small enterprise in which they sold agricultural equipment accessories.  On this night, they were robbed and died after being stabbed more than 110 times.  The robber stole a few cartons of cigarettes and some bicycle tyre inner tubes from their shop.  The entire city was outraged.  On September 15, news came that the police had apprehended the suspect in Suzhou and was bringing him back.  Twenty thousand citizens went out into the streets.  They were banging on gongs and drums and thanking the police for solving the case.  The relatives of the victims were crying their eyes out too.
  
  This assembly was unauthorized, it was massive and it went on the news.  So was this a 'mass incident'?  I report, you decide.  And if you think it counts, then will China collapse as a result of such 'mass incidents'?

• [073]  The Four Chinas.  From Simon World, Mark Steyn is quoted as saying: "I would say the Russian-Chinese border, which is going to become a huge flashpoint in the years ahead. Basically, China is slowly going to annex the Eastern part of Russia ... Their distorted birth rate, artifically distorted birth rate, which means they have this huge surplus of men. Unless they're figuring on becoming the first gay superpower since Sparta, that is going to be a huge issue for them ... There's a widening gap between the rural inland China and these coastal cities that are booming. And that in the end is going to bust that country apart. There'll be two, three, four Chinas on the world's stage eventually."  Wow!  Book me on the next Mars shuttle!  I'm going back to my own home on MARS before the Earth blows itself up!
   
  P.S.  A very popular ESWN blog post is about the Monty Python skit on the New Zealand All-Black rugby team tour of England.  You can't imagine why anyone would be interested in that subject.  Well, I titled it Why I Don't Talk Chinese Politics and you can read it for the association.  The Hugh Hewitt-Mark Steyn conversation would actually do just as well as the Monty Python skit to illustrate my point. 
   
  Next question: Should Taiwan spend the billions to procure armaments?  Hmmm ... why do you want a blogger to tell you that?  What the f*ck does he know!?  But if that blogger goes ahead to give opinion anyway, you might as well as take the opportunity to ask him about these other current issues ...
  - Should the Turkish army invade northern Iraq to protect the Turkeman ethnic people from the Kurds?
  - Should a person of Chinese descent serve on the commission to prosecute the Khmer Rouge leadership for genocidal crimes in Cambodia?
  - Should Lai Changxing's divorce from his wife in Vancouver be considered a ploy to preserve his ill-gotten gains for his family?
  - Should Brazilian national football team trainer Alberto Perreira play his big five (Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Robinho, Kaka, Adriano) at the risk of sacrificing his defense?
  Why not ask, since that blogger thinks that he knows everything ...?  (For the record, I think that the answers are NO, NO, YES, NO and YES respectively)

• [072]  The Beauty of Death.  With respect to the article in The Guardian about a Chinese cosmetics company using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, I have to say something.  I am only a blogger, and I can't tell you if this is true or not.  However, I have my doubts.  First of all, being an operations manager by profession, I don't see how I can manage such a distribution system.  The article cites Amnesty International for 3,400 executions around China.  How shall I build this supply network?  How can I make the officials in more than 2,000 counties around the country to report to me, who is just the supply manager of a smallish cosmetics company.  I have no official authority, so I need to pay them off.  How do I negogiate with 2,000 plus local officials?  How do I know that I am negotiating with the persons with the right level of authority?  How much do I have to offer them?  They won't take 50 RMB because that would be an insult.  And they have other people whose palms must be greased as well.  How much would I have to pay per body?  10,000 RMB?  And what are my sales returns?  The financials just does not work.  
   
  Moreover, I cannot just fax some instructions to the local militia and tell them what to do because this job requires expertise.  How do I get qualified people out there to get what I need?  Or shall just I instruct the firing squad to cut off the heads, ice them and ship them to me overnight via UPS?  I am trumped by the magnitude of the task involved, and I cannot imagine any sales from cosmetic products can justify the cost of building such a system.
   
  More importantly, I have read about what happens at executions in China.  You can read the confessions of an executioner at The Death Penalty in China - Part 2.  And then you can look at photographs about what happens (WARNING: EXTREMELY GORY!!!) in Part 3.  I'd love to see how the Guardian reporter proposes to harvest off the collagen ... scrape it off the ground with a spoon?

• [071]  The Super Girl Book.  There is a Chinese saying: 打鐵趁熱 (forge the iron while it is still hot).  In the United States, there are people who can hack out a book and get it printed and distributed within a week of an event.  The market rewards the fast movers who can satisfy the demand.  (Shanghai Evening Post)  On August 5, a 19-year-old first-year university student watched the final of Super Girl and then proceeded to write a 100,000+ word manuscript in about 10 days.  The book was picked up by Chongqing Publishing House.  The book went on sale in Chongqing and Chengdu on September 11.  The first 10,000 copies were sold out in three days.  The book is titled 炮轰超女 (Bombarding Super Girl).  At the price of 16 RMB, this is neither pro nor con against Super Girl, and will therefore satisfy both fans and critics.

• [070]  The First Lady versus F4.  (TVBS News via Yahoo! News)  
  
  At a press conference, Taiwan's First Lady Wu Shu-chen said: "Here, I would once again call on our friends in the media to make more positive reports handicapped people and fewer negative ones.  The media should not stay on F4 all day.  I feel that is really the source of chaos in society."  Who is F4?  Why are they even more powerful and insiduous than corrupt officials, gangsters or communist spies in fementing chaos?
   
  F4 is a quartet of entertainers.  The 'F' in the title refers to their bra size.  Will four girls in their early twenties cause the republic to topple?  That might be an exaggeration. 
  
  Why do the media stay on F4 all the time?  The invisible hand of the market is at work.  If the people like to stay informed about F4, the media oblige; conversely, if the people don't like F4, the media won't go near them.  If you don't like this, you can change the market model to a public service model in which the government pays for and controls all media content.
   
  As if to prove the point, the story has passed the First Lady by and moved onto a feeding frenzy after this week's Next Magazine exposé about F4's Tiffany (see ET News via Yahoo! News): Did she work before as a bar girl at a uniform shop?  Was she really a university student?  And an even bigger question was: Could it be that Tiffany is only a D-cup?

• [069]  The Crying Game.  (Star Daily via Yahoo! News)  Why is this woman crying so hard?
  
  At a funeral home in Chengdu, a farewell ceremony is being held.  In front of the friends and family of the dearly departed, she spoke: "Today, we have come here with a heavy heart to say goodbye to our dear mama with tears in our eyes ..."  Then she began to choke and sob, and so did the attendees.
   
  She is actually the funeral home's master of ceremony, and she does this for a living.  She is professional in the sense that she controls the emotions of the audience to the right degree.  Normally, she works more than ten funerals per day.  Her record for the busiest day is more than 30 different ceremonies on the same day.  She charges 60-80 RMB per session, so her income is better than an ordinary white-collar worker.
   
• [068]  Citizen Satisfaction Poll In Hong Kong.  From the print edition of Sing Tao, here are the results from a poll commissioned by the Chinese University of Hong Kong Department of Journalism and Communications.

Year	%Satisfied	%Not satisfied	%Not sure
2002	21%	72%	7%
2003	24%	71%	5%
2004	39%	53%	8%
2005	65%	29%	6%

• [066]  Adapting Eileen Chang's Works: Who Can Decide?  At InMediaHK, that was the title of the essay (改編張愛玲──誰又做得了主？).  Indeed, I too was incensed about how yet another stage adaption might have butchered her work.  Who allowed that to happen?  So I ran into bathroom, looked in the mirror and yelled, "Why did you allow that to happen!!!"  Yes, I am that ultimate decision-maker at this time.  Look, this is not about grubbing money off Eileen Chang, because there is no money in this (and you will have to trust me on that as I get to deposit the paltry amounts on the royalty checks).  Rather, if I had issued a global moratorium on all adapations of Eileen Chang's works for theater, television and film, the same people will be ready to lynch me for stifling artistisic creativity.  And if I play God and demand a detailed proposal before approval subject to my conditions, you would hate me even more.
   
  Now you know how Tung Chee-hwa felt?  Damned if he did and damned if he didn't.  What would you do in my place?
   
  Here, I am mindful of my responsibilites.  According to what I read in her letters, she would have preferred to be left alone.  If I published what she wrote about what she saw, heard or thought, you would all be hanging your heads in shame and dread.  At the personal level, I ought to shut everything down from here to eternity.  Yet, I am mindful that she is bigger than life.  She is more than just Eileen Chang, for she is also the aspiration and inspiration of entire generations.  For that reason, I step aside and you the public will have to be the judge.

• [065]  'Non-mainstream' Media Strikes Back.  Never insult the media, for hell hath no worse fury.  In Next Magazine, there was a brief gossip item: At the banquet for Chinese Vice-Premier Zeng Qinghong with 400 illustrious guests, the Government Information Services Department refused to let the magazines send reporters.  When asked to explain, the answer was: "Given that there is insufficient space, only newspapers, television and radio media are invited.  Magazines are not mainstream media."  The columnist was left to wonder: So Time, Asiaweek, The Economist and their kindred are not mainstream media ...
   
  
  Did you think Next Magazine could forget or forgive a snub?  In the same issue, they would trot out the photograph of Secretary of Finance Henry Tang's noon reception at Disneyland.  Apparently, the organizers forgot to notify the press about this momentous occasion, so there were only about a dozen reporters in a room with 700 seats.  This photograph will be seen by the one million plus readers of 'non-mainstream' Next Weekly.
   
• [064]  More About The Chinese Hordes.  You read The Chinese Hordes Take Over Disneyland as reported in Apple Daily and Sing Tao, and you are appalled.  Today's Next Magazine got both of them beat.  In the words of a Disneyland restroom attendant named Emily: "The child is already six or seven years old.  This is not an infant.  But the mother still picked him up and put him into the handwashing basin to relieve himself ..."  The reporter interrupted her: "Yes, the newspapers have photos of a little boy urinating right outside this restroom."  Emily continued: "NO!  He was not urinating.  He was defecating into the handwashing basin.  When I saw him, he was in the middle of the process of defecating.  Someone else was washing her hands in the adjacent basin.  It was disgusting."  Thus, on opening day at Disneyland, Emily's Magic Journey experience was to pick up feces from the handwashing basin.  "This place is huge with more than twenty partitions.  At the time, some of them were still unused.  I told the mother that there were more partitions.  She replied in putonghua: 'It'll be quick.  It'll be quick' and continued."

• [067]  And Miss Hong Kong Does It Too.  There is actually a reason why I want to document the apparently appalling behavior by mainlanders at Disneyland.  Back behind is the subtext of social prejudice and superiority complex of Hong Kong residents.  I don't have the time and space to deal with all that at the moment, so I am just documenting as quickly as I can.  Meanwhile, there is a Hong Kong tabloid report about the 1999 Miss Hong Kong (Sonjia Kwok) who is currently shooting a television show in Henan province, China.
   
  (6Park)  On Sunday, Sonjia Kwok was in her stage costume and roving around the corridor of the set.  With her assistant as the lookout, she went into an isolated spot and re-emerged several minutes later looking relieved.  It was discovered that she left a pool of urine and a pile of feces there, with a pungent odor.  She did not wash her hands and her male co-lead held her hands without realizing what had just happened.
   
  The next day, Sonjia Kwok did the same thing to get to her "personal" restroom with her assistant as the lookout.  This time, she was only doing "number two" and not "number one."  The cleaning staff member was irate: "Uncivilized!"  The security staff member said: "The restroom was nearby.  One should get fined for doing it!"  When contacted by telephone, her manager said, "There are no restrooms in the middle of nowhere, so many people will do the same."  When told that the restroom was nearby, the manager was tongue-tied and hung up the phone.
   
• [063]  The Unhappy Middle-class in Hong Kong.  In SCMP, there is a report on a SynergyNet survey.  Sample quote: "One survey question asked respondents to rate ministers' willingness to shoulder responsibility for policy blunders on a scale of 100. The 505 respondents in a general survey gave an average rating of 51, but the corresponding figure of the survey covering 225 middle-class professionals was only 31."  Here is the data table in the print edition of Sing Tao:

Issue	Middle-class respondent score	Total sample respondent score
No matter one's position or background, everyone can participate in policy development	24.7	52.1
The government is willing to listen to critical comments	29.9	54.9
The government policy development process is transparent	30.5	51.2
The ministers are willing to shoulder responsibilities for policy blunders	31.2	50.7
The government grasps the needs of society as a whole	36.3	53.0

But before you run away with the spinning, Sing Tao also published the technical details.  The 505 respondents in a general survey was obtained from a telephone sample.  This is not an unreasonable approach (assuming that it was executed properly).  The 225 middle-class professionals came from an Internet survey.  In other words, those results are virtually useless because this is a self-selected sample.  My conjecture: Only malcontents will show up in that web survey, and that is why the scores are so low.  This can be checked by comparing their scores within the middle-class professionals within the telephone sample.

• [062]  HK SAR CE Poll.  (HKU POP)  Rating of HK SAR Chief Executive Donald Tsang: 66.7 (up from 64.8).  Vote of confidence: 75% (up from 68%).  Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "The popularity of Donald Tsang has rebounded in early September. His support rating has gone up for about 2 marks, while his support ra