a question and a vagrant writer
Just how do you translate book titles? And the titles in question don’t strike me as being those of books that would have been translated into English…. Oh well, I guess there’s always google and baidu and all that lot and probably fruitless search results.
What prompts this question? The vagrant writer. 新京报/The Beijing News has what’s little more than a piece of fluff by by Han Meng about a chronically ill writer who’s spent the last 16 years roaming the countryside gathering materials for books. Two have been published, one’s about to be published, and now he’s off to collect material for more writing in the drought-stricken areas of provinces like Hebei, Henan, and Anhui.
And yes, based on the itty little bit of information in Han’s article, part of me envies him his lifestyle. Apart from the illness, naturally.
Anyway:
“流浪”作家赴旱区农村取材
“Vagrant” writer goes to drought zone villages to collect material
身患“软癌”16年来走访全国200多个农村，已出版两本农民读本
Suffering “soft cancer” travels around over 200 villages across the country for 16 years, already published two farmer’s readers
昨日，48岁的“流浪”作家戴忠金从东直门医院出院，接下来将赴河北、河南、安徽等旱区农村，收集写作素材。在过去16年里，患“软癌”（再生障碍性贫血和溶血性贫血）的戴忠金走访了10多个省市200多个农村，目前已出版两本农民读本。
Yesterday, 48-year old “vagrant” writer Dai Zhongjin checked out of Dongzhimen Hospital and will now head to drought-stricken villages in Hebei, Henan and Anhui to collect material for his writing. Over the past 16 years, the sufferer of “soft cancer” (aplastic anaemia and haemolytic anaemia) Dai Zhongjin has visited over 200 villages in more than 10 provinces and municipalities. To date he has published two farmers’ readers.
戴忠金出生在江苏盱眙县一个农民家庭。他告诉记者，自1992年患病后，他在单位办理了病退手续，开始走访全国各地农村收集写作素材。过去16年里，他走访了10多个省市200多个农村，目前已出版了《新农村新农民读本》和《参选村干部必读》各20万字的农民读本。
Dai Zhongjin was born to a farming family in Xuyi County, Jiangsu. He told your correspondent that when he fell ill in 1992, he went through the formalities of early retirement due to health problems and began to travel around villages across the country collecting material to write about. Over the last 16 years he has visited over 200 villages in more than 10 provincs and municipalities, and to date has published two farmers’ readers of 200 thousand characters each, New Countryside and New Farmers’ Reader and Essential Reading for Village Officials Standing in Elections.
[uh, yeah, that translating book titles thing. Help?]
由于患“软癌”，多年来戴忠金一直在东直门医院进行治疗。他说，今年1月23日，他从医院办理出院手续后，赶赴河北、河南、安徽等省市多个农村，了解农民们的耕种情况，“多数农户反映，因干旱，估计今年庄稼收成不是很好。”
Because he suffers from “soft cancer”, for several years Dai Zhongjin has been receiving treatment at Dongzhimen Hospital. He said that on January 23 this year, he went through the process of checking out of the hospital and quickly went to several villages in provinces like Hebei, Henan and Anhui to get to know the situation farmers face in cultivation. “Many farming families said that because of drought, this year’s harvest probably won’t be so good.”
1月31日，戴忠金因病复发回京。昨日，结束治疗的他再次从东直门医院出院，乘车离京赴河北旱区。
On January 31, because of his illness, Dai Zhongjin returned to Beijing. Yesterday, when his treatment was finished, he once again checked out of Dongzhimen Hospital and took a bus out of Beijing to the drought-stricken area in Hebei.
戴忠金表示，目前他正在修改即将出版的第三本农村读物《新农村新干部读本》，他将在书中花较大篇幅来介绍遇上干旱、洪涝等自然灾害时的应对方法，为村干部支招。
Dai Zhongjin said that at present he was revising his third farmers’ reader, New Countryside and New Cadres’ Reader, which will soon be published. He will devote more space to advising cadres on methods of responding to natural disasters such as drought and floods.
Yet another rough-as-guts translation. Corrections and constructive advice are, as always, welcome.
more shoes, a hit, and an escalation
Posted by wangbo in news, ranting, tilting at windmills on February 6, 2009
Alright, people, this is getting silly. As others have pointed out, it’s one thing for an Iraqi man to throw his shoes at the man responsible for the state his country is in, quite another for people with no direct involvement in the issues they claim to be protesting to go throwing shoes around.
Now it’s Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, but not just a shoe, apparently other objects, too (the escalation). And the thrower is a better shot than that loser in Cambridge, and Mr Ambassador’s shoe-dodging gongfu isn’t as good as Bush’s- apparently he was hit by one of the objects. This article does not identify the shoe-throwers except to say a 35-year old man and a 25-year old woman were arrested. The accompanying video starts with what appears to be some kind of argy-bargy, then the camera flips round to the shoe-thrower, but blacks him out- I can only assume some Swedish law means he can’t be identified. And despite the flag at the end of the video, it certainly seems the people making the noise are shouting in Swedish- although the sound quality isn’t clear and I have to admit I don’t speak Swedish.
Anyway, this really is getting a bit silly. Could everybody please just keep their footwear on and find more intelligent ways to express themselves?
bring on the shoe throwers
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on February 3, 2009
Now, there’s one thing I agree totally with in Jim’s post:
World’s Stupidest Protester Returns to Primary School
Wants to try to get it right the second time around.
Yup. Absolutely.
But there’s an aspect I disagree with. See, I think this world should move to a system of solving international disputes through shoe-dodging competitions. Yes, absolutely. It would, of course, be dangerous- well, for world leaders, at least. It would also require the expense of training large numbers of fit, strong, young men and women in the art of throwing shoes. But that could be arranged.
In fact, I think the UN should organise a team of shoe-throwers, to be called, in the UN’s long tradition of convoluted acronyms, UNSHOTHROTE- United Nations Shoe Throwing Team.
And all national and world leaders should be informed that in order to have their way on the global stage, they will have to learn to dodge shoes flying at high velocities.
The two problems are, of course, that:
- The man Obama replaced set a very high standard of shoe-dodging gongfu; and
- Munatadar al-Zaidi set an equally high standard of shoe-throwing accuracy and velocity. Damn, had those two shoes been thrown at any lesser a shoe-dodger, America would’ve had to deal with its first presidential assassination since 1963.
Therefore I nominate al-Zaidi for first general secretary and chief trainer of UNSHOTHROTE and the man Obama replaced as inaugural trainer of shoe-dodgers.
This is, of course, an entirely serious proposal, and I trust that Ban Ki Moon will set up a work committee to study its implementation. After all, the best solution to solving such disputes as the continued division of the Korean peninsula or Darfur is to have the relevant leaders stand on either side of the “border” or “boundary” and throw shoes at each other. They can settle it the old Navy way: First one to die, loses.
why I’m not overly worried
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on February 1, 2009
No, I’m not really worried right now. There’s a lot of things going on in the world, many of which are bad, but I’m not concerned- not concerned in that I’m not expecting Armageddon to wake me up at dawn tomorrow, I mean.
And what sparked this off was this post at Absurdity, Allegory and China. Something really irked me about it, and looking back and rereading I may well have misread or read into it more than what was there, but nevermind, I reacted the way I did and it got me pondering.
Which shows two things:
- Rereading is always important, especially when what you read provokes a strong reaction; and
- Anything that gets you pondering, whether you agree or disagree, whether it’s right or wrong, is good. The key is that you really do ponder. Reacting is not pondering.
停电
Power’s supposed to go out at 1 and I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with my afternoon….. I could go out explore somewhere….. I recently acquired a few books from a colleague who’s about to leave…. hmmm, decisions…..
one gig
Posted by wangbo in Environment, news on February 1, 2009
Found via Beijing Gourmand, this article reports that two Chinese companies plan to build the world’s largest photovoltaic powerplant. It will be built in the Qaidam Basin in Qinghai, and when it’s completed will have a capacity of one gigawatt. Apparently the current biggest solar photovoltaic powerplant, in California, only manages 550 megawatts.
Ah, China, gotta love that drive to be the world’s biggest at everything (except population).
pollution tax?
Posted by wangbo in Environment, news on February 1, 2009
I started writing this yesterday evening, but I was distracted by too many other things happening around me, the most important being dinner. So I thought, bugger it, hit save and finish it tomorrow. So here I am, but I can’t be arsed finishing the post, I’m just going to put it out there in its only just begun form: Nah, now I’ve gone and updated the whole thing with a translation of a new article.
Is Beijing going to put a pollution tax on vehicles? That seems, at first glance, to be the point of this article. Now, I’m feeling a bit too lazy to translate the whole thing, and it all seems very preliminary anyway, but the article says that the environmental protection bureau is investigating levying a 排污费, what I take to mean an ‘exhaust tax’, on motor vehicles, a tax that would be levied on two bases:
- 机动车排量大小- the volume of the vehicle’s emissions; and
- 尾气排放标准高低- the standard of the vehicle’s exhaust.
Update: Not this year, reports Ma Li in 新京报/The Beijing News:
近日有媒体报道称“北京今年拟开征机动车排污费，实施前将开听证会”，市环保局相关负责人昨天表示，此消息为空穴来风，机动车征收排污费仅是北京将深入研究的一项政策，今年并没有征收的安排。
In recent days there have been media reports saying “Beijing plans to levy an emissions fee on motor vehicles this year. Hearings will be held before the implementation.” The relevant person in charge at the municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said yesterday that this information was an empty rumour and the levying of an emissions fee on motor vehicles was simply a policy that Beijing will research further. Arrangements to levy the fee this year have certainly not been made.
去年奥运会后，北京提出将加强机动车尾气排放管理，深入研究机动车排污费征收政策。市环保局副局长、新闻发言人杜少中表示，这项政策目 前仅是要深入研究，何时出台和征收的方法都还未确定。“环保部曾在全国进行过机动车污染排污费的试点。但由于此项工作比较复杂，所以何时在北京实施收费目 前没有安排。”
After the Olympics last year, Beijing proposed a strengthening of vehicle exhaust management and deeper research into the policy of levying an emissions fee on motor vehicles. Vice-director and spokesperson of the municipal Environmental Protection Bureau Du Shaozhong said this policy is only undergoing deeper research and it has not yet been decided when it will be announced or how it will be levied. “The Ministry of Environmental Protection has carried out pilot projects for the levying of a fee for the emission of pollution by motor vehicles around the country, but because this work is relatively complicated, at present it has not been decided when to levy this fee in Beijing.”
他表示，今年北京对机动车的治理将以“黄标车”的更新淘汰为重点，以经济鼓励的手段促进这些高排放的老旧车辆报废或退出北京，目前“黄标车”的淘汰工作比较顺利，截至春节前，已经淘汰576辆。
He said that this year the key point for motor vehicle management in Beijing was the renewal and elimination of “yellow sticker vehicles”, using the method of economic encouragement to promote the scrapping or moving out of Beijing of these old, high-emissions vehicles. Currently the work of elimination of “yellow sticker vehicles” was relatively successful, with 576 vehicles having been eliminated before Spring Festival.
1998年，杭州、郑州、吉林三城市曾试点总量排污收费。根据当时规定，小型车辆每辆300元/年、中型车辆每辆500元/年。费用仅收取到2003年6月30日。
In 1998, the three cities of Hangzhou, Zhengzhou and Jilin carried out a pilot project of levying fees on the total amount of emissions. According to the regulations of the time, small vehicles payed 300 yuan per year and medium-sized vehicles 500 yuan per year. The fees were only collected until June 30, 2003.
So, vehicle owners are safe this year (unless, of course, it’s a high-emission “yellow sticker vehicle” they’re driving), but watch out, they’re seriously researching the possibility of levying a “pollution tax” on motor vehicles. Upgrading to a smaller, more efficient, less polluting vehicle might be a good idea.
我发现了
And so I discover that Pyromaniacus pekinensis is an odd beast, largely nocturnal, but not quite…
I don’t think I’ve ever spent a Spring Festival in downtown Beijing since fireworks were allowed within the Fifth Ring Road. Certainly don’t remember any such Spring Festival. This, these last couple of days of the legal holiday, is the closest I’ve come to it. And last night, as darkness fell, the barrage began. And it continued, so far as I could tell (hey, I spent most of the night asleep, as most people usually do), right through till about lunchtime. Then there was a lull through the afternoon, a lull that lasted right up until, oh, about when darkness fell no more than half an hour ago (the longer I take to stop writing, the longer ago the barrage resumed).
Yanqing was much quieter. But then again, Yanqing doesn’t have anywhere near the population density of downtown Beijing, especially out in the countryside. And rural folk are far more pragmatic than their urban cousins. Not that I’m complaining- nine years and ten Spring Festivals in China have put me in that potentially dangerous state where I am inured to the sound of large explosions in close proximity. And the long, constant rumble with occasional closer, sharper cracks is oddly comforting. We, lzh and myself, may not have bought any fireworks ourselves- in fact, the last time I remember buying fireworks was when I lived in Taiyuan, 2001, although I may have bought some in the first Spring Festival I spent in Yanqing, I’m not sure- but our neighbours are doing their bit to make sure the Cow Year goes well.
And there is the seductive smell of kaimoana coming from the kitchen, along with the sound of my wife wrestling a red-hot wok.
Well, obviously, fireworks are best set off at night. But I was a little surprised to hear and see them going right through till lunch time. Actually, I have to admit to being a little surprised at the ferocity of last night’s barrage- and tonight’s looks set to match that. But then again, as I already said, I have not yet spent a Spring Festival in downtown Beijing since fireworks were allowed within the Fifth Ring Road.
Not that the former ban ever stopped those truly determined to Blow Shit Up, of course.
Still, nothing I’ve seen up here in the arid north can compare to what I experienced in Yangshuo as the clock ticked over from 11:59pm, January 31, 1999, or in Changsha at the Spring Festival immediately afterwards. Of course, those memories are undoubtedly augmented by my then recent arrival in China, the passage of time, and Changsha’s particular place in my heart, but even so…. There is the simple fact that in Yangshuo that night all the revellers gathered into tight group hugs on the tables as shrapnel bounced off the backs of those of us in the outer rings, and when the barrage eventually stopped, we could not see the other side of West Street, the smoke was so thick. Changsha at Spring Festival did not have quite the same intensity-of-proximity, but offered instead an intensity of sheer volume. Volume as in the sheer amount of explosives demonstrated and the explosive power available to ordinary citizens for ridiculously low prices. Not once since I left Changsha have I seen repeated bright flashes originating far off in the distance and illuminating the whole sky followed countable seconds later by a deep boom.
But for the third time this evening I’m hearing what sounds a hell of a lot like semi-automatic rifle fire….
Well, the writing of this post was interrupted by the consumption of the source of that “seductive smell of kaimoana”, and now I’m ordered to wash up. Better get to it.
Sorry to put another aimless ramble out there, but I’m inclined to think that inspiration is half sought for and half given. If you don’t write, the muse will leave you, and sometimes you have to just start writing from whatever blocked-in position you find yourself in just to keep the muse’s attention. Fireworks and the memories they set off are an easy option this time of year.
Heheheheh…. When I was in Taiyuan I turned 25. An older, wiser friend told me, “25 is a good age- you’re young enough to do stupid shit and old enough to know better.” I took advantage of that maxim. That Spring Festival I stocked up on fireworks- I had a prized 10,000-cracker roll which I took to said friend’s house to enjoy with him and his kids (13-year-old twins at the time, and yes, I was saving that roll of crackers for good friends). I also spent an evening or two shooting mortars off my balcony- and came close to damaging my left eye when one mortar blew the bottom out of the tube and so didn’t shoot as high as it should’ve, giving me a facefull of sparks when it exploded maybe two feet above me as I was looking right at it. At a party hosted the preceding Christmas by the missionaries foreign teachers at the fancy school down at Jinci, I’d won a teddy bear with a demonic tendency to launch into the most irritating elevator muzak as soon as it was moved- won? No, deliberately lost the game to claim said teddy so I could remove the offending piece of technology and silence the bloody thing. And then that Spring Festival I took that teddy bear down to my school’s sports field expanse of dirt, stuffed it with a 500-cracker roll, doused it in baijiu to make sure, lit the fuse, and ran like hell- just as I had promised the missionary teacher I had won it from. Like my friend said, 25: Young enough to still do stupid shit, old enough to know better.
I’m now facing 33, with a wife bemoaning her proximity, from the other end, to 30 (actually, her birthday is two days before Lantern Festival, and we’re pretty much equidistant from 30). My fireworking is a lot more safety-conscious these days. Me and my father in law, we’ve got it worked out. He selects the fireworks, places them, and steps back to a safe distance. I work my fuse-lighting magic and, as soon as I see sparks, run like hell- and my “run like hell” is scouted out and planned before I even consider lighting the fuse. We have fun together.
And regards that opening comment about “Pyromaniacus pekinensis”: I strongly suspect that had I been in my hometown, as in the city in which I was born and mostly raised, on November 6, this post would’ve opened:
“And so I realise, for the umpteenth time, that Pyromaniacus wellingtonensis is a particularly stupid beast that more rational beings would’ve assumed had won a diamond-studded platinum Darwin Award by making itself extinct a long time ago were it not for the foolish, blind luck of the terminally idiotic…”
And I base that on my childhood and youth in Wellington, marked every year at the end of October and the early part of November by yet more stories of complete halfwits doing abominably stupid things with fireworks.
I mean, it’s one thing to blow up a teddy bear; it’s a whole other thing to deliberately damage another living thing just to get your jollies. Or start a bushfire just because it’s Guy Fawke’s.
But how can one be a complete halfwit? Surely the ‘complete’ and the ‘half-‘ negate each other?
Which reminds me of something that has always puzzled me about China: How is it that Spring Festival fireworks can be set off in such intensity over such an extended period with apparently so much less damage than is comparatively caused in New Zealand by Guy Fawke’s? (and yes, I am very well aware that Spring Festival brings many a call for the ambulance- 新京报 today had a report about a child injured by a manhole cover sent flying by the explosion set off by fireworks of gas captured in the well below the manhole cover, and that’s certainly not the first I’ve heard of such incidents) Or, how is is that Chinese dogs are so much better socialised than their Kiwi counterparts, despite the apparent lack of proper training or ‘animal rights’ at this end of the Pacific?
Alright, I think I’ve run out of things to ramble, for the time being.
back
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on January 29, 2009
Back a couple of days before the end of the holiday, and walking from the taxi to our apartment I thought, wow, it’s hot. Of course, I was dressed for Yanqing, and rural Yanqing at that. I mean, I had the same problem at Laogu’s apartment in the county town yesterday.
Now we’re just waiting for the water to heat up so we can finally have a shower.
And the trip back was surprisingly painless. I say surprisingly, because getting into the county town to visit Laogu and Laogufu yesterday meant standing by the side of the highway for at least half an hour before we could get a ride. When the public bus finally came, it was too crowded to get on- you know a bus is way overcrowded when Chinese people refuse to even attempt boarding it. Then about 15 minutes after that a miandi with space finally arrived. There were two problems here: The sheer number of people trying to get to relatives’ houses in other parts of the county to pay their New Year visits (a compulsory part of the celebrations is visiting all your relatives) and the lack of buses and miandi. One bus every half hour is simply not enough on Yanqing’s rural bus routes, and the advent of public transport IC cards has killed off a lot of the demand for miandi.
Anyway, today we managed to get a miandi pretty quickly, and I was too tired to object to lzh jumping the queue. And then the other advantage of coming back early: There weren’t many people waiting for the 919 back into Beijing. Instead of a massive queue winding its way out of the bus station and down the road, there were maybe 100 people at the most, allowing us to get on a bus super-fast with minimum hassle.
And that water should be just about hot enough…
初一
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on January 26, 2009
Well, we did our best to keep Nian away last night, and it seems to have worked.
And I was right: Culinary magic.
And we set off a few more fireworks this morning, just to make sure.
And the Spring Festival Gala- well, yes and no. lzh’s first reaction was that it was like the opening ceremony of the Olympics, and it certainly did have a bit of that about it. This was both good and bad. It felt a bit ‘been there, done that’, but it also spiced up what quite likely would’ve been yawn-inducing song-and-dance numbers with a certain element of the surreal and psychedelic- I’m thinking particularly the forest scene.
On the whole, though, I found it rather bland, but with a few bright spots.
The opening song-and-dance set the mood for the whole thing: Technically brilliant, but just like every year, like drinking weak, cheap tea when you can see there’s a pot of perfectly good Longjing sitting right there. Jiang Kun’s (姜昆) triumphant return continued that. His crosstalk raised the occasional giggle or snicker, but had only one really laughable line, the one that went along the lines of “30年前又一个老婆一大堆孩子,现在有一个孩子…. 还是一个老婆. (30 years ago you had one wife and a whole lot of kids, now you have one child and….. still only one wife)”
And Jay Zhou/周杰伦 and Song Zuying/宋祖英? Well, I’m not a fan of either, but I was expecting more than just tacking Song onto the end of Jay’s song.
But I did find most of the skits and crosstalks to be pretty good. Well, the Taipei vs. Beijing 团团圆圆 crosstalk was a bit messy, and I could’ve lived without the “Lost my ticket to the opening ceremony” skit’s sudden descent into weepy-eyed nationalism, and the submarine?… yeah. But on the whole, pretty good.
Zhao Benshan’s piece was quite well done- certainly better than last year’s. Perhaps the Zhao Benshan/Song Dandan format was getting a little tired? Anyway, enjoyed that one. The security guard skit reminded me of Monty Python somehow. Perhaps it was the slight note of the absurd combined with the taller guy’s John Cleese-like ability to send limbs apparently made of rubber in a million different directions as he collapses in a lump with a luch of sheer stunned guppyness on his face. Ma Dong’s (马东)’s crosstalk featuring everybody’s favourite Laowai Mark Rowswell/大山 I have to see I really enjoyed. And much as us lesser Laowai love to loathe 大山, you’ve got to admit it, he’s a damn good crosstalk performer. I particularly liked his “我是国外出生的,外甥,所以叫他舅舅.” or words to that effect. Uh, no, I won’t attempt to translate that line. Instant update: I forgot to mention Feng Gong/冯巩, who also did a great job.
Anyways, on the whole the gala was more or less as I expected it to be- large stretches I didn’t much like but didn’t loathe, with a few bright spots that I enjoyed.
And then, of course, we went outside to make sure Nian knew he wasn’t welcome. Ba and I have this down to a fine routine. I’m given a lit cigarette- best thing for lighting fuses, it’s small and isn’t affected by the wind- Ba selects the fireworks, exposes the fuse and places them, then retreats to safety. I work my fuse-lighting magic then run like hell (some of those fuses, especially on strings of crackers, are very short, and more than a few occasions I’ve had crackers start exploding while my hand is still held up to the fuse, or shrapnel hitting my back just as I turn to run). Nian scared off, we retreated to the warmth of the kang.
This morning, as I said, we set off a few more fireworks just to make sure. After breakfast we did the rounds of the aunts and uncles, then just after we got back, I bunch of cousins, aunts and uncles showed up. All the greetings and presents were exchanged. I’ve found myself with a quiet patch, which is how I can be online.
And a discovery: before we left this morning there was a bit of downtime in which I found some Henan Opera/豫剧/yùjù on CCTV 10 (I think it was 10- the opera channel, anyways), and I was pleasantly surprised. At first I thought it was 黄梅戏/huángméixì, it was so much more down to earth and easier to understand than the ‘regular’ Chinese opera. But no, lzh corrected me. And I enjoyed it- it was easy to follow and with plenty of comedy, physical and verbal, through the story. Think I might see what more I can learn of both yùjù and huángméixì.
Seems the wind is picking up again, and somewhere off in the distance I’m hearing snatches of the rhythm section of the village Yangge troupe. I’m hoping they make their way down to our corner of the village, I like watching Yangge.