Start with the passionate red
Ended with the cold blue
I am wondering what color the story will be in the next season
Start with the passionate red
Ended with the cold blue
I am wondering what color the story will be in the next season
The winds of tech consumerism are changing course. More specifically, they’re heading east. According to the latest Q3 figures from Strategy Analytics, China is now the world’s largest smartphone market by volume, overtaking the US for the first time. According to the research firm, smartphone shipments in China reached a record high of 23.9 million units during the third quarter of this year, up 58 percent from Q2. Compare that with the US, which saw shipments decline by seven percent over the quarter, to 23.3 million units. The Boston-based firm attributed much of China’s growth to a spike in cheaper, Android-based handsets from companies like ZTE, as well as a flowering of subsidized higher-end models, like the iPhone. Nokia leads the way within the People’s Republic, accounting for 28 percent of all quarterly shipments, followed by Samsung, with an 18 percent share. Find more quotes and charts in the press release after the break, or hit up the source link below for the full report. Show full PR text Strategy Analytics: China Overtakes United States as World’s Largest Smartphone Market in Q3 2011 BOSTON, Nov 23, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) — According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, smartphone shipments reached a record 24 million units in China during the third quarter of 2011. Smartphone shipments reached just 23 million units in the United States. China has overtaken the United States for the first time to become the world’s largest smartphone market by volume. Linda Sui, Analyst at Strategy Analytics, said, “Smartphone shipments grew 58 percent sequentially to reach a record 23.9 million units in China during Q3 2011. In contrast, smartphone shipments fell 7 percent sequentially to reach 23.3 million units in the United States. China has overtaken the United States for the first time to become the world’s largest smartphone market by volume.” Tom Kang, Director at Strategy Analytics, added, “China’s rapid growth has been driven by an increasing availability of smartphones in retail channels, aggressive subsidizing by operators of high-end models like the Apple iPhone, and an emerging wave of low-cost Android models from local Chinese brands such as ZTE. Nokia currently leads China’s smartphone market with 28 percent share, while HTC heads the United States smartphone market with 24 percent share.” Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, added, “The United States remains the world’s largest smartphone market by revenue, but China has overtaken the United States in terms of volume. China is now at the forefront of the worldwide mobile computing boom. China has become a large and growing smartphone market that no hardware vendor, component maker or content developer can afford to ignore.”

The origins of Chinese erotica and pornography can be traced way back into antiquity. Though remnants have been found dating from as early as the 1st century, production of erotic artwork appears to have properly flourished around the 10th century and reached its peak during the late Ming Dynasty (17th century).
Ancient Chinese erotica drew its influences from both Daoist religious practices and the courtesan culture that was developing in the imperial courts. The spread and increases in production of erotic works coincided with the rise of the mercantile middle classes particularly in cities such as Suzhou, Hangzhou and Guangzhou. Pornographic artworks produced during the Ming dynasty were called ‘spring palace paintings’ (春宫画, chungong hua) a reference to the presumed debauchery that occurred behind the walls of the Forbidden City.
Much fiction, erotic and otherwise, during the Ming and Qing dynasties focused around the imagined practices of the imperial court. Whilst we can’t be sure how much truth there is to these works, its safe to say that the Emperors weren’t playing mahjong with their thousands of concubines. Chungong hua are similar in style to the Japanese shunga tradition of art of the same period. The paintings depict an incredible diversity of sexual practices, including threesomes; lesbianism; homosexuality; oral and anal sex, and orgies; enough to make the most hardened Communist Party censor blush. Some collections of artwork, termed ‘pillow books’ were given to newly married couples as instruction guides, but the main purpose of the artwork does appear to have been to titillate.
Towards the end of the Ming Dynasty, the erotic classic The Plum in the Golden Vase (金瓶梅, Jin Ping Mei) was published. Written under a pseudonym, the book is a naturalistic masterpiece composed in the vernacular language. It is sometimes considered to be the ‘fifth’ of the Four Great Classical Novels (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West, Dream of the Red Chamber). Jin Ping Mei was the first full-length Chinese work to depict explicit sex scenes and despite being acclaimed as “a landmark in the development of the narrative art form” it has often been suppressed as pornography in China. Within the Middle Kingdom has a scandalous notoriety akin to Lady Chatterley’s Lover in Britain.
The novel focuses on the downfall of a great household and its patriarch who, over the course of the story, has nineteen sexual partners encompassing a wide range of acts and a surprising number of sex toys. Jin Ping Mei predicated a proliferation of Ming-era Chinese erotica from lowbrow bawdy scripts designed to scandalize and titillate to works of great literature such as The Embroidered Couch (termed “the most licentious and inflaming book of its age” by contemporary translator Lenny Hu.
Much erotica produced during this period focused itself on the practice of foot binding. Bound and small feet were considered to be especially erotic, analogous to the obsession with big breasts in the West. Rich husbands would even put their wife’s shoes on display to show off to the world how minute their loved ones’ feet were. One especially notorious work that came from this boom-period of Chinese erotica was the Carnal Prayer Mat (肉蒲團, rouputuan) an erotic novel written by Qing dynasty author Li Yu. The Carnal Prayer Mat was illustrated in a style similar to the earlier chungong hua paintings and features an outrageous plot in which the main character seeks to seduce a woman away from her well-endowed husband and so undergoes surgery to replace his penis with that of a dog. Each chapter ends with a short critique of the action, ostensibly by a reviewer but presumably written by the author himself, enhancing the tongue in cheek humour of the novel.
But The Carnal Prayer Mat was published at a time when the ruling elite’s attitudes to sex and pornography were beginning to change. Whilst authors and artists during the Ming Dynasty had prospered under relatively liberal policies promoting science and the arts, the Qing Dynasty ushered in a conservative attitudes to sex and eroticism inspired both by Christian missionaries from the West and a resurgent Confucian movement.
This eventually resulted in the banning and even destruction of many previously treasured works of art; indeed, the oldest and best-preserved copy of the Carnal Prayer Mat only survives by dint of having been taken to Japan (it currently resides in Tokyo University).
A previously thriving genre of painting and literature was all but stamped out in the 17th and 18th centuries. Following the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and the establishment of the first republic, and the country’s traumatic experience during the world wars, which finally resulted in the emergence of the People’s Republic of China, attitudes remained conservative. Today the ruling Communist Party hierarchy continues to take a hard line on issues relating to sex and erotica.
However, whilst government rhetoric stridently opposes them, both prostitutes and pornography remain easy to come by in modern China. Despite regular crackdowns and highly publicized raids on brothels, the sex industry thrives, with one 2005-study suggesting that Beijing alone has over 200,000 prostitutes. Pornography too has proven a thorn in the government’s side, particularly since the advent of the internet. Today China has the most internet users of any country in the world.
Despite the worlds most sophisticated monitoring and filtering software arrayed against them, tech savvy Chinese jump the Great Firewall with ease. For those less computer literate, pirated porn DVDs and VCDs are easy to buy if rarely on display. Porn is big business on the black market. In one 2008 bust in Shanghai authorities confiscated over 8,000 DVDs on their way from Guangdong. Internet crackdowns are frequent; the most recent was launched in 2009, with over 60,000 websites confiscated and shutdown by the authorities. Pornographic materials remain easy to acquire however, through p2p services, torrent sites and numerous websites that have escaped the censors. The futility of the authorities’ attempts to police this area was illustrated by the Edison Chen scandal that broke in early 2008.
A number of photos depicting Chen, a Canadian-Chinese film star, and several Hong Kong and Chinese actresses and musicians engaging in sexual activities and posing naked, were posted on a Hong Kong forum. The images spread almost instantaneously around the Hong Kong internet community and quickly found their way onto foreign and mainland Chinese websites.
For several weeks major sites such as Baidu turned a blind eye, and they were widely viewed all over China. When a belated crackdown began, officials declared that sharing the photos or posting them online could be punishable by up to 15 days detention. A number of people were arrested in Shenzhen on suspicion of producing CDs of the images, which had apparently been selling “like hotcakes”. Baidu, which had made it particularly easy to find the photos thanks to its image-search function, was instructed to make a public apology by the Beijing Internet Self-Discipline Organization. However, once the dust had settled over the scandal and the authorities attention turned elsewhere the photos remained, and are still viewable on the Chinese internet.
Whilst the Edison Chen incident had more in common with a traditional tabloid scandal than pure pornography, it demonstrates Beijing’s limits in suppressing materials when there is high demand. The spread of VCDs and DVDs during the Chen scandal may also give us a glimpse as to how illegal pirated pornography was spread before the advent of the internet. Unfortunately, statistics on the spread of pre-internet pornography are impossible to come by as the Chinese government does not publish them and researchers of pornography in China have too drawn a blank. It is safe to assume however that the practice was similar to the under-the-table sales of DVDs and videos still taking place today.
It remains difficult to gather statistics even on modern porn usage in China though some idea can be gleaned from apocryphal sources. During a call for tougher measures against the spread of erotic materials, education authorities stated that over 50% of under-18s had visited porn sites. Several porn stars have also become minor-celebrities in the China. The so called ‘Kappa Girl’ shot to fame after a video surfaced on micro-blogs of the Kappa employee having sex in a hotel room. Once a ‘human flesh search engine’ had named the girl, she took to her blog offering herself for hire as a model, rates starting at 20,000 RMB. She was later detained by Shanghai Police.
One porn star, who has managed to both find fame and stay out of trouble with the authorities, is Japanese AV Idol (porn star) Sora Aoi. Famous as the baby-faced, large breasted star of such films as Illegal Tits Violation 14 and Sexy Butt Climax 2004, Ms. Aoi is very popular in mainland China where she is currently attempting to branch out into mainstream stardom. Internet searches for her Chinese name return over 41 million hits, more even than Chinese NBA star Yao Ming. Ms. Aoi initially drew the ire of the authorities when the discovery of her Twitter handle by Chinese fans had netizens flocking to join the banned site, leap frogging the Great Firewall in the process, to leave Ms. Aoi messages in Mandarin and broken English and Japanese.
In late 2010 Ms. Aoi joined the Twitter-like Sina Weibo and quickly became the most popular micro-blogger in China, with over 2.8 million followers. She has proven so popular that at an appearance in Jiangxi province she was forced to flee the stage after just three minutes, such was the chaos caused by fans rushing towards the AV Idol.
Far from getting in trouble with the authorities, one police station in Dalian was discovered by netizens to have a Weibo account that solely followed Ms. Aoi’s updates. Officials from the station quickly claimed that the account had been hacked and that they would issue complaints with Weibo’s parent company Sina.com. (See also Adult video star Aoi Sola writes to China fans on blog and AV actress entices Chinese netizens to go on Twitter.)
Representatives for Ms. Aoi declined an invitation to comment on this story.
It remains unclear what the future holds for Chinese pornography users. Despite the tide of public opinion turning against the current approach: a recent Sina poll showed that only 2% of respondents supported the current prohibition; as well as a long history of Chinese erotic art and literature, the authorities haven’t shifted from their hardline stance against pornography. PRC officials have maintained an anti-pornography rhetoric since the country’s founding and, with internet regulation tighter than ever following the Arab Spring; China’s porn viewers are going to have to continue slipping by the censors for their gratification.
You can find more of James Griffiths’ writing at his blog; see also his piece on Danwei People’s Pornography – An interview with Katrien Jacobs.
What would Mao say? What would Mao say? By Bai Mo 经济观察报E.O/Worldcrunch BEIJING - On a social network website, a beautiful model, pictured draped over a car, posted a message: “Would anybody out there be so kind to invite me for a late dinner? I’d like it to be delivered to my room.” She left the name of the hotel and the floor she was staying on, the seventh. An hour later, the same website was blue with curses. Quite a few men had made a trip to the hotel, just to find out that it was a building with only five floors. Plots like this, woven with desire, seduction and disappointment are repeated everyday on this website. Some 120,000 people are regular viewers of the site. The majority are males between the ages of 20 and 40 who live in Beijing. New messages are posted constantly with ever changing patterns in order to catch the attention of women. Lies, drama, naked desire are in the language. In essence, they are plainly asking for what in the West is called a “one-night stand”. Unlike the sex trade hidden in dark corners of the city, in the virtual world and with a virtual identity, a nation’s burning, unhindered desire is exposed. Weekends and business-led festivals magnify the infinite loneliness of urban men and women. Yet the virtual world’s social rules are as cruel as that of the real world. It is said that only the “tall, the handsome, the rich” will attract the opposite sex. While the West was experiencing a “sexual revolution” in the 1960s, China was going through the Cultural Revolution, a violent, repressive attempt to eradicate “capitalist elements” from Chinese society. During the Cultural Revolution, sexual instincts were transmuted into idolatry, but they have now been awoken by the stimulation of materialism. After years of being closed up, the Chinese suddenly realized that there are a lot of wonderful things they have yet to enjoy. Rather than loving the leader, one might as well just love oneself. Like a child who has been suppressed for too long, in today’s China, sexual energy spews out and manifests in “symptoms of hysteria,” as Thomas W. Laqueur, the American sexologist and author of “Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation” would describe it. Chinese sexologist Li Yinhe puts it this way: “The desire for sex is like the craving for food, the more it’s suppressed the stronger it gets.” China’s relatively rapid economic rise has resulted in a polarization of wealth among its people. Within the last two decades, the concentration of social resources has deepened. Only a small number of people possess power, money and prestige. The sex ratio difference does not help either. Currently in China, the birth ratio between boys and girls is 120:100. In fifteen years time, the male/female imbalance will leave tens of millions of men without any prospect of finding a wife. “The marriage market is a female market,” says Li Yinhe. “Sexual equality is particularly related to the social status, the economic and social resources one possesses… It’s certainly a big temptation if a woman can change her living conditions and social status through sex, or marriage”. No wonder, some say. Although the American television series “Sex and the City” was popular in both America and China, the American female audience was most interested in the craving for sex, while the Chinese women were more attracted to the lifestyle of well-off women. A Chinese matchmaker network hongniang.com confirmed the situation. In a survey posted on Nov. 11, the non-official Chinese “Singles’ Day,” shows that 43% of young people regard the economic situation and family background as their primary concern when assessing a potential lover, instead of the person’s qualities. Modern Chinese marriages are suffering and the divorce rate has skyrocketed in the cities. “When a society’s value system is distorted and people worship only money, it is scary,” Li sighs. “But the main cause of the psychological and sexual changes lies ultimately in the extremely unequal distribution of wealth.” Sex is the most neglected of all social issues Paradoxically, despite the rising anxiety and sense of emptiness among urban men and women, sex is a topic rarely discussed by academics, the public or even the media. “In comparison with poverty, war, disease, racism and starvation, sex is regarded as a trivial subject,” the feminist Gayle Rubin, has pointed out. It’s demonstrated in the collective, desperate searching for a one night stand. Chinese women still feel severely oppressed by the traditional view that women should not enjoy sex, and should renounce this activity if they become a widow. Li Yinhe quotes a statistic that 26% of Chinese women have never experienced an orgasm, a figure which stands around 10% in other parts of the world. So does this mean that we are poised for an extreme and opposite reaction to the virulent sexual oppression of the Cultural Revolution? Li Yinhe says no. Change has happened slowly. The proof is that the average number of sexual partners in China is 1.3 compared to 16 in other parts of the world. In a recent case, a man who went to an orgy in Nanjing was sentenced to three and a half years of jail time. Hypocrisy is everywhere. Pornography is rife on the Internet, but being caught watching it is harshly punished. When corrupt officials are arrested for embezzlement and fraud, it usual turns out they’ve had numerous mistresses. The official is not punished for his sexual exploits, but the lonely worker satisfying his fantasies with online porn is a criminal. Until recently it was still possible to be shot for opening a sex shop or running a porn site. In the West, feminists are usually opposed to pornography, which they say turns women into objects. In China, no such subtlety is necessary: pornography is condemned on moral grounds, that’s all. For Li Yinhe, pornographic films and sex toys are the fruit of people’s imagination and are there to stimulate desire. She sees no harm in them as they are objects not actions. For her the Chinese constitution guarantees the freedom of expression and publication, and that includes the contents of a sex shop. In a good society, not only are you satisfied with your food, but you are also satisfied with your sex life. This is the sign of an advanced society. It is also classical Confucianism. The Communist Party of China has resolved the problem of providing food; now is the time to let that other human desire be fulfilled.
By白墨

这个网名叫wow的年轻人,凌晨两点开车从北京顺义的家里出发,沿途买了烤串和啤酒,朝着西四环的万寿路开去。他的目的地是那里的一家酒店。不久之 前,在一个以音乐、电影和书为媒介的社交网站的小组里,一名性感漂亮的女车模发了一个帖子:“有人请夜宵吗?最好是送到房间来!”她留下了酒店名称和楼 层。这深夜的赤裸裸的召唤,引起了一群未眠的年轻人的骚动,包括wow在内的几位“壮士”出发了。
一个小时之后,网上又起了谩骂声。有人到那家酒店找了半个小时,发现酒店只有五层。有人“奇迹般”地找到了七楼,可是不知道具体房间号。wow也加入了谩骂的队伍。直到这时,“壮士们”才意识到,他们以为天上掉馅饼,其实只是一个女孩半夜无聊耍人的把戏而已。
wow谩骂着开车离开了酒店。他先是到了海淀,然后沿着四环开到了亚运村,牡丹园。他不断发着新帖子,唤人出来吃夜宵,或者只是聊聊都可以。然而一路开,开到了天亮,他依然孤独一人,绕着北京城转了一圈,最后苦闷地回到了家中。
凌晨四点半,wow一整夜漫游的最后一站是他家小区楼下的早餐店。他在这里发了最后一个帖子:店里就我一个客人,夫妇俩都在忙着包包子,面前一屉热 气腾腾的小笼包,我弄了一小碟醋,等大姐给我煮的馄饨,“哎呦,真香,这包子怎么这么好吃啊!”我这样发出赞叹,一方面是闲得蛋疼,没话找话;另一方面, 我想让他俩高兴高兴,毕竟有人夸他们的包子好吃,他们打心里还是高兴的。都不容易!都挺辛苦!
这样大同小异的由欲望、挑逗和失望串联的剧情,在这个以吃喝玩乐为名的小组里每天都在上演。这个小组有12万多人,大多生活在北京,年龄从七零后覆 盖到九零后。每时每刻都有人在发新帖子,变着花样引起女性关注,实质上都是在赤裸裸地约“一夜情”。然而回复总是寥寥无几,很快帖子就沉下去了,新的帖子 又发起来。但是这群数目庞大的年轻人很少有人在这里寻找到他们的一夜情伴侣。虚拟社会的规则和现实社会一样残酷——只有“高帅富”的男人才能吸引异性的眼 球。
很多时候,这里甚至形成了鲜明的性别对立,或者隐性的“性别战争”。大多数女性因忍受不了男性不断地骚扰而破口大骂,那些言语犀利的女性因此成了这 里的明星,泼皮无赖的男人则被其他人“膜拜”。谎言、无病呻吟、赤裸裸的性言语充斥在这里。而周末和节日前,是这个小组以及这个网站很多类似小组的高潮 期。欲望和骚动疯狂涌起,形单的影子被无限拉长,都市男女的孤独在商业引导的节日里被放大到无限。与北京城里无数隐秘性交易的角落相比,社交网站的虚拟身 份让性饥渴的人们在这里直白而疯狂。
但是,这些年轻人缺失和渴望的,真的只是性,一夜性吗?
都市男女的孤独和性缺失,绝不只是北京这种匆忙、疲惫、压力巨大的城市所独有的,但在都市一系列社会问题中,它可能是最被忽略的问题之一。女权主义 学者盖尔·鲁宾(Gayle Rubin)曾说过,“性也许被视为一个无足轻重的主题,与更加危急的贫穷、战争、疾病、种族主义、饥荒和核毁灭问题相比,它显得并不重要。但是,正是在 这些问题出现的时候,当我们的生活有可能遇到无法想象的灭顶之灾时,人们对性问题的疯狂有可能变得十分危险。”英国社会学者杰佛瑞·威克斯 (Jeffrey Weeks)也在他的《20世纪的性理论和性观念》一书里写道:“性活动已经变成一个日益重要的政治问题和道德问题,浓缩了若干关键性的问题,……近年 来,关于这些问题的争论已经变得越来越激烈,越来越尖锐,因为有关性问题的争论就是我们希望生活在怎样的社会形式中的争论。”
但关于性的争论和思考在今天的中国几乎是一片空白(或者任何争论最后都演变成没有结论和意义的口水仗)。对于每天都有匪夷所思的死亡和不幸上演的当代中国,性问题尤其会被一脚踢开。对于我们“希望生活在什么样的社会形式中”的思考,在学者、媒体与大众的视线之外。
而且,在我看到的为数不多的中国媒体的报道里,关于性话题的似乎都是一派乐观景象。《中国新闻周刊》几年前在一篇名为“中国的第三次性革命”的文章 里写道:“新世纪的中国面临着一场新的性革命。所有性的资源都围绕四个字配置:自我,快乐。透过这次性革命,人们看到的是社会的宽容、技术的进步、女性观 念的更新。最后,性仅仅成为性。”
然而,“性如果只是成为性”,自我和快乐在今天的中国能很好地实现的话,在网络上,在现实中,孤独和焦灼的人群也许不会那么庞大。
十年前出版的一本名为《中国底层访谈录》的书里,作者写道:“中国民众在文化大革命中,都将自己的性本能转移到偶像崇拜上,这是1949年以来的极 端理想主义的顶峰……而改革开放以来,民众的道德水准在物欲的刺激下,直线下滑到动物现实主义,似乎每个人都醒悟了,原来世上还有这么多好东西没有享受。 爱领袖不如爱自己,这也是文革反思结论之一。”中国人的性从那以后,也开始从“计划经济的产物”转移到“市场经济”的轨道上。中国开始变成托马斯·拉科尔 (Thomas W. Laqueur)在《孤独的性:手淫文化史》里描写的那样,“那种认为性及性乐趣的终极目的是生育的旧观念已经不再被人们所遵从”。随后,中国像个被压抑 过久的孩子,“性能量喷涌出来,以歇斯底里的症状表现出来。”
拉科尔的预言击中了今天的中国,我们开始“排斥社会所认可的恰当的性行为、排斥了恰当的社会交往,也排斥了社会秩序本身”。
“西方世界在不同的时代有不同的性价值观,但是高度概括起来却只有两大家:反性的价值观与褒性的价值观。”著名社会学家李银河在《性爱二十讲》开篇 提到,西方几千年的性的观念转变,在中国只进行了十几年。在文革中经历了苦难与饥饿的一代,在80年代短暂的精神疗养之后,迅速地在90年代开始遵从自 我,对食物的饥饿感与性的压抑同时喷涌出来,像李银河提到的,“旧道德的错误在于对性的过分压制,而性的欲望和饮食的欲望一样,会因禁止而极大地增加,越 是压制就越是强烈。”
在性开放和自由的90年代,“暂时的缓解”在中国演变成了“狂欢”,社会的离婚率开始飙升。我们提到的那群孤独的年轻人,他们的成长环境也正是从这 时候开始变得糟糕。九十年代,他们正在青春期,失去父亲或母亲的关爱,独生子女的家庭,压抑的内心,让他们在孤独中成长,对关爱有着病态的需求。

随着中国二十多年财富的累积,今天我们“被宣布”进入了“富裕的社会”,同时也变成赫伯特·马尔库塞(Herbert Marcus)在《爱欲与文明》——该书被认为是西方20世纪60年代性革命的政治宣言——里描述的富裕社会的情景:社会自身要求人们“追求审美、渴望一 致”,恢复“天人合一”,充实心灵和赞颂“为创造而创造”……这些期望被转变成了由政府和大企业资助的、受人操纵的文化活动,成了它们向群众心灵延伸的执 政之臂。
在这看不见的“执政之臂”下,所有人“遵循着商业和利润的指导……生命本能的爱欲能量在唯利是图的富裕社会的非人条件下是不可能获得自由的。一方面,必须发展把生命作为自在目的的非经济需要;另一方面又必须坚持维持生命的需要”。
正是在这样的环境中,这群年轻人离开压抑的家庭和学校后,梦想朝气蓬勃地进入社会,实现他们的理想或者仅仅是简单生活时,却发现自己被商业和政治操 控。社会资源正是在90年代开始分化的,随后二十年里,分化不断深化,社会资源高度集中,流向一小部分人——他们因为权力而拥有财富,或者因为财富而拥有 声望。
这其中当然也包括性资源分配的两极分化。权力和财富彼此热爱并互相追逐,二者的结盟越来越紧密。在高压的城市生活中,毫无背景、孤身奋斗的年轻人,在体味孤独和艰难的同时,也体味着不确定性和安全感的缺失。
在今天的中国,财富成为所有人保护自己免受侮辱、轻视和损害的方式,“因为财富不仅给人以权力而且给人以声望。这种对财富的非理性的追求,在我们的 文化中非常流行,因此只有将我们的文化与其他的文化加以比较,我们才能认识到它不是一般的人类本能,无论它是以一种贪得无厌的本能的形式表现出来,还是以 一种生物驱力的升华形式表现出来。甚至在我们的文化中,一旦决定它的焦虑消失了或清除了,这种对财富的强迫性追求也会消失。”美国心理学者卡伦·荷妮 (Karen Horney)在她的心理学著作《我们时代的病态人格》里写道。
热播美剧《欲望都市》曾经风靡中国十年,那场媒体誉为的“性革命”也发生在这十年的中国。但上海作家小宝在一篇文章里一针见血地写道:《欲望都市》 引起的中国的性革命不过是场空谈,美国女人在《欲望都市》里看到的是性,是淫,中国女人在《欲望都市》里更多看到的是“银”——有钱女人的生活方式。他们 借该剧温习十年前大举登陆中国市场的欧美名牌知识,认识了十年前尚未高调入市的豪华商标。中国女生并没有像美国姐妹那么关注凯瑞们如何消费男生,她们更关 心的是凯瑞们如何消费。
正是在这种社会环境和文化氛围中,越来越多年轻漂亮的女性开始集中到那些拥有权力、声望与金钱的男性手中,这部分人大概占到中国男性的4%或者更 少。本报在郭美美事件中曾经刊登过一篇报道,其中最让我印象深刻的一个情景是,一个通过陪富二代、官商睡觉的年轻女孩,每个夜晚在她通过卖身买到的大房子 里,孤零零的,眼睛望着窗外的夜空,失眠到天亮。
与此同时,那些依靠自己的智慧与勤奋在事业和生活上取得独立,却没有收获婚姻的女性,则成为一个醒目且不断庞大的群体:剩女。当那个叫“wow”的 年轻人在北京城里彻夜孤身游荡,也许他的邻居里就有一位善良、美丽的姑娘和他一样孤独,彻夜未眠,渴望爱与被爱。然而,楼群的间隔,人与人的隔膜阻止了他 们的相识与相爱。
这与埃里希·弗罗姆(ErichFromm)在其名著《爱的艺术》一书中“当代西方社会的爱及其瓦解”章节里写到的西方世界及其相似:
“现代西方社会的人疏远自己,疏远他的同胞,疏远自然,异化了。他已转化成商品,感受到他生命力量的是作为在现行市场条件下能够获得最大利润的投 资。人的关系基本上是异化了的自动装置的关系,每个人都把他的安全建立在靠近群体的基础上,而在思想、感情或行为上没有什么区别。尽管每个人都尽可能靠近 其他人,但仍然感到十分孤独,充满了当人不可克服的分离感袭来时而经常会产生的深重的不安全感、焦虑感和内疚感。”
缺失的情感和性,最终损害了一些年轻人的内心和生活。这在当下飞速奔跑的中国,仿佛一个坏死的癌细胞,不可治愈。荷妮则在她的书里为我们提供了一个 理论上医治的希望:我们的情感和态度极大程度地由我们生活的环境塑造而成。这种环境既有文化的环境又有个体的环境,它们相互交织在一起,共同作用,相辅相 成。这也就意味着如果我们了解我们生存于其间的文化境况,我们就会具有更好的机会,更为深入地理解正常情感和态度的特殊性质。
按照荷妮在书里的定义,在膜拜美国华尔街对金钱的贪婪的同时,我们时代的许多人几乎都染上了与华尔街人共同的病:神经症——神经症患者的反应不同于 一般的人,这种人的生活方式与我们时代普遍认可的行为模式不同。荷妮举例:一个艺术家,一个星期只挣30美元,但是如果他工作勤奋一些,他本可以挣得更 多。可是他不这样做,偏偏喜欢过这种清贫的生活。于是我们就认为这个艺术家有神经症。“我们之所以要称这些人为神经症患者,其原因在于,我们大多数人熟 悉,并且只熟悉一种行为模式,这就是,争取在世界上出人头地,做人上人,挣比满足基本生存多得多的钱。”荷妮写道,“而在古希腊,超出自己需求之外的工作 态度被认为是极为下贱的。”
“在谈到我们时代的病态人格时,我不仅指的是存在着具有基本的共同特征的神经症患者,而且指的是,这些基本的共同性根本说来是由我们时代和文化中现存的困境所产生的。”荷妮在书里写道。

虽然中国没有美国式民主和自由,但面对的困境却比美国更甚。在我提及的那个小组里,很多年轻人摆脱了前辈中国人的性顾忌,对他们而言,“性关系不仅 是特别紧张的发泄,而且是人际交往的惟一途径。”这种人格和态度使他们“容易达到性兴奋,并强迫性地将任何异性看作是潜在的性伴侣”。
荷妮的文字应验了其在中国的现实存在,“他们感到不安全,没有保护,当他们没有性关系或者没有看到具有性关系的机会时,他们就表现得相当失常。他们 总是在自己与他人之间创造一种性爱的气氛。”这种性态度使这一代人陷入某种困扰:人际交往陷入障碍,不相信关爱和爱本身,身心忧烦和焦虑,面对社会和人保 持着高度的防御姿态以及不相信爱情。
当我在那个小组里总是看到20多岁的年轻女性说想知道爱情的感觉,而男性却被苦闷的性困扰时,总有一阵莫名的心酸、忧虑和疑惑,当所有年轻的男女都 该去享受爱情以及性的美好时候,是什么阻挡着他们获得这一切?是这个社会无孔不入、不被约束的权力,还是不义不均的财富?在这样的社会中,这些年轻而孤独 的灵魂会被带向何方?(注:文中wow为化名)
李银河:要性高潮,不要性骚扰
问=白墨 答=李银河
问:你一直提倡中国人享受“性自由”和“性快乐”,但当下的中国社会是不是存在性资源不平衡的问题?比如拥有大量金钱、权力与名望的一小部分人,他们占据着更多的性资源,他们享受着性自由与性快乐,而另外一部分没钱没权的人,他们正常的性需求却得不到满足?
答:应当说这种状况挺严重的。主要是在婚姻市场上,有甲女丁男的情况,男的往下找,女的往上找,郊区女孩子往大城市嫁,农村的往城市嫁,高山的往平 原嫁、往沿海嫁,最后剩下来的一批就是特别贫困地区的男性,他们很困难,成为剩下来的一批丁男。而且,目前中国出生婴儿的性别比例是120:100,也就 是说120个男孩出生的同时,只有100个女孩出生。一些人口专家预测,大概在2025年还是2030年的时候,中国男人的绝对量要多出几千万。而多出的 这几千万,大都会集中在农村,集中在最偏远的山区,就是那些最贫困的地方。
问:作为社会学家,你觉得这种性资源的不平衡会对我们的社会造成怎样的影响?
答:我觉得对于这些被剩下的男人来说,性也是一个民生问题。他们占有的经济资源本来就特别少,性的资源恐怕也会很少。其实不只在贫困地区,在大城市 的民工工棚里头也有这种情况,一对一的性伴侣很难实现,没有人愿意嫁给他们。尽管也剩下来一些女人,但都不愿意嫁给民工。这部分人正当的性需求得不到满 足,就会造成一些社会问题。
问:除了这些被剩下的男性,对女性来说,中国女性的性地位,到目前为止是否有实质性的改变?
答:男女的平等,在性上的平等和社会地位联系特别大,和他们掌握的经济资源、社会资源等等这些方面的关系是非常非常大的。其实性的平等,跟经济上的平等、社会地位的平等是连在一起的。咱们目前的社会很大程度上还是一个男权社会,所以女人在这方面的平等情况并不是太好。
问:当前我们社会中商业力量在各个领域的强大介入和影响,对年轻一代的性观念是否也有影响呢?
答:对。咱们现在的社会,两极分化非常厉害,有一批人消费能力很强,他有各种各样非常昂贵的消费品、奢侈品,这让一些女人通过交朋友,通过性,通过结婚,一下子改变自己的生活条件和社会地位,这东西对人肯定是一个诱惑。
所以在这种情况下,更应该多讲讲浪漫的爱情,让大家注重精神方面,别仅仅看物质方面,绝对不能偏废。当然,你让大家完全不考虑经济因素也不太可能, 不是有老话说贫贱夫妻百事哀吗?就是说经济条件一点没有也不行。但是不要偏废,不要光去讲物质,也要讲精神,要讲爱,要传播这种理念。你看所有的好莱坞电 影,不都是在传播爱吗?好莱坞电影很多主题不都是爱情么,一个富家女爱上穷小子了。所以,在谈性、爱情、婚姻时,绝对不能偏废,完全偏废到物质这一边,这 个社会就歪到一边去了,完全走向拜金主义了,那样的社会非常恐怖的。
问:这种社会的心理也是随着改革开放,特别是这20多年的社会演变而成的。从90年代到今天,整个社会,无论男性女性,年轻一代或者中年一代,对权力和金钱的追逐,这个过程中导致的民众心理、性观念的变化,到底是一个什么样的演变过程?
答:这个演变的过程很明显,就是两极分化,就是贫富分化,太明显了。我们的基尼系数在70年代的时候是0.2,是全世界最平均的国家。所以那个时候 的性和婚姻,没有人考虑物质因素,因为大家在物质上都一样,都是共同的贫穷。但是这二三十年最大的变化就是拉开了距离,基尼系数现在变成0.5了,早就超 过社会动荡的警戒线了,非常非常刺眼了,这种分化的状态已经太明显。所有的人,包括年轻女孩,你从年轻女孩想嫁什么人,就能看出来整个社会的状况。她肯定 要嫁给有钱的,这就是一个很明显的变化。我觉得最主要还是社会资源和经济水平两极分化造成的。
问:在两极分化的过程中,对于爱情和性的道德规范,包括社会的教育,是不是也是很薄弱?
答:爱情和道德是两回事。爱情是爱情,有好多爱情,比如两个单身的人发生爱情,一点道德问题也没有。但如果他去搞婚外恋,那就有道德问题了,所以要把爱情和道德分开来说。
问:我们单从道德的角度去讲,两极分化如果太严重的话,道德有一个正确的引导或者有一个正确的观念,是不是对这个问题有一些改善呢?
答:在性和婚姻这个问题上,我觉得必要的不是去强调道德,而是要强调精神的追求,追求精神,追求爱情。婚姻是出于爱情,性是出于爱情或是经济利益, 这是一对矛盾。道德在贫富分化之前和之后都是一样的,在任何时候,婚外性行为都是不允许的。因为你在婚姻中,你有对配偶的承诺,你要是老想去搞婚外恋,就 有道德问题了。你搞婚外恋就应该先离婚,这跟贫富分化没什么关系,在过去贫穷的时候,社会对待婚外恋的态度也是很严厉的。虽然单位没有行政处分,但是舆论 还是非常反对的,舆论对于婚外恋、婚外性关系是非常激烈反对的。所有调查都表明,绝大部分人,80%、90%的人都是反对婚外性行为的。
问:我在网上看到好多女孩感慨说,她们一方面不相信爱情,另一方面根本不知道爱情的感觉是什么样的,你怎么看待年轻女孩这种说法呢?
答:爱情这个东西肯定是存在的,为什么大家都不相信了呢?一个是他们没有机遇,好多人没有碰上他可以爱的人。浪漫爱情的发生也并不是那么常见的,好比说那种激情,就是真正能够引起你激情的那种爱情,这种情况也不是经常发生的,看你有没有运气了。
另外,我觉得年轻人有这种想法,恐怕跟教育也有关。一个人想要一个非常浪漫的爱情,他先得从文学,从小长大的教养里头,比如从世界名著、从各种各样 的电影这些媒介里知道真正的美好的爱情是什么。先有了这种期望,然后才要看有没有这个机遇。如果家庭、学校和社会都没有教给你什么是真正的爱情,你从小对 真正的爱情没有期望,那你要想获得一场真正的爱情,几率就更低了。一心在等待爱情的人都不一定能碰上。
所以这个东西也挺无奈的。但是我想一些比较优秀的人,他会更容易碰上爱情,比如他从小就相信爱情,期望着爱情,这个时候如果他各方面的素质也比较高,他就更可能碰上真正的爱情。
问:那日本、韩国包括台湾地区,他们经历的性解放是不是也应该与社会的革命或者思想的革命相匹配呢?
答:那是第二次妇女解放运动,发生在上世纪60、70年代的性革命,这里面最主要的内容就是妇女的性解放。世界各国都是男权社会,在所有涉性指标 里,都是男性超过女性。比如婚外恋,男性占60%、女性占20%;婚前性行为,男性也比女性多;不管是性伴侣数还是其他,在所有你能想出来的跟性有关的指 标上,都是男性超过女性。
但是自从60、70年代的性革命以后,数据开始改变,女性在所有指标上开始接近男性。这实际上就是女人的性解放。不管是婚外恋、婚前性行为,第一次发生性行为的时间等等,全都接近于男性的比例,这是性革命最主要的特征。中国现在的情况当然也是,中国也在发生着这种性革命。
问:您有没有观察过台湾地区的性观念和文化,他们的文化与我们同根,那么在性观念上有什么不同吗?
答:我觉得台湾做得比咱们好多了。他们在妇女游行的时候,提的口号是“我要性高潮,不要性骚扰”。这种口号在大陆现在还提不出来,什么性高潮,人都害羞死了,人家公开游行的时候,就打着这个标语。
他们最著名的妇女解放运动的先锋何春蕤教授,是台湾中央大学的。她写了一本《豪爽女人》,这书就是专门反对双重标准的:女人为什么不可以享受性?性 对于女人不是一件受害和吃亏的事,而是性愉悦。女人应当敢于正视自己的性需求和获得性快乐的权利。他们是这样一种观念。他们比咱们走得靠前。
问:你觉得大陆没有走到台湾社会那一步,原因或者说阻力是在哪里?
答:我觉得是两个方面。其实客观条件我们已经具备了:现在很多女人都有自己独立的经济收入,不用靠男的,也不用仅仅为男性服务了,自己完全有能力去追求性的快乐。
因此最主要的阻力来自两个方面:一个是社会的压力、社会的主流价值观、男权社会男尊女卑的意识形态和社会传统习俗。比如,妇道这个东西。守妇道本身 就是一个旧俗。过去的妇女不能抛头露面,大门不出、二门不迈、笑不露齿、三从四德一大套东西,其中就有反性,就是非常非常禁欲的。比如节妇烈女,死了丈夫 是不能再嫁的。全世界几乎没有一个国家政府表彰这个,但在中国的旧社会,你要是节妇烈女,政府给你造一个贞节牌坊。这种观念和习俗特别深入人心,比其他国 家都要深入人心。这导致中国妇女在追求性愉悦、性快乐的时候,承受着很大的社会压力。
另一方面的阻力,我觉得来自妇女自己的内心。漫长的旧社会和旧习俗,让中国妇女在内心已经把男权社会的这种价值观都内化了,内化成自己的习惯了,她 自己就不喜欢性,她自己都觉得没有理由。她觉得喜欢性太可耻了,所以好多女性觉得在夫妻生活里不能主动提性要求,都得被动地让男人来提。自己只要喜欢性愉 悦这个事就不合适。
我看到最近的一个全国统计,全国抽样调查,有26%的女人从来不知道性高潮的,这个比例太高了。全世界的平均数据大概在10%左右,也就是说有 10%的女人由于生理或者心理的种种原因,不知道性高潮,一辈子没有体验过性高潮。但是在中国,这样的女人比例高达26%,差太远了,中国女人的性欲被压 抑太厉害了。
问:你觉得中国到现在为止发生过真正的性革命吗?
答:是否发生了性革命,这是有一些指标可以去衡量的。我的判断是,中国的性革命已经在进行。它进行在哪里呢?从根上来说,就是性目的的改变,这是性革命的一项内容。
过去我们只是为了生孩子,只有生孩子一个理由是正当的性的理由。现在由于计划生育,每个家庭只能生一个到两个孩子,除非你生了两个孩子之后,不再发 生性行为,只要你还做,那你就已经进入性革命了。就是说性的目的已经改变了。不为生孩子的性行为,目的是什么呢?不就是为了快乐吗?如果说性的目的从生育 变成为了快乐,性革命就开始了。
另外还有很多指标,比如说婚前性行为大量增加。以前的婚前性行为是非常非常少的,比如80年代末我们做的调查,婚前性行为只有百分之十几,现在这个比例大大提高了。
问:我记得你提过好像是15%吧。
答:当然那个样本包括年轻人和老人,所有人都包括,现在这个数字,我看到世纪初的调查,大概已经达到30%、40%了,婚前性行为已经上升十几个百 分点了,那这十几个百分点都是年轻人做的呗。越年轻的年龄组,婚前性行为比例越高。计生委做过一些调查,在现在准备结婚的人群里头,婚前性行为已经达到六 七成了,这当然是革命了,这绝对是革命了。
所谓革命就是剧烈的变化,从几乎是零,进入15%,然后达到60%、70%,这实在是太大的革命。另外比如同性恋也浮出水面,这些都是性革命正在进行的指标。
问:文化大革命结束之前,中国一直在一个性压抑时期,压抑之后反弹的话,中国现在是处在在性方面特别疯狂的一个时期吗?
答:我觉得并没有,并没有说一下走到另一个极端去了,还是在逐步变化。中国人平均的性伴侣数,好像在全世界还是倒数,倒数第二。
问:你提到的数据好像是平均1.3个。
答:世界上最高的比例是人均16个性伴侣。咱们中国远远没有到那个极端。所以一点都不疯狂。比如有些人刚刚开始尝试换偶,南京的马尧海,不是还判了 三年半吗?这让全世界都很震惊的。成年人因为性游戏被判刑的例子,全世界也没有几个国家发生,太少见了。所以还是相当压抑的,我觉得在好多方面都压抑得非 常厉害。虽然你可以到处看到黄碟什么的,但是打击还是很厉害的,网上打击色情网站非常厉害。国外有调查,在全世界的所有网页上,涉性的网页占到70%到 80%。这就是全世界平均的色情消费水平。但在中国,对色情网页打压得还是非常厉害的,非常非常压抑。
问:政府在这件事情上究竟是什么心理?你看我们每查出一个贪官来,他们都会有很多二奶、情妇。那么政府打击色情消费的目的何在呢?
答:应该是出于道德考虑吧。也是一种惯性吧。一直扫黄,现在不能不扫了。但主要还是出于道德考虑,觉得性这个东西很肮脏。过去几十年都是反性、禁欲 的,因为这样被枪毙的有好多人。1984年的时候,有一次严打,枪毙了很多人。再比如网站做得大一点,或者卖淫秽品的,营业额达到百万、千万的,都要枪 毙,一直在这么做。
我最近写了一本《中国性政治史》,里面全都是这些案例。我觉得主要是出于一种道德整肃的目的,这个跟西方有些不一样。西方各国都没有淫秽品法,但有 一些个别的,比如像美国有一些女权主义者,从保护妇女的角度争取到一些地方的立法。他们的理由是,认为淫秽品这个东西,本身就是对妇女的一种暴力。但也只 是出于女权保护的角度,不是出于道德整肃的目的。
而中国的《淫秽品法》完全出于道德整肃的目的。中国政府认为要反性、禁欲,这是中国的历史环境和文化传统造成的,从道德整肃的角度要扫黄,一直延续 下来。这种观念和做法是完全错误的。所以我提议,应该取消《淫秽品法》,因为它和咱们的宪法是矛盾的。淫秽品本身其实不过是人类想象的产物,完全是言论, 根本不是行动。所以在一个宪法里,如果有言论自由、出版自由这样的条文,那《淫秽品法》就是不能成立的。
问:如果一个社会在性观念和性心理上是健康的、自由的,它对社会发展和进步,是不是也会有一个推动作用呢?
答:如果说人能够生活得好一些,它本身就是社会的进步。在一个比较落后的社会,人在物质上、精神上都非常压抑,吃不饱、穿不暖,这个社会就很落后, 一点可怜的性欲也得不到满足。就是咱们老祖先所说的,食色性也。如果大家能吃得好,能吃得饱,在性上能够得到满足,那这个社会就是比较进步、比较富裕的社 会了。这不是什么手段,而是一个目的,一个目标,是我们要达到的目标。他们跟我开玩笑说,我这是“新民生论”。
共产党这几十年干什么了呢?就是解决老百姓的吃饭问题。现在基本上解决了,也就是咱们现在老提的民生问题。可是我觉得民生问题里头还有性,应该让大 家正当的性需求也得到满足,得到充分满足。这样的话,大家高高兴兴,生活质量就高了,这就是社会的一种进步。饱暖思淫欲,现在吃饭问题解决了,大家希望生 活得更快乐一点,仅此而已。那你为什么老跟老百姓对着干呢?为什么不让老百姓快乐一点呢?我真的不明白,到底这里头有什么严重的后果呢?不就是老百姓活得 不那么愁眉苦脸了,比较快乐一点了嘛。
China has made a fortune producing cheap products that sell for low prices around the world.
Yet many high-end goods manufactured in China –- everything from iPads to Coach bags — actually cost more in China than they do in the United States.
To figure out why, I recently visited a luxury shopping mall in Beijing with Professor Nie Huihua, who teaches economics at the People’s University.
We went to the sixth floor of the mall, where Apple products were being sold, including an iPad 2 that was going for $700. The same iPad 2 costs $499 at an Apple store in Washington, D.C.
We then went to a Columbia sportswear store to get some prices. There was a blue backpack, called the Trail Grinder, which wasn’t very big and was selling for 1,399 Chinese yuan — or about $220. Back in the U.S., that made-in-China backpack retails for just $139.
Graft Contributes To High Prices
Nie says products like this cost more in China because of the country’s high transportation fees and local government corruption.
Last year, a trucker in East China’s Henan Province was caught using fake military license plates to avoid paying tolls along a 110-mile stretch of road. It’s easy to see why: Tolls and fees for a single trip are $230.
“It is impossible for him to make a profit if he pays all the tolls and fees legally,” Nie says.
At the high end of the market, there is also a certain, kind of flash-for-cash culture. It doesn’t really matter what the price is. The whole point is to be seen to pay and to be able to pay.
Paul French, chief China strategist for Access Asia-Mintel, a consumer analysis firm, says local governments can continue to gouge truckers because China is still essentially a state-run economy.
“In a market economy, those things will work themselves out,” French said. “People will push to reduce those costs. It’s just not possible to do that in China. You can buy all the trucks you want. What you can’t get rid of is local officials that are on the graft.”
China Imposes High Taxes
Another reason high-end goods cost more here is because China taxes them so much. But in a market loaded with fakes, wealthy Chinese are willing to pay a premium for authentic products they can show off.
“At the high end of the market, there is also a certain, kind of flash-for-cash culture,” French said. “It doesn’t really matter what the price is. The whole point is to be seen to pay and to be able to pay.”
Because of the price differential, many Chinese buy luxury goods when traveling overseas.
On a recent trip to New York, a woman named Ling, who didn’t want her full name used, went bargain hunting for a Gucci bag on Fifth Avenue.
Ling, who works for an Internet company, still had to shell out $1,000, but she says she thinks she got a good deal compared to what she would have paid in China.
Like other Chinese, she asks friends traveling abroad to buy items for her, including clothes.
Even inside China, products can sell for very different prices.
Luxury goods are cheaper in Hong Kong, which is part of China but doesn’t have a luxury tax. Recently, police nabbed a couple trying to smuggle hundreds of thousand of dollars in merchandise from Hong Kong onto the mainland. The stash included Prada handbags, Cartier jewelry and four iPhones.
we might think about Chinese education style again, apart from the stereotype.
-Reginald
url:http://my.backchina.com/chineseblog/201111/user-299872-message-130030-page-1.html
How to become a perfect Chinese American kid
There are many inside jokes circulating around the Chinese American community, but one is particularly relevant, and in a way, bitterly funny. “To be a perfect Chinese-American kid,” it goes, “you must score 2400 on the SAT; apply to and be accepted by 27 colleges, all of them in the top parameters of the annual “US News & World Report” rankings; and win enough scholarships to pay for it. Have three hobbies: math, piano, and more math; love classical music and detest talking on the phone; and lastly, accept your parents unfortunate fashion choices with enthusiasm.”
The joke reflects the fact that lofty aspirations have become a standard expectation, and of course, it reinforces the stereotype of the corkscrew glasses wearing, eternally studying, and no social life-ing Chinese American dork, who, to the dismay of his former tormentors, ends up becoming an Internet billionaire by the age of 25. It’s a rather uglifying stereotype, except for the billionaire part. But as the saying goes, a stereotype isn’t a stereotype if it’s not at least partially true.
It was back in the 1980’s, when Chinese Americans first began entering elite institutions like Harvard, Princeton and Stanford in mammoth numbers that the mainstream USA realized the scope of their academic excellence. In other words, they noticed that “Hey, Chinese are really smart”. Everyone from talk-show hosts to “Popular Mechanics Magazine” was fascinated by the supposedly new phenomenon. They tried to pinpoint its origins, bottle it, harness it, find that magical elixir that seemed to take every fresh off the boat Chinese immigrant and stuff his mailbox with big fat acceptance envelopes. It seemed like every family with a last name of Wong had three sons who were top of their class at Harvard, or three model daughters with perfect moon-pie faces and GPA’s in the 5.0 range.
Piano competitions became a wide swath of Asian territory, dominated by little musical prodigies with black hair and cheeky barrettes. California MATHCOUNTS state top-10 finales were inevitably dominated by 7th and 8th grade Chinese boys in bowl cuts and corduroys, scribbling answers to impossible math problems, their proud parents answering congratulations with the usual Chinese humility, “No, no, he’s lazy, doesn’t like to study at all, always wants to watch television, play with his friends.”
Of course, watching T.V. and hanging out with your buddies are two entirely unacceptable pastimes in the Chinese American culture, except under certain circumstances when you’re watching a documentary about Napoleon on the History Channel, or studying for the Academic Decathlon.
And then there’s the unavoidable competition. The science test results are always succeeded by an interrogation regarding the scores of the top students in the class. Course grades are eagerly compared among anxious Chinese parents. “What about this girl,” they ask, “how did she do?” Chinese American kids are expected to maintain up-to date records on everyone’s SAT I, SAT II, and Advanced Placement grades.
An awful lot of articles have been written about the “infamous” Chinese American overachievers. An awful lot of words have been spent denying it. You can debate endlessly about whether these seemingly impossible expectations actually help or hurt these Chinese kids. It’s probably both.
The pressure and the competition and the stereotypes are unavoidable as a Chinese American kid. It comes with the territory. I, for one, have learned to embrace it. No other parents are as supportive and dedicated when it comes to education as Chinese parents. No other culture gives more chances for inside jokes and hysterical anecdotes. And when you look at people like Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo, Steve Chu, the Nobel Prize winner, and Steve Chen, the founder of YouTube, or the legions of lawyers, scientist, doctors, and musicians, who made it alive through the gauntlet process, and who are living extraordinarily happy and successful lives, it’s hard not to be convinced that maybe, just maybe, there’s something right in Chinese American parenting styles.
this must be the biggest donation in China of this year. -Reginald
Bell, who teaches politics at Beijing’s crack Tsinghua University, is well placed to comment on changing Chinese attitudes. He detects signs of a reviving interest in, and practice of, pre-communist traditions, whether in the lecture hall, in the streets, or inside karaoke bars. The latter especially attract Bell’s attention. It is within the karaoke bar that the bonding properties of music – so beloved of Confucians – become manifest. If the hostesses offer sex as well as harmonious conversation, that too is as the Sage Master might wish. “I never met anyone,” he told his 5th-century BC students approvingly, “who values virtue more than physical beauty.”
Moreover (Bell argues) such arrangements, while providing profitable “employment opportunities” for the hostesses, also help preserve the family - the ultimate Confucian good. Husbands may err, but return to base soon enough. Health workers and feminists may grimace, but Bell has a sharp sense of cultural differences. What matters more to him than political correctness is China’s political direction. He senses greater inclusivity ahead, though not a Western-type democracy. Dismissing Yu Dan for her lightweight reconfiguration of Confucianism as an inner quest, he prefers Jiang Qing, whose Political Confucianism is distinctly socialist while upholding the role that non-elected wise elders should play in China’s governance.
HONG KONG — “Almost a full house!” Zhao Dayong said, his eyes glinting as we gazed over rows of filmgoers shuffling into their seats. It was a moment neither of us could have imagined two years earlier, as we filmed the Lisu tribespeople through a chilly Christmas in mountainous Fugong, in southwest China, not far from the border with Myanmar.
Minoru Iwasaki/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPresident Hu Jintao of China.
Zhao’s unapproved independent documentary, “Ghost Town,” an unflinching look at a remote community on China’s margins – one of those left behind by the country’s breakneck development – was having its moment at last. But the ovation that followed the film’s world premiere in 2009 at Lincoln Center in New York could not shake the bittersweet recognition that this moment would never have been possible in Zhao’s own China.
My thoughts drifted back to that screening last month, as I watched the nine members of China’s Politburo Standing Committee preside over a stiffly choreographed meeting of the country’s most senior leaders in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Against a phalanx of red flags and an enormous golden hammer-and-sickle, President Hu Jintao delivered the Chinese Communist Party’s document on “promoting the great development and prosperity of socialist culture.”
The gist of the “Decision” was that China’s ruling party, recognizing that culture is soft power, would lead a renaissance of cultural creation. The message behind the turgid ideological phrasings and the rodomontade about how the party was leading “the great reawakening of the Chinese people” was that China’s leaders would encourage culture so long as it served their narrow political ends. The Decision states emphatically that China’s rank-and-file “cultural workers” must uphold the party’s “main theme” and “keep to the correct orientation” in cultural creation.
Controlling culture is nothing new to the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese Communist Party has twisted culture to its own ends ever since Mao Zedong dogmatized on the role of literature and art at Yan’an in 1942. During the Cultural Revolution, China’s traditions were ravaged or subverted to persecute millions. What was new last month was the C.C.P.’s urgent sense that China’s power and place in the world should be reflected in its cultural strength. The party has long sought to manufacture legitimacy by “guiding” public opinion domestically through aggressive controls on media and culture. Now it also hopes to influence global public opinion in its favor.
Behind the bravado lies deep anxiety about what some in China have called the “third affliction,” its negative image in the world. With its economy now the envy of the world, China has symbolically thrown off the affliction of poverty. With its powerful and modernizing military, it is no longer afflicted by the threat of foreign aggression, as it was during its “century of shame.” Yet the country’s international prestige remains constrained by the cultural dominance of the West. Each time China is castigated by the international human rights community, or criticized by the Western media, the country’s leaders feel more and more that global public opinion is stacked against them. Western culture and values have gone global in a way that Chinese culture and values have not, and Beijing wants to do something about this.
China’s leaders hope to close this “soft-power deficit” the only way they know how: by diktat. But commercializing state-controlled culture built on repression only turns the spotlight on the injustices of China’s political system. China’s “third affliction” is a self-inflicted malady. As the popular Chinese blogger Han Han said amid the official drivel in state-run media: “Governments in countries with cultural censorship may no longer fear criticism at the hands of their own country’s cultural work, but they must endure the ridicule of the whole world.”
While the government backs slick propaganda epics with blockbuster budgets – like this year’s “Founding of the Party” – real creativity will continue to struggle to survive in the gaps. Independent artists, writers and filmmakers like Zhao Dayong, those who refuse to submit to government censorship, will continue to endure marginalization to protect their creative freedom and work in a state of perpetual exile from their Chinese audiences.
No sooner had the curtain closed on the C.C.P. meeting in Beijing than media outlets in Hong Kong and Taiwan reported with unmistakable schadenfreude that an Oct. 17 showing at Lincoln Center of the 2009 Chinese propaganda epic “The Founding of a Republic” had drawn not a single filmgoer. The screening was an opener for the series “Eastern Promise: Popular Cinema from China,’’ a soft power ploy plain and simple. But not even the organizers from China’s Ministry of Culture bothered to show up.
Via humanscalecities, amazing portfolio images under the heading: “Why Is China Building These Gigantic Structures In the Middle of the Desert?”
Comment stream below it is a pareidolic nightmare. An entertaining nightmare, however.
High school and college students may be ‘digital natives,’ but they’re wretched at searching… In 1955, we wondered why Johnny can’t read. Today the question is, why can’t Johnny search?
Who’s to blame? Not the students. If they’re naive at Googling, it’s because the ability to judge information is almost never taught in school. Under 2001’s No Child Left Behind Act, elementary and high schools focus on prepping their pupils for reading and math exams. And by the time kids get to college, professors assume they already have this skill. The buck stops nowhere. This situation is surpassingly ironic, because not only is intelligent search a key to everyday problem-solving, it also offers a golden opportunity to train kids in critical thinking.
I wonder is it only in the US or actually happens everywhere? Are Chinese students even worse? Or they are better than American kids because so much things they like are banned by the government?
From That’s Shanghai:
by Leslie Jones & Raemin Zhang @ Wednesday, 06 July 2011 14:58
The uphill battle of Shanghai’s poorest neighbor
The story behind Anhui’s poverty isn’t one-dimensional, nor is it hopeless. Some of the factors are as unique as the region’s mountainous topography, while others reflect the plight of all rural Chinese. Leslie Jones and Raemin Zhang headed to the hills for this special report.
Wang Xiangkun’s grandfather sits across from his quiet 11-year-old grandson in the family farmhouse. Half a dozen academic awards are pasted up behind the bed where Wang sits. Three years ago his parents left to work in Shanghai. He quit playing with other kids and seldom spoke for months after they went away.
Wang lives in Tiantou village, a tea farming community in Dabie Shan, the mountain range along Anhui’s western border. His grandparents are farmers who only speak the local dialect, no standard Mandarin, and cannot read. They live a subsistence lifestyle, raising pigs and chickens and growing their own rice. Wang’s parents send money home, but most of it is socked away for his college fees. The family has pinned its hopes on Wang entering university, an odds-defying feat for any child from the countryside.

Wang Xiangkun with his grandparents
This spring a group of Shanghainese 10th-graders bused up the winding mountain road to Dabie Shan for a stint at Wang’s elementary school. They came equipped with iPads and SLR cameras, gadgets that cost the better half of what some local families will see in a year. The teenagers are students at Shanghai World Foreign Language Middle School, a private school for Chinese students preparing for college overseas. Yearly tuition is about RMB80,000. The entire annual budget for the village school is RMB24,000.
Anhui is China’s eighth most-populous province and one of its poorest. The province’s monthly minimum wage is RMB720 and the average rural household has a yearly income of RMB12,473, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. One in five women over the age of 15 is either illiterate or semi-literate and 13 percent of the population cannot read proficiently. There is little homegrown private industry to speak of. Flagship companies Chery Automobile and Anhui Conch Cement are both state-and-private joint run projects. Anhui is also the nation’s largest supplier of migrant labor; a little over half of Shanghai’s migrant labor force comes from Anhui or Jiangsu.
“My son always asks me to bring him to Shanghai, I tell him I can’t afford it,” says Wang’s mother, Lin Xiaoping, who cleans hotel rooms six days a week in Shanghai. “Every year when we come home he’ll cry a lot and beg us to stay. He’ll say, ‘I can use less money.’ Every time I tell him I have no choice.”
Lin and her husband, Wang Wusheng, live in a tiny second-floor room big enough for a bed, closet and table. There’s no running water, so they hand-carry their cooking water and use the neighborhood public toilet. Lin showers at work and her husband sponge bathes at home. Wang works as a night watchman every day of the week and gets fined if he misses a day. Their combined income is RMB3,500 a month, half of which they send home, leaving just enough for their rent and food – rice and vegetables they cook themselves.
“But it’s easy for us to get used to the life here, because we’ve always been poor,” Wang says.
One of the most curious aspects of Anhui’s poverty is its proximity to the epicenter of China’s economic powerhouses. It takes three hours by high-speed train from Shanghai to Hefei, Anhui’s capital. And to the east lie Zhejiang and Jiangsu, two of the country’s wealthiest provinces and models for rural development.
Despite the phenomenal growth on the Yangtze River Delta, Anhui has somehow missed out. In Shanghai, it’s often dismissed as backward countryside – the place where ayis come from, home of Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) and very little else.
But the story behind Anhui’s poverty isn’t one-dimensional, nor is it hopeless. Some of the factors are as unique as the region’s mountainous topography. But others echo the plight of all rural Chinese, both those who move to the big city and those who remain in the countryside.
Up until 1667, Anhui was part of Jiangnan, one of the highest tax-paying provinces in the nation. The reigning Manchu Qing Dynasty split the region into Jiangsu and Anhui, cutting the latter off from the coast. Today, parts of Anhui that border Jiangsu still enjoy a standard of living closer aligned with the coastal province.
“There’s always a debate in my town about whether it should belong to Anhui or Jiangsu, basically most people wish it were part of Jiangsu simply because it’s richer than Anhui,” says Wu Yun, a Shanghai-based magazine editor and Anhui native.
Anhui’s borders are almost the same today as three centuries ago. Lack of port access has plagued the region ever since. Still, in 1861 the Qing government chose to seat its military-industrial complex in Anqing, Anhui’s former capital. China’s first steam engine was built there.
Anhui sustained its next planning blow after the PRC was formed. The new government decided to move the capital from culture-rich Anqing, which traces its official status back over 2,000 years, to centrally-located Hefei, disparaged for being ‘China’s biggest county’ rather than a true city.
Huangshan, one of China’s top tourist destinations and now a UNESCO World Heritage site, is located in southern Anhui, but there are only two highways linking it to the rest of the Yangtze River Delta. The government chose instead to invest in roads linking Hefei to impoverished northern Anhui.
Bad infrastructure decisions were made on top of inherently challenging terrain: northern Anhui is prone to flooding. More than a quarter of a million people had to be evacuated during an especially bad flood in 2003. And the south comprises two mountain ranges, which make development problematic.
Despite geography, Anhui was a pioneer for economic reform in rural China. In 1978, a handful of farming families in Fengyang County signed private contracts to work the collectively owned land in their village. It was a first step toward dismantling agricultural communes. The village’s success paved the way for change nationwide.
When reform took hold, foreign investment poured into the region, but the more accessible coastal provinces took the lion’s share. In the early ‘90s the Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone was formed. Zhejiang, Jiangsu and under-construction Pudong comprised the area aimed at attracting foreign investors. Anhui was not included in the newly planned area. A few years later, developing western China rose on the list of national planning priorities. Since it was considered a central province, Anhui missed out once again. NGOs have had trouble drumming up funding for projects in the predominantly Han Chinese province.
International children’s welfare NGO Save the Children began work in Anhui in the late 1980s, mainly in health and education, but in 2009 they were forced to close their office there.
“It’s much more difficult to raise funds for Anhui because it sounds like an ordinary central province to donors,” spokeswoman Qian Xiaofeng says. Though the office closed, Save the Children still supports several Anhui projects.
As its neighbors to the east sped ahead, Anhui languished. In the north, desperation bore deadly consequences. HIV infected thousands of poor villagers who sold blood in unsanitary conditions on the black market in the mid-’90s. To this day several counties in northern Anhui are known for having ‘AIDS villages.’ The Blood of Yingzhou District, a 2006 Academy Award-winning documentary, illustrated the plight of children in Anhui orphaned by AIDS.
All over Anhui, local governments struggled when the funding burden for new national policies fell on them. And too often rural people suffered bitterly at the hand of officials who were not only ineffective but corrupt, sometimes to a violent degree. In 2007 People’s Daily posted an online poll asking readers why Anhui lags so far behind: 28 percent blamed government inefficiency and 21 percent said it was because of unstable policy and corruption.
Things were especially bad in the countryside in the ’90s. Some of the bloodiest instances of villager exploitation garnered national media attention.
One case of victimization by local government took place in 1998 and resulted in four deaths in a village in Guzhen County. Outspoken members of the community had petitioned the local party committee multiple times for an audit of village finances. The deputy village chief took exception to their pleas. He invited one petitioner to his home and had the man beaten – a show of intimidation that only served to rally the villagers. They banded together and demanded an investigation at the township office. So finally a village audit was scheduled.
On the morning the audit was to begin, the deputy village chief and two of his sons showed up at the home of one of the local men chosen to conduct the audit. They killed the man with a meat cleaver. The commotion was heard by three men – two other auditors plus the dead man’s brother – and when they rushed over to help they too were stabbed to death. The teenage son of one victim came and tried to drag his dying father to safety. He was stabbed in the shoulder and narrowly escaped with his life.
County police arrived quickly and arrested the official and his sons, but local authorities tried to bury the true nature of the dispute. Villagers were instructed not to talk about it. Initial news reports called it a case of “manslaughter” related to a civic dispute and implied the victims provoked their attackers. Eventually the story trickled up and national media arrived. Reporters saw for themselves that where villagers had meager furnishing, most cadres had refrigerators and TVs. Southern Weekly and Democracy and Law magazine came out with long reports on the quadruple murder and the true story behind it, but not until a full four months after the fact.
At that time, reports of village cadres foisting exploitative taxes were widespread. Officials put in charge of poor villages in remote townships were difficult to hold accountable. It proved easy enough in many instances for corrupt officials to impose taxes on a whim, despite national laws limiting the tax burden of rural people. Even today, it can be a dangerous feat for rural Chinese to seek relief from unjust government. In April, a group of women from Gansu traveled to Beijing to complain about the mishandling of earthquake relief funds. Shanghai Daily reported that the women said after they arrived in the capital they were stripped of their clothes and beaten by men dressed in black, and forced into a van that spirited them back to Gansu before they could make their report.
Anhui’s history of bad government extends well beyond village tyrants. In 2003 a former Anhui vice-governor was sentenced to death for accepting bribes, then again in 2007 another vice-governor and a former deputy secretary of the Anhui Provincial CPC Committee received the death penalty for corruption. The following year Anhui’s former railway boss was sent to prison for taking bribes and misappropriating funds. And last year Zhang Zhian, a former party secretary from Fuyang, was sentenced to death for taking millions in bribes and persecuting those who tried to expose his corruption (one whistle blower hanged himself in prison after being framed by Zhang). Before he was brought to justice, Zhang earned the nickname ‘White House director’ after he had an RMB30 million district office built to look like the White House.

Not all corruption in Anhui is blatantly self-serving. In 1985 compulsory education through grade nine became national law, but the burden to fund schools fell to county and township government. Over the last two decades impoverished areas have struggled to keep schools afloat. Counties accrued debt in the tens of millions in the early ‘90s trying to achieve national education goals. In 2000 Anhui served as the test ground for a new tax policy meant to alleviate the rural people’s tax burden and cut down on extortion. It proved successful but also meant less revenue was collected, which meant even less education funding. So local officials got creative.
In 2008 a National Audit Office report revealed RMB150 million in illegally-collected fees from 54 counties nationwide. Money was collected in the name of exam fees, book fees, after-school programs and ‘donations.’ Much of the misappropriated money was used to pay off old debt and build new schools. Around the same time the report came out, central government stepped in and pledged to relieve the financial burden on rural schools.
“It’s getting better. Things have become much easier in the past few years,” Tiantou village elementary school principal Wu Dexin says, seated in the school conference room while his students play in the yard with the Shanghai teens.
Tiantou’s students no longer have to worry about book fees. Many of the students whose homes are farther up in the mountains sleep at the school during the week, and their boarding fees are subsidized now too. Still, village schools have a long way to go. Rural students are at an extreme disadvantage. A senior teacher in Tiantou only makes about RMB2,000 per month. Resources are scarce; textbooks are free, but there are essentially no supplementary or enrichment materials, no free reading books and no sports. Wang Xiangkun, the boy whose parents moved to Shanghai, wants to study computers in the future, but seldom gets a chance to use one now. Education NGOs say rural students lack opportunity to develop critical thinking and social skills because classes focus exclusively on standardized test preparation. Plus there aren’t extracurricular activities, as there are in the city, where kids can learn by doing.

Teachers look uneasy when the topic of college prospects comes up. “The students study very hard now, so many of them will go to university,” they say, but statistics do not back up this hopeful assertion. The college enrollment rate in 2009 was 14 percent for the entire province. Presently, less than 2 percent of rural Anhui people have college educations, according to one development report.
“We are too limited,” teachers in Tiantou say over and over. “This place is just too poor.”
It is against that backdrop that so many Anhui people set out for migrant work. A 2004 survey by the Anhui Statistical Bureau reported that some 16 percent of the population left the province to seek work. The number of children in Yuexi County living with grandparents or other relatives has quadrupled in the past decade, according to the county education bureau. The majority of elementary school students in Tiantou Village have at least one parent working far from home. Wu, the principal, says it’s easy to see the difference: when parents leave grades drop and when they return they go back up.
“Our teachers wind up taking on the role of parents,” he says, because grandparents are often unequipped to keep up with the educational and psychological needs of their grandchildren.
“It is a worry,” Lin Xiaoping says, seated in her room in Shanghai on her off day. “We feel very sorry for our children. We call every week, but it’s always short greetings. You can’t really know what’s actually going on.”
Last year Shanghai became the first city in China to propose free education for school-aged migrant children. In other parts of the country, the hukou system bars migrant children from attending city-funded public schools because they lack an urban hukou (a permanent resident permit that affords municipal public benefits). Students who accompany parents to the city often attend unlicensed private schools, which can be expensive and academically sub-par. Even in Shanghai, migrant children must return to their villages if they choose to attend high school. Grace Nieh, Shanghai regional manager for charity Compassion for Migrant Children, says about one-third of migrant children go home for high school, and of that number about 40 percent wind up returning to the city for work in a couple of years because they can’t adjust to village life or are unable to get into high school.
“Of course we wish our son could come here for high school,” Lin says. “But we haven’t thought about the future. Right now we just want to continue making money.”
Though Wang Xiangkun’s parents have no plans to move back to the mountains, many migrant workers did return home to Anhui last year, about 3 million according to the provincial Department of Human Resources and Social Security. As manufacturing costs rise along the coast and infrastructure improves (Anhui doubled its length of highways in the last six years), industry is moving inland.
In May the Anhui Economic Information Center reported a 13 percent increase in GDP – the greatest fiscal revenue increase the province has seen in 15 years. Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung and Canadian auto parts supplier Magna International (two of the world’s 500 biggest companies) entered Anhui this year. UPS invested RMB100 million in a business services park in Hefei. In April JA Solar broke ground in Hefei on what will be the world’s largest integrated solar energy production center. Levels of disposable income in Anhui are growing rapidly too and consumer goods manufacturers are taking notice.
“Hefei is a place we go to quite frequently for consumer research, because income is growing really fast there,” says China Market Research senior analyst James Roy. “The luxury market there is picking up.”
But it’s still a full day’s drive from Hefei to the villages tucked high and away in Dabie Shan. Locals say that things are better than they were; 10 years ago the roads were worse and all the homes were traditional farmhouses. Now there’s a strip of square concrete buildings that line Tiantou’s main street. A couple of villagers have returned from urban industrial centers and used the skills they learned to open little clothing factories. They’re doing well, making more than a principal does, says Wu.
On a Thursday morning the Shanghai teenagers prepare to leave. It’s been a full few days of interacting with their Dabie Shan counterparts through music, games and crafts. Local kids offer up handfuls of wildflowers and friendship bracelets as the teenagers head for the bus. There are lots of hugs and tears before they board. Even some of the local teachers dab their eyes, but Wang Xiangkun doesn’t cry. Every Chinese New Year he has a much harder goodbye to say. After the teens depart, it’s back to normal for the grade-schoolers – class time followed by a heavy homework regimen. Everyone knows education is the most hopeful path down the mountain. That’s why Wang’s parents work so far away.
// To make a donation to Dabie Shan village schools, contact Liz Lou at Shanghai World Foreign Language Middle School on 5419 0200 ext 8508 or ttllxx_5@hotmail.com
Chris Chang’s photo of construction in China. I love his photos. He has a great eye. Click here to see more photos from Chris.
Anxiao discussed how our “Avatar” represent us online and how we act differently according to the different online environment. It’s so interesting!
So is the design of a social networking website the only factor of what user use it for? If not, then what are other factors? Artists’ art is definitely part of themselves, does online identity work the same way for everyone? And how should we interpret individual’s social media presence? And how can it help website designers to design better website?
Artists and avatars. I’m always very conscious about the way I use my avatar, the message it sends to the world. Some call it branding, some call it self-expression, some call it communication. But my avatar represents me in some fashion. Kyle Chayka in LA Weekly wrote a thought-provoking essay about artists and their online avatars:
Think about your Facebook profile picture. For the most part, these small images are close-ups on faces or group photos with friends. Maybe it’s a vacation shot, or a cute picture of your pet. That profile picture is your avatar, a representation of yourself, or a particular aspect of yourself, on the Internet. Avatars, whether on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, are our online ambassadors.
And this is what I said on the matter:
“I often obscure faces to focus us on what else is present in digital media,” Xiao notes. “How can we communicate our identity just through text, or just through images that we share of our life without us in them?”
These pieces subvert the traditional idea of an avatar by forcing us to work without the one avatar we are most comfortable with – our own bodies.
In addition to publishing my first Chinese pun*, the article covers the avatar work of Man Bartlett and Petra Cortright. Bartlett sees “avatar use as an unmediated, organic outgrowth of identity and personality”, while Cortright creates “weird, semifictional narratives” using a mixture of digital tools. It’s like Yin and Yang (and An) in a way: on the one hand, Bartlett says he “has nothing to hide”, Cortright obscures the avatar, and I tend to take mine away entirely.

The word “avatar” is a funny one. It has religious connotations–according to Wikipedia, it comes from Hinduism, where a deity may descend (avatar means descend) into the world. Part of the descent is the physical manifestation, the way the deity looked. But part of the descent was the behavior, the way he or she acted.
When Chayka asked me how I use my avatar, I had this definition in the back of my mind, and so I replied in broader terms, beyond the image and into the actual use of media. This is most pronounced when you compare how I use Sina Weibo and Twitter, both of which are microblog services. Whereas in the former, my activity is driven more by images and personal stories, in the latter I’m more apt to post links and quick reflections. My avatar, the way I project myself in these media, varies because the platforms vary.![]()
Could we expand the idea of avatars, and avatar self-portraiture, to include the full social media presence, rather than just the image? Chayka rightly points out that much of my works obscures the image of our body and face (our primary definition of what an avatar should be) so we can focus on other things–namely, the interaction between us, the message content, the way we use language and tell stories about ourselves and to each other.
I think back to the postcard installation I developed for Yale’s Haskins Laboratories, and how I called it a Self-Portrait in Postcards, a portrait accumulated over time as I sent tweet-like postcard messages to the gallery. This is what Jan Ellen Spiegel wrote in the New YorkTimes:
[An Xiao] came to art through photography, writing and an interest in communication that goes back to her childhood, when she wrote letters to her grandmother in the Philippines. The letters, she said, related little moments that add up to a portrait of the writer, the way social networking does now with a series of – as she put it – ‘totally inane things’
The inspiration for the postcard installation came from a long Times essay by Clive Thompson that changed the way I see the Internet and the way social media works. The essay argued–rightly, in my view–that social media and microblogging, over time, create a sense of who we are. More so than any other media:
Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does – body language, sighs, stray comments – out of the corner of your eye. Facebook is no longer alone in offering this sort of interaction online. In the last year, there has been a boom in tools for “microblogging”: posting frequent tiny updates on what you’re doing.
That article was written in 2009, which feels like ages ago. Since then, we’ve seen microblogging implemented in everything from the Obama campaign to the Arab Spring, andone famous writer argued that social media can’t possibly develop strong ties. But over these past two years, I’ve become even more convinced that the way we represent ourselves online reflects who we are. Our avatars–both our images and our accumulated self representations–are indeed self-portraits, whether we construct them consciously or whether we let them develop naturally over time.
* The Chinese visual pun explained. The first character in my Chinese name, An (安), consists of the character for “woman” (女) under a character representing a roof. My avatar, then, is a bit of a play on the common practice of iPhone-in-bathroom-mirror photography. Standing in front of a women’s bathroom mirror in Beijing, I used the bathroom ceiling to spell my name. Chinese isn’t my native language, so most of my attempts at puns fall flat, but this one got a few laughs on Sina Weibo.