distant ruminations

Last Friday a poster appeared on the wall of our local market informing everyone that it will soon be replaced with a new hospital. That day there were a couple of dozen people standing around reading the poster when I arrived on my beer run. And just as I got there a police car pulled up and a cop and a security guard got out. I just moved on. Nothing to see. Beer to buy. And I did the same on my way out of the market. Well, I just don’t see any sense in unnecessarily attracting the attention of anybody who looks even remotely like “authority”, and it’s pretty much guarunteed that had things turned even just a little bit ugly, or even just a little less than good-looking, I’d find myself in more trouble than I need. Or want. So it wasn’t until the next day that I bothered to have a look at this poster- there were no crowds, no cops, no trouble.

Anyway, today new posters have appeared protesting the planned new. The poster appeals to some city government rule banning the construction of new hospitals within the fourth ring road (or maybe just the east fourth ring road- either way it’s an odd sounding rule) and residents’ concern for their living environment.

Are we in for excitement around here? I hope not. I hope the market is queitly allowed to go on doing business as per usual. It doesn’t strike me as being the best location for a hospital, and besides, if it is necessary to have high-tension power lines running right through the middle of your hospital complex, there’s land on the opposite side of the road that is mostly vacant.

Disturbing news, this. A Chinese student was beaten up in his home in Christchurch early on Wednesday morning by three Pakeha intruders with shaved heads.But I want to see how it’s being reported in New Zealand. I also want to see how it’s being reported in Chinese. Anyway, a quick search of the NZ Herald turns up this NZPA article which seems to confirm the details reported in that Xinhua article on china.org.cn. The Press has a more detailed report, naturally, being the local Christchurch paper.

So, the facts that the three reports I’ve found so far seem to be: At 5am on Wednesday morning a 22 year old Chinese man studying in Christchurch answered a knock at his door to have three men between the ages of 17 and 23, of European descent and with shaved heads, storm inside and beat him up while yelling racist abuse.

Now, the odd and frustrating thing is that I can’t seem to find a Chinese language report, even though that first report at china.org.cn was attributed to Xinhua. So has this been deemed not safe for domestic consumption? I wouldn’t think so, because google seems to turn up plenty of old reports on Chinese students getting in trouble in New Zealand. Still, maybe I’ve got my search terms all wrong. After all, I’m not used to googling in Chinese. Baidu wasn’t much better so I changed the search to 新西兰 and so far all I’ve gotten is a reminder of the China-NZ basketball game last night, which apparently China won. lzh can’t find anything either, so it seems at this stage that there just plain isn’t a Chinese version of the story.

So, I’m trying skykiwi, but for some reason it seems to be blocked. So blocked that not even anonymouse will open it. Have to try another proxy. Ah, finally. Now I have to figure out how to find this story, assuming that anybody has bothered to write about it on skykiwi. Well there is a headline, but following it gets me nothing. So I clicked on the Christchurch button, and….. once again, nothing. But that Christchurch page does tell us this:

�人学生�到入室侵袭以���攻击

警方正在调查一起22å²?的中国学生被三å??头带é?¢å…·çš„白人入室行凶，殴打致伤，并å?£å‡ºä¾®è¾±æ€§è¯?汇，其中ä¸?泛有ç§?æ—?歧视的语言。（详细内容…）

Chinese student suffers home invasion and racist assault

The Police are investigating the home invasion and assault on a 22-year old Chinese student by three masked white men, injuring him, and shouting insulting words, among which was some racially discriminatory language.

Now, I can’t figure out this ä¸?æ³›, it’s not in the dictionary or IME and I just can’t figure it out.

Anyway, it’s a pity that clicking on that leads to an empty page, because that’s the only sample I can find of any reporting of this incident in Chinese. I don’t know if it’s a problem with the proxy or with skykiwi. I also can’t figure out why skykiwi is so securely blocked that most proxies won’t open. Are Chinese in New Zealand so extremely counter-revolutionary as to attract such heavy blocking? That might explain why Xinhua hasn’t released a Chinese language report on this yet…

Quickly scanning through the skykiwi bbs, haven’t found any talk about this incident yet, but I have found this charming topic.Note: You may have to fiddle with the character encoding for that one.

Well, I’m giving up. I’m surprised that a racially motivated attack on a Chinese student in New Zealand has generated such little coverage or discussion.

Roubaozi left us a bottle of wine. He was given it, but couldn’t take it home because of the unprocessed wood box it was in. Well, he could’ve left the box behind and just taken the bottle, but no, he just gave us the wine.

So the wine is called Hope-Full. It claims to be malbec brewed in 1996 in Mendoza, Argentina. Actaually, the label on the bottle says it is “Elaborado y Embotellado en Origen por Simonassi Lyon S.A.” and gives and address in Rama Caida, San Rafael, Mendoza.

Alright, so I have established that a company called Simonassi Lyon S.A. does produce malbec at exactly the address printed on the bottle. But the malbec on their website looks nothing like the bottle sitting on the desk next to me, and there’s nothing on the site bearing the name “Hope-Full”.

So I have another potential lead to follow: The Chinese company whose name is carved into the lid of the wooden box this wine came in.

Tangent: Wow, I left my tea sitting a bit too long. It’s quite bitter, now. Good.

Seems I found it: 汇ç¦?粮油集团有é™?å…¬å?¸. Now that is a terrible website in atrocious English. Thing is, under product info they list only soybean meal and soybean oil. No wine. In fact, I’ve searched through as much of that site as I can, and can find no mention of either wine or Argentina. And adding ‘malbec’ into that google search dredges up nothing useful. Swapping malbec for Simonassi Lyon SA yields even less.

And so basically I have no idea what it was I drank last night. Well, I know it was dry red wine claiming to hail from Argentina. I know that my first reaction was “Huh? That’s kinda salty!” I know that after that first mouthful it just tasted like any Chinese dry red wine. I know that I reacted to it the way I usually react to red wine: Lots of weird dreams last night, and my head felt oddly heavy but kind of light when I woke up, and although my stomach felt empty, I really could not bear the thought of putting anything more solid than yoghurt into it. And then I had to run for the toilet, and yet the only thing I consumed yesterday that I might not be used to or that was of suspect origin was that wine.

So I found websites for both companies, but I can’t find any connection between the two. So what exactly was in that bottle?

And just because I don’t have enough to worry about: There’s a rather suspicious lump on my skin on my back just at the base of my neck. We’ve been keeping an eye on it for a while now, but it seems to have gotten a little bigger. Going to the hospital early tomorrow morning to get it checked out.

Found some 哈尔滨啤酒å°?麦王/Harbin Beer Wheat King in the fridge at the supermarket at lunchtime, so I bought a few cans thinking I’d try it out. Well, it’s one kuai cheaper than canned Tsingtao, Hapi (Harbin Beer, for the uninitiated) is on my list of drinkable Chinese beers, and it looked interesting….. Of course, I checked the can before putting any in my basket. 3.6% by volume, a little on the weak side, but about average for China. The ingredients listed are water, barely malt, wheat malt, rice and hops, listed in that order. One would assume there was a little yeast involved in there somewhere, too.

Roubaozi’s on his way, and I was feeling a little thirsty, so I thought, why wait, and cracked open a can now. First impression: Well, there’s a little hint of flavour hanging around in the background, but kinda watery. Second impression: Might as well be drinking carbonated water.

Fortunately Lao Ma came over bearing a large case of Yanjing.