Offended – the WTO column


(Later also at Chinabiz)
Would it be offensive to say that the Chinese have no sense of humor? I guess so, especially to many of my friends who do have a sense of humor. But when the cultural dignity of a nation comes into play, you do end up making generic statements that do not allow too many exceptions.
I’m not really a clairvoyant but when I heard about the McDonalds commercial that caused first a row in Xi’an and then engulfed the nation in indignation, I could already set out the scenario for the rest of the week, including McDonald’s pulling the commercial and apologizing for hurting China’s dignity.

China’s media followed the scenario that has been extensively tested in previous incidents and quoted angry customers and likewise indignant academics who all condemned the culturally insensitive American company. I have not been reading all the nonsense about the commercial, but even the token exception on the rule that Chinese have no sense of humor lacked from those media reports.
What happened in de commercial? A customer kneels for the owner of the shop to beg for a bargain. McDonalds goes on to explain they have a bargain every day of the week. I saw very little reason for any Chinese to feel offended.
Mostly we Dutch tend to like it when jokes are being made about our cultural sensitivities and we pay even people – we call them comedians or columnists – who try, mostly in vain, to ignite a bit of a row. There are exceptions, as our Prime Minister Balkenende asked for a retraction when the Belgium minister of foreign affairs used in interview in Beijing to characterize the Dutch government leader as a ‘small-minded Harry Potter’. That was quite an achievement from the Belgians. They succeeded of course because our prime minister is a small-minded look-alike of Harry Potter.

Of course there are cultural sensitivities you should take into account. Last week I attended an international conference where the Belgium representative – yes, again – explained how he used humor to promote his campaign of this website. A Spanish delegate said he could make jokes about anything in Spain, as long as it was verbally. He could never write it up. A Polish journalist said they could write up jokes about anything. “Only not about work, people find work too serious to make jokes about”.

Jokes should be on the edge of what is permissible in a society. That is the function of humor and a way to explore and challenge value systems. Doing that in China, especially when you are a foreign company, seems to be rather tricky. When you watch the famous New Year’s shows on Chinese TV you see that Chinese themselves can go pretty far in challenging their own cultural obsessions and display a huge sense of humor. Obvious foreign companies in commercials do not have even half that leeway Chinese comedians take for themselves.
Maybe it is for the same reason Polish people do not accept jokes about work. Chinese think commercials are too serious. You cannot use commercials to makes culturally challenging jokes that would be perfect permissible in another setting.
Get a life, I would say to people who feel offended by commercials.

Fons Tuinstra

media - China Daily lets a lesbian girl talk

A first-timer in the official China Daily where a lesbian girl talks about the Beijing 'Lala' scene.

Now there is only one lala bar in Beijing. How sad! It's a lonely little place, but there's nowhere else to go anymore. I think this generation is already lost. It's up to the next generation of lalas. There ave been lots of great ideas, but none of them have worked out. One example, there was a lala conference that was organized two years ago in Beijing, open to the public. It was amazing! A lot of lalas from Hong Kong and Taiwan were there. They held classes inside a school and had a big party. There was a kind of lala film festival, but the plans were finally all aborted.

Quite a nice way to describe the governmental reluctance to accept the gay people in their society. But things are changing, as this article shows and they do not have to rely on hidden media only.

Update: Still lagging behind in checking my RSS-feeds, so I saw this disclosure by Danwei only just now. Ok, they have been stealing the article and sanatized it, but still a remarkable change.

Books on lesbian women

internet - Typepad seems blocked indeed

Danwei confirms yesterday's rumor. Although here is also the word 'seems' and suggest the evidence is not 100 percent. Any more stories around?

Update: Help is flocking in to circumvent the typepad-blocks. The conversation continues at Bebecca's site.

internet - An the next victim is: McDonalds

Using jokes in a cross-cultural setting is rather dangerous, I discovered last weekend yet again. But when China wants to enter a global economy, a bit more sensitivity would not hurt. Danwei reports on yet another online row as McDonalds uses humor to attrack more customers.

Books on cross-cultural humor

internet - Typepad blocks restored?

Some rumors suggest that the IP-blocks on typepad-weblogs have been restored. They were unblocked at the beginning of this year. While anything is possible, there are a few contra-indications. First, some typepad weblogs do not seem to be blocked, so that would exclude a generic blockade. Second, those blocks are mostly put in place at the first working day of a month, unless there is really an urgent need for the censor to make overtime. I have not seen any reason for that urgency, but might have missed things.

Books on the Chinese internet

life - A good restaurant in Brussels' China town

Despite a disappointing first Chinese meal in Brussels' China town, we returned last Sunday for a pleasant surprise at the "Au The de Pekin" at the Rue de laz Vierge Noire 16-24. The restaurant has unfortunately no clear online presence, but the food is quite excellent. When you're looking for good Chinese food in Brussels, do not miss them. China town can be found near the Bourse-subway station.

Books on Chinese cuisine

law - Haagen Dazs targetted


High-end ice-cream shop Haagen Dazs has been targetted by sanitation authorities, first is Shenzhen and now in Shanghai, for what is supposed to be rather low-end ways to prepare their expensive products. It is part of a long row of foreign companies finding themselves at loggerheads with consumers and local authorities. In Shenzhen the toilet was found to be too close the the ice production.
Rather unclear for me what triggered off this expanding problem.

Books on Haagen Dazs

On 26 million depressed Chinese – the WTO column

Fat and happy

The summer is nearing and that means that many journalists fly on their automatic pilot. Figures, especially huge figures, also go down very well with an audience looking for easy to digest messages, so we could read this week that 200 million or 11 percent of the current mainland Chinese population will be obese somewhere later this century. Even more intriguing I found the news that 26 million Chinese suffer from depressions, two percent of the population, while only ten percent of those 26 million is being treated. That of course is calling for some evangelizing by the pharmaceutical industry.

I’m not sure whether this is good news or bad news. Like many diseases, much depends on the way a disease is defined. Media, doctors and academics thrive on making us worried about all kind of statistical health risks. In a previous live I have dedicated a part of my life on gruesome occupations diseases, caused by asbestos, organic solvents and other killers. I know too much of this work to blame a wrong mindset for all these diseases.
But I do think that two percent of officially depressed people is a pretty good score compared to the score of many developed countries.
While the market for anti-depressives is booming in the west, of course eager pharmaceutical industries wonder how to tap into the Chinese market. According to my observations we see here a nice clash between different cultures
Let me generalize here in a grand way to illustrate some of the ways how Chinese deal with happiness, which differs greatly from the way I was used to that in Europe. In Europe, as religion became much less the centerpiece of society compared to the first 60 years of last century, people have been looking for alternative ways to seek happiness. The promise of the paradise after a hardworking life did not work anymore, and the western world has been seeking for every possible way, including medical treatment, to regain that happiness while they were still living.
Those expectations have been in China traditionally different. Unhappiness, misfortune have been so much part of daily life that being depressed is very much an accepted way of life and not something Chinese would not seek treatment for. Even more, a few times my Chinese friends took me apart. “You are always so happy and optimistic,” they told me. “Have you ever seen a doctor for that?”

I do not want to encourage the pharmaceutical industry to develop medicine against optimism and happiness, but the rather diametrically opposed approach does have severe repercussions for the question whether there is a huge market in China for anti-depressives. Well, in emergencies the sales force of those industries can of course always rely on their own products.

Fons Tuinstra

Books on mental health

politics - New testing grounds for democratic procedures

"No matter how smart we are, we officials have limited information," he says. "The easiest way to avoid mistakes is by having more democratic decisions.

Howard French describes in the International Herald Tribune how Jiang Zhaohua, an ambitious young local politician in Zhejiang province develops democratic ways of governing. While his descriptions of more violent clashes between the ruling class and their citizens in the article are sometimes missing the point, the experiment is worth noting.

Books on democracy

book - Can I have 50 signed copies of your book?


Well, eh, alright then. Seems that my German book is increasingly selling in bulk :-)

life - Back in action

I have been pretty active on the internet in the past days, but too little time to update this blog. It should be better in the upcoming week as I returned to my temporary residence in Brussels after attending a conference of webmasters of the international wage indicator, having too much food and wine, and by kicking off their weblog. (Proxy needed in China). Back in action by tomorrow.

internet - Microsoft's Scobleizer says he is sorry

A week ago he caused an uproar by siding with his company in its decision to censor the MSN Spaces, their weblog service, in banning indecent words like 'democracy' and 'human rights'. Now Scobeleizer says he is sorry:

My wife says I'm wrong.
My son says I'm wrong.
My best friends say I'm wrong.
My book co-author says I'm wrong.
All week long my coworkers
have been coming by and saying I'm wrong.
Dan Gillmor says I'm wrong.
Rebecca MacKinnon says I'm wrong.
Now a bunch of Chinese bloggers
say I'm wrong.
In the face of overwhelming evidence, I admit I'm wrong.
Trying to justify the Chinese MSN word blocker is one of the more boneheaded
things I've done.
Sorry.

This does not mean that Microsoft turns around, yet.