From China Hush
Today, Ms. Fan’s house in Minghang district was to be forcefully demolished, Ms. Fan standing on the 3rd floor threw home-made fire bombs (at the demolition squad). However home-made fire bombs were made of glass bottles, naturally had technical bottlenecks, fire power was too weak. They were put out by the fire trucks, then the high-pressured water gun aimed at Ms. Fan, eventually she surrendered.
Upon seeing this news, I am pleased that after two decades of development, society has progressed. Sub-machine guns are replaced by high-pressured water gun. Then why would it lead to such brutal resistance? Because of the large-scaled building project of Hongqiao, Ms. Fan had an area 480 square meter home, but the government is only willing to offer the compensation of 670,000 yuan, which is 761 yuan per square meter of housing subsidies and 1,480 yuan for the compensation of the land.
When the city’s average commercial housing is measured by tens of thousands (per square meter), forced eviction’s price is still calculated with the hundreds, this is the reason why residents threw fire-bombs. That is, they were living in a 480 square meter home, you acquired their land for so called construction, that’s also business, your compensation for the family only is enough to buy a 40 square meters home, and then the demolitions team came. I think anyone who had weapons probably could not help themselves but to take them out in this situation.
Of course, this example illustrates a number of problems. First, it made sense why Chinese government banned guns. And I remember when I was a child my family had an air gun for shooting birds. Then suddenly one day the government ordered that all of the air guns and hunting rifles must be turned over. This showed that our government had foresights, they realized more than a decade later, social conflicts will increase, then if ordinary people are equipped with guns, the government demolition department can only be equipped with rocket launchers.
Second is when Chinese government made public ownership of the land was also foresighted, and even Mao Tse-tung who was not financial minded was aware of the government costs of eating, drinking and playing would be huge, only depending on taxes and monopolizing resources and energy would probably not going to be enough, land would be a big income. Later, leaders were worried that if the land gets sold out in their hands, then there will not be any land left for party’s son and party’s grandson to sell, at that time they will become the guilty ones, therefore they added a rule, the time limit for the land-use rights is 70 years, so that their grandsons can sell them again.
Third is certainly a problem the government regrets very much. If they knew the urbanization process is now so profitable, then they would not allow farmers to have homestead and their own houses. This now leads to a lot of demolition and reconstruction problems. Back then when building prisons, should have built farmer’s villages using the prison blue prints, one village one prison, one family one cell. Then use People’s Daily newspaper to indoctrinate ideas, say this is the new socialist countryside, that they no longer need to spend any money on housing, the government directly give houses to everyone, every home is made of cement and concrete, the doors are made of steel. Of course you still need to give the keys to them. This way, there are some initial costs, but later the government no longer needs to worry about the demolition distresses. The second benefit is in case someone is guilty of a crime, just confiscate the key then you are done.
There are a few highlights of this incident. That is some comments made by the leaders at Minhang district. As we all know, leaders of Minhang always accidentally spill the truth, and I think this is worth encouraging, because they frankly reveal the truth, always speak from their heart, much better than those two faced officials. For example Minhang district law enforcement captain made his speech on the “fishing incident” “If it is not driven by benefit, why should I help you”. These bold words only that Zhangzhou government official can match “Will you speak for the Party? Or will you speak for the people?"
[Key: Two references here, “fishing incident” is a scandal happened this year which law enforcement hires people pretend to be sick to hitchhike a ride. The informant then turns the kind-hearted driver in for using private car to make money by giving rides to strangers. This is illegal because only licensed taxi drivers can do this. 2nd incident was Zhangzhou government official Lu Jun made the above comment when interviewed by China national Radio reporter which triggered public outrage. Bold statement made him “the official who dares the most to speak the truth during 2009”]
This time the Minghang district officials’ truth relay came to Huacao town.
Deputy Mayor of the town Gao Baojing said: You fight against the government, it certainly violated the law, then it must surely have to be dealt with.
In addition, the construction companies of the land was charged by the Government 1.3 million yuan per mu (1 mu = 6.67 acres), the total cost of demolition of the Hongqiao Airport area is up to 14.8 billion yuan. But the government only compensated the farmers 380,000 yuan per mu. So why does the difference in price go to the local government?
Minhang district Shanghai Construction Committee director of transportation, the headquarters of relocation top leader Wu Zhongqiuan had a fresh view. He thinks that Minhang Hongqiao hub of the land‘s value increased after and because of the government reconstruction and extension, so the added value of the land should not be obtained by the people.
Do you think Minhang District is very hateful? Did you wonder why these officials still have such stable positions? If you think this way, you are too tender (naïve) because they are the effective go-getters of the Shanghai Municipal Government. This is like you are a company manager, you want to buy a printer which has a market price of 1,000, so you give your employee 1,000 yuan. In the end your employee only spends 300 and forcefully buys this printer and gives you a receipt for 1,000. He also gives your 400, keeps 300 for himself. Not only that, you do not even have to be responsible for his meals, because when he is hungry he will go fishing on his own. The only problem is that the employee crushes a few dogs to death when driving in a hurry, resulting in your office often have a group of dogs outside barking at you. Say, would you fire that employee? Of course not, you can only think, these dogs are really annoying.
Yes, the unfortunate ones are those dogs, but we are that group of dogs.
See orignial article at Han Han's blog:
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4701280b0100g03k.html
Tuesday 24 November 2009
Monday 2 November 2009
Han Han: China's Literary Bad Boy
From Time Magazine
By Simon Elegant
On a recent afternoon at the Shanghai Tianma Circuit race-car track, the 1,000-strong crowd was treated to the sight of one of the competitors — still dressed in his driver's jumpsuit — walking slowly past the officials' stand, one arm held aloft with the middle finger of his hand extended. "My only regret," he later wrote on his blog, "is that I couldn't show both fingers at the same time because I happened to be having a phone conversation."
The driver was 26-year-old Han Han: best-selling novelist, champion amateur race-car driver, wildly popular blogger and, as his self-consciously provocative antics at the track underlined, China's most media-savvy celebrity rebel. Since 2000, when he burst onto China's literary scene at the age of 17 with his first best seller, Triple Gate, Han has shrewdly mined a seam of youthful resentment and anomie through his stories of anguished characters in their late teens and early 20s. One of China's top-earning authors, he is widely seen as a torchbearer for the generation born after the beginning of the country's opening to the outside world, a group the Chinese call the "post-'80s generation": apolitical, money- and status-obsessed children of the country's explosive economic boom. Even China's most notorious anti-Establishment figure, 52-year-old artist and activist Ai Weiwei, called Han "brave, clear-minded, dynamic and humorous" and predicted that he would be the "gravedigger" for the older generation of writers and artists.
(See the top 100 novels of all time.)
Han, a high school dropout, has built a franchise by tweaking his elders, once stating, "No matter how rude and immature they are, how unskillfully they write, the future literary world belongs to the post-'80s generation. They must be more arrogant. A writer must be arrogant." Yet despite his youthful bravado, Han, who has published 14 books and anthologies, generally stays away from sensitive issues such as democracy and human rights. His calculated rebelliousness, says Lydia Liu, a professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, exemplifies the unspoken compact his generation has forged with the ruling Communist Party: Leave us alone to have fun and we won't challenge your right to run the country. "He is known for being a sharp critic of the government and the Establishment but he isn't really," says Liu. Instead, she says, Han is a willing participant in a process that channels the disaffected energy of youth into consumerism. "The language in his novels and the narrative strategies are very easy to read," says Liu. "Basically it's all the same book."
In person, Han, the son of an editor of a small Shanghai newspaper, is carefully groomed in an epicene, metrosexual way that is unusual among Chinese males of his age. Affable if slightly wary, he is an old hand at interviews, deftly batting away questions that don't suit him, including most concerning the current state of Chinese literature and his place in it. "It's stupid to try to evaluate one's own works," he says, lacing his answer with frequent expletives. "If you are too humble, people won't take you seriously; and if you think too highly of yourself, it's not good for you either." As for other writers, Han flaps a manicured hand: "I don't do this kind of comparison. And frankly, I don't think your readers will be interested in Chinese literature at all." Nor is he. "I don't read fiction now," he says. "All I read are magazines. I stopped reading books seven to eight years ago. I think I've read enough."
If Han seems flippantly dismissive on the subject of fiction, social and political issues draw a more serious response. Asked whether China will ever have a democratic system of government, Han becomes pensive: "I can accept the fact that there's no real democracy or multiparty system in this country in the foreseeable future. There are more urgent and realistic issues, such as press and cultural freedom. At least those issues are not hopeless. And I prefer doing things that are not hopeless."
Certainly, his fellow Netizens feel that his efforts are by no means hopeless. Han's blog, which has registered well over 200 million hits since it was started in 2006, making him one of the most popular bloggers on the planet, covers everything from the minutiae of the amateur racing world to diatribes about the hot social issue of the day on the Internet. "Neither fame nor wealth have changed his honesty or the sharpness of his criticism," says novelist Zhang Yueran of Han. "To me he's like the little boy in The Emperor's New Clothes, whose provocative attitude doesn't allow people to be self-satisfied."
At a time when China's authorities appear to be continually increasing censorship of the Internet, it's remarkable that Han has not been muzzled. But there apparently are limits even for rebels with no particular cause. Han's latest project is a literary magazine that remains nameless following a rejection by the government of Han's proposed title, Renaissance of Art and Literature. Asked why the title was rejected, he blurts an expletive and launches into a characteristic rant: "Oftentimes [the authorities] are just messed up in the head. No one knows what they are thinking." Least of all Han. "Lots of people ask me how I strike a balance in my writing and not annoy the authorities," he says. "The answer is, I don't know." Perhaps not, but this ignorance is bliss — for it allows Han to remain popular both with China's hundreds of millions of readers and the authorities who would control what they read.
By Simon Elegant
On a recent afternoon at the Shanghai Tianma Circuit race-car track, the 1,000-strong crowd was treated to the sight of one of the competitors — still dressed in his driver's jumpsuit — walking slowly past the officials' stand, one arm held aloft with the middle finger of his hand extended. "My only regret," he later wrote on his blog, "is that I couldn't show both fingers at the same time because I happened to be having a phone conversation."
The driver was 26-year-old Han Han: best-selling novelist, champion amateur race-car driver, wildly popular blogger and, as his self-consciously provocative antics at the track underlined, China's most media-savvy celebrity rebel. Since 2000, when he burst onto China's literary scene at the age of 17 with his first best seller, Triple Gate, Han has shrewdly mined a seam of youthful resentment and anomie through his stories of anguished characters in their late teens and early 20s. One of China's top-earning authors, he is widely seen as a torchbearer for the generation born after the beginning of the country's opening to the outside world, a group the Chinese call the "post-'80s generation": apolitical, money- and status-obsessed children of the country's explosive economic boom. Even China's most notorious anti-Establishment figure, 52-year-old artist and activist Ai Weiwei, called Han "brave, clear-minded, dynamic and humorous" and predicted that he would be the "gravedigger" for the older generation of writers and artists.
(See the top 100 novels of all time.)
Han, a high school dropout, has built a franchise by tweaking his elders, once stating, "No matter how rude and immature they are, how unskillfully they write, the future literary world belongs to the post-'80s generation. They must be more arrogant. A writer must be arrogant." Yet despite his youthful bravado, Han, who has published 14 books and anthologies, generally stays away from sensitive issues such as democracy and human rights. His calculated rebelliousness, says Lydia Liu, a professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, exemplifies the unspoken compact his generation has forged with the ruling Communist Party: Leave us alone to have fun and we won't challenge your right to run the country. "He is known for being a sharp critic of the government and the Establishment but he isn't really," says Liu. Instead, she says, Han is a willing participant in a process that channels the disaffected energy of youth into consumerism. "The language in his novels and the narrative strategies are very easy to read," says Liu. "Basically it's all the same book."
In person, Han, the son of an editor of a small Shanghai newspaper, is carefully groomed in an epicene, metrosexual way that is unusual among Chinese males of his age. Affable if slightly wary, he is an old hand at interviews, deftly batting away questions that don't suit him, including most concerning the current state of Chinese literature and his place in it. "It's stupid to try to evaluate one's own works," he says, lacing his answer with frequent expletives. "If you are too humble, people won't take you seriously; and if you think too highly of yourself, it's not good for you either." As for other writers, Han flaps a manicured hand: "I don't do this kind of comparison. And frankly, I don't think your readers will be interested in Chinese literature at all." Nor is he. "I don't read fiction now," he says. "All I read are magazines. I stopped reading books seven to eight years ago. I think I've read enough."
If Han seems flippantly dismissive on the subject of fiction, social and political issues draw a more serious response. Asked whether China will ever have a democratic system of government, Han becomes pensive: "I can accept the fact that there's no real democracy or multiparty system in this country in the foreseeable future. There are more urgent and realistic issues, such as press and cultural freedom. At least those issues are not hopeless. And I prefer doing things that are not hopeless."
Certainly, his fellow Netizens feel that his efforts are by no means hopeless. Han's blog, which has registered well over 200 million hits since it was started in 2006, making him one of the most popular bloggers on the planet, covers everything from the minutiae of the amateur racing world to diatribes about the hot social issue of the day on the Internet. "Neither fame nor wealth have changed his honesty or the sharpness of his criticism," says novelist Zhang Yueran of Han. "To me he's like the little boy in The Emperor's New Clothes, whose provocative attitude doesn't allow people to be self-satisfied."
At a time when China's authorities appear to be continually increasing censorship of the Internet, it's remarkable that Han has not been muzzled. But there apparently are limits even for rebels with no particular cause. Han's latest project is a literary magazine that remains nameless following a rejection by the government of Han's proposed title, Renaissance of Art and Literature. Asked why the title was rejected, he blurts an expletive and launches into a characteristic rant: "Oftentimes [the authorities] are just messed up in the head. No one knows what they are thinking." Least of all Han. "Lots of people ask me how I strike a balance in my writing and not annoy the authorities," he says. "The answer is, I don't know." Perhaps not, but this ignorance is bliss — for it allows Han to remain popular both with China's hundreds of millions of readers and the authorities who would control what they read.
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