The IHT on 7 February 2011 published an article “E-book devices draw in a younger generation”. It also showed a picture of a young reader, shot by Joyce Dopkeen.
While the article was interesting in itself (thinking about my books that do not progress) I was touched by the black & white picture. It has something soft, sensual, retro and poetic that is hard to describe. Would merit a special prize. I went to see the picture online, only to find a reduced quality color pic. Was disappointing, the appeal was not there anymore.
The pic you see here is a scanned version of the hard copy.
Sometimes I feel nostalgic about the old B&W picture we took with our film rolls.
Very high air pollution in Hong Kong
According to Bloomberg on 4 Feb 2011, the Hong Kong API was recently “very high” at two of the roadside monitoring stations: 141 in the Causeway Bay District (where I lived before) and 107 in Central (one of my favorite spots). Now, could those sissies stop complaining? Right on Sunday 13 Feb, despite the snow, Beijing’s AQI had passed 180; then a good wind blew it all away and pollution dropped well below AQI 50.
Well at least in Hong Kong they talk about it. Here, all is well obviously. Thanks to different definitions of what “Very High” means.
We just need to wait till our Beijing drivers transform the city into a parking lot (this week?) and we can look for higher AQI. After short periods of under 50, we should be back in the familiar territory of 150 to 200.
2011 Spring Festival Ball – Beijing Information Office
On 17 January, thanks to Charles Dukes of “Beijing This Month” we were invited to their event at the Beijing Marriott Hotel City Wall. We were happy to have skipped other invitations for the same evening as once again BTM did a great job in organizing a flashy evening.
The evening was presided by Ms. Wang Hui, well known through her role as spokeswoman during the Beijing 2008 Olympics.
If you want to see some beautiful Chinese models – boys and girls, the latest Chinese fashion creations from Zeng Fengfei (designer and general manager of Xiamen Fengfei Costume Design Company), as well as the well-known fashion house Botao, sit back, relax and watch the picture gallery or click [Show picture list]. There are some impressive, elegant and tempting models. Makes us forget the pollution.
Also pictured are the ballroom dancers Liu Lei and Zhao Jing (I think they received the second prize in the national competition). Also the singer Ke Sen from the Bahamas and a group of international enthusiastic dancers.
Not to forget the obvious Chinese Opera group…
The evening ended with some dancing, Sun was invited by one of the dancers for a waltz and more; we could not resist to dance our Brazilian favorite swinging. Thanks Charles for the pics.
The deadly threat from our bad air
In Beijing we are all supposed to be happy with the great efforts of our beloved leaders to achieve so many blue sky days.
Unfortunately, it’s all a lie and for the past 12 months we live with average AQI values of 150 (i.e. the readings of PM2.5 thanks to the USA Embassy). We all know the Embassy is right and representative of the whole Beijing city area. (the normal limit would be AQI=50)
Even official sources in China are starting to question the validity of the official figures, as reported in China Daily.
Well, in Hong Kong they are in great panick because API figures are going over 100. Lucky people! Can we have your air pleeeeeaaaase?
According to recent studies by the University of Hong Kong and other institutes, air pollution causes about 10,000 deaths per year in the Pearl River Delta including Hong Kong and Macao.
The South China Morning Post reported details on 20 January (see here abbreviated version). Their values: they measure as in Beijing, i.e. micrograms of PM10 per cubic meter.
See here a typical reading from the USA Embassy in Beijing:
21 Jan 2011; 12:15; Past 24hr: PM2.5 avg; 52.9 micrograms; AQI=130; Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups
HKU links pollution to increased mortality risks (by SCMP – Elaine Yau)
(pictures are all from SCMP)
For every kilometre of reduced visibility, an additional 70 deaths occurred every year over a decade, a University of Hong Kong survey has found.
Chief researcher Professor Anthony Hedley said visibility was strongly negatively correlated with air pollution, especially with particulates and nitrogen dioxide.
“Loss of visibility kills people,” he said. “The higher the pollutant concentrations, the lower the visibility. Every kilometre in reduced visibility increases our mortality risks.”
The team, which analysed 360,000 deaths between 1996 and 2006 along with data from the Observatory, took into account factors including humidity, temperature and the incidence of flu epidemics.
Postdoctoral fellow in community medicine Professor Lai Hak-kan said that the average visibility in the city over the past four years was 12.6 kilometres, well below the norm of 30 kilometres from a 50-metre structure.
The university’s associate professor in community medicine, Dr Wong Chit-ming, said the situation was alarming. “The visibility in the city was five kilometres yesterday, with 84 micrograms of particulates every cubic metre,” he said.
The World Heath Organisation sets the minimum safety levels at 20 micrograms every cubic metre.
But Hong Kong set the level at 55 micrograms.
Rob Chipman, the chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, said last week that pollution was becoming one of the most serious threats to the city’s competitiveness.
The findings of the survey were published in the academic journal Environmental Research.
The big Internet players in China are thieves?
I regularly receive Matthew’s weekly update. He is a strong competitor in sarcasm and always ready to demolish “the bad and the ugly”. See here part of his recent “rambling”. Or should we rather say, he is right? (I did not manage to find a suitable direct weblink for this)
I just watched a Chinese movie on Youku (“The Chopsticks Brothers”, with English subtitles). I must agree that having all this for free on the websites is not helping much the healthy development of media and culture in China. Why produce something that is stolen soon after? Chinese find this all “normal”. I’m just waiting for the day the West does the same with Chinese products, books, movies etc. Go ahead folks, steal the Pandas, Monkey King, Confucius and all.
When Will Foreigners Stop Investing in Chinese Pirates?
By Matthew Crabbe – www.accessasia.co.uk – Access Asia’s Weekly Update – 20th of January 2011
Probably never, or at least not until they stop making them money, which may well only be when they stop being thieves. There’s a lot of interest in China’s Internet retailing, China’s ‘YouTube’, net IPOs and all that kind of thing these days. We are shamelessly putting out a report about it in the hope that we can make some money selling a few copies before it ends up stolen by China’s Internet pirates. That’s right, there’s a very, very dark side to a lot of the recent listings of Chinese internet stocks that investors, supposedly smart analysts and the ever asleep-on-duty hack pack seem to be all ignoring – the underlying criminality of many of these supposedly ‘hot stocks’.
We all know who the criminal pirates that have recently listed (or who are looking to list soon) on global stock markets are, and it covers foreign investors and the foreign hack pack in no glory for allowing it to happen without raising even the slightest of objections. Let’s take for example Youku.
Victor Koo is the founder and CEO of Beijing-based Youku.com. “The company’s 161% rise after listing on the New York Stock Exchange was the biggest US IPO gain in five years,” according to Bloomberg. Yet Youku is a massive criminal organisation stealing intellectual property and copyrighted products from Hollywood and the world’s movie makers, TV programmers worldwide, musicians and authors. That’s what people watch on Youku, not students slapping each other but ripped off music videos, movies and TV. Youku knows this and yet Youku very wittingly allows all this stolen content to stay up there. Not only does it actively leave it up there, but Youku also actively sells advertising around its stolen content. And who are they selling advertising to for these prime interest pages of stolen content? The likes of KFC, L’Oreal, Unilever, which are just some of the company adverts you have to sit through before you can enjoy (for free) a ripped-off episode of Dr. Who or the latest Hollywood blockbuster.
Or let’s talk about Baidu. Baidu is a massively criminal organisation that would be stamped out anywhere that the rule of law is applied in equal measure to all. We have a special dislike of Baidu, as the company has consistently allowed pirated versions of our reports to be uploaded to its system and downloaded for free. The bastards at Baidu are simply thieves who come into our house and steal from us, depriving us of revenue, income and the ability to pay wages to our staff. The fact that some foreigners, who should know better, work for them is merely shame on them. After a lot of shouting, legal threats and publicity we can usually get them to take down illegally uploaded content. But they have to be threatened, and they have never shown any genuine concern about abusing, stealing and raping our IP. And then our reports reappear again, and the muppets at Baidu start prevaricating, again.
Or how about Tudou? Another site selling advertising and attracting investors capital based on providing stolen content from movie studios and TV companies. For those of you who think we’re lying, or these are just aberrations amongst lots of other content, try for yourself – click here [link not copied here] to watch the newly released film about Ian Dury and the Blockheads – fantastic, and completely stolen. Search around (in English or Chinese), it doesn’t matter, they’ve made it easy for you to enjoy the fruits of other people’s labour, investment and creativity without paying a cent. Oh, and don’t forget to enjoy the KFC or the shampoo ad before the movie!! Imagine KFC being discovered to have advertised on an illegal download site in America or England? The newspapers might be interested, no? But the foreign press in China? Not a squeak was heard!
So, can we now fully expect the Sicilian Mafia, the Columbian cartels, the Mexican drug lords, Somalian pirates and others to all list on America’s stock markets? All they need to do to get legit is set up a website full of illegal downloads, get a few shameless foreigners who’ve ended up in China as failed hacks or rock stars to front for them and away they go. Clearly if Tudou, Baidu or Youku were based in the USA or EU they would be raided and shut down immediately, their bosses prosecuted and never allowed anywhere near a stock market.
And the question remains, in among the reams and reams of glorying prose on these supposed champions of the Chinese internet, we have pirates backed by the government, being funded by foreign investors, egged on by investment bank analysts and left in the dark by the foreign press covering China. Likewise we have bankers (who say they don’t need regulating!) supporting and funding pirates (interestingly, we have found bankers reports on these ‘services’ too!!) and somehow we are less than surprised at this?
And finally, let’s just point out who the real losers are here. Not Hollywood or the BBC, though they are the victims of crime, but struggling Chinese content producers. It is TV programme makers and movie companies in China that are the those most ripped off by the likes of Tudou and Youku. These are the creative people who will be stymied by the pirates. These companies, and the foreign PR hacks and investment banker bloviators that promote them are the enemies of IP, creativity and progress.