the right to breastfeed
Posted by wangbo in Chinese study, news, tilting at windmills on September 28, 2008
The only comment I have on this piece is that it’s interesting. 新京报/The Beijing News’ Zhu Yan reports on the case of a mother suing her husband for the right to breastfeed their son:
孩子被抱走 母亲讨哺乳权
Child taken away, mother demands right to breastfeed
本市首例母亲索要哺乳权案开庭
Court convenes on this city’s first case of mother demanding right to breastfeed
儿子才半岁就被父亲两次抱走，36岁的母亲遍寻不到孩子，一纸诉状交到了法院，讨要对儿子的哺乳权。昨日上午，怀柔法院开庭审理了这起本市首例母亲索要哺乳权案。
The son had been taken away by his father twice by the time he was six months old. His 36 year old mother searched everywhere but couldn’t find her child, so filed a plaint at court demanding the right to breastfeed her son. Yesterday morning, Huairou Court convened to hear this city’s first case of a mother demanding the right to breastfeed.
原告李佳说，她和丈夫刘军是在网上认识的。2007年9月结婚，婚后生有一子，如今只有半岁。但在自己怀孕期间， 丈夫长期不回家，今年5月，刘军将儿子带走，并且告诉她“要见儿子，除非离婚”。李佳到处寻找儿子未果。5月17日，李佳终于在刘军妹妹家找到了儿子，当 时家里没人，她迅速抱着孩子离开。7月，刘军以夫妻感情不和向法院提出离婚被驳回。理由是，按照法律孩子在哺乳期内，男方不得提出离婚。9月6日，刘军带 着几个人再次将孩子夺走。李佳多次寻找孩子未果，便将丈夫告上了法院。
The plaintiff Li Jia said she met her husband Liu Jun online. They married in September 2007, then had a son who is now only 6 months old. But when she was pregnant, her husband did not come home for long periods of time, and in May this year, Liu Jun took their son away, telling her “If you want to see your son, we must divorce.” Li Jia went to look for her son, but without result. On May 17, Li Jia finally found her son at Liu Jun’s younger sister’s house, and as there was no-one home at the time, quickly picked up the child and left. In July, Liu Jun filed for divorce in the court on the grounds that husband and wife did not get along well, but was rejected. The reason was that according to the law, when the child is still breastfeeding the husband can not file for divorce. On September 6 Liu Jun took several people with him and once again forcibly took the child away. Li Jia searched for her child several times but with no result, and so sued her husband.
昨日，刘军和李佳法庭相对，双方母亲也都到场。刘军不认为自己抢了孩子，只说“按照农村习俗，孩子满两月后应该挪窝”，所以把孩子带到了母亲家。刘军称，李佳没有工作，无论如何都不会把孩子给她。法庭未当庭宣判。（以上皆为化名）
Yesterday Liu Jun and Li Jia faced each other in court, each with their mothers also present. Liu Jun doesn’t believe he snatched the child, and only said “According to rural custom, when the child is two months old he should move house”, so he took the child to his mother’s house. Liu Jun said, Li Jia has no job, and so there is no way he would give the child to her. The court has yet to rule on this case. (All names above have been changed)
Like I said, interesting.
closing Qianmen
Posted by wangbo in beijing public transport, news on September 28, 2008
How odd. They’re closing Qianmen subway station for the holiday, and the Tiananmen East and West stations may also close temporarily. No reason for the closure is given in that article, but I assume they’re concerned about safety, given the large crowds likely to descend on the Square over the National Day holiday.
地铁前门站明起封闭五天
Qianmen subway station closed for five days from tomorrow
9月29日至10月3日，东北、东南口作过街通道使用
From September 29 to October 3 the northeast and southeast exits will be used as a pedestrian underpass
明天起到10月3日期间，地铁前门站封闭。
From tomorrow to October 3, Qianmen subway station will be closed.
北京市地铁运营公司昨日消息，根据上级指示，9月29日至10月3日，地铁前门站封闭、列车在该站通过不停车。该站东北口、东南口通道开放，作为过街通道使用。另外，天安门东站、天安门西站也随时准备根据通知，采取临时封站措施，地铁公司请各位乘客给予谅解。
Yesterday Beijing Subway Company announced that, in accordance with instructions from higher levels, from September 29 to October 3 Qianmen subway station would be closed and trains will not stop there. The passage between the station’s northeast and southeast exits will be open and used as a pedestrian underpass. Also, Tiananmen East station and Tiananmen west station will be prepared to close temporarily when notified at any time. The subway company asks passengers for their understanding.
Like I said, no reason is given, but if you’ve ever seen the size of the crowds on the Square during national holidays, you can imagine the pressure and consequent safety concerns those subway stations are likely to suffer if they remain open. Well, that’s my best guess as to the likely reason for this…..
Instant update: Should’ve read the whole paper. Here’s a rather general article mentioning the extension of Olympic period security checks at parks and scenic spots through the National Day Golden Week. Funnily enough, Tiananmen Square is on the list…. And this one is specifically about Dashilan’r. Not just Olympic period security checks, but if the number of people on the Dashilan’r pedestrian street exceeds 10,000, the western entrance may be temporarily closed. It also briefly mentions the existence of those same security checks at the north end of Qianmen Dajie.
So I’m guessing all this is about security in the sense of keeping dangerous people and objects away from large crowds and attractive targets, and public safety in the sense of keeping crowds to manageable levels to avoid the kind of risks oversized crowds entail. But this is just me guessing.
hijacked days
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on September 27, 2008
And no, the title does not refer to the Chinese practice of working a weekend to make up for the holiday.
Had lunch with a few colleagues yesterday. Nothing remarkable in that, there’s a group of us who often hang out. But we took a table outside T’s favourite Muslim restaurant. T’s easy to please: If it’s cheap and has noodles and beer, he’s happy. Cheap, in this case, comes with a downside: Even though it’s a Muslim restaurant and Muslim restaurants are usually cleaner than infidel restaurants of similar price/quality, this one isn’t. It’s a low down, dirty, dive. In fact, that little corner, Pandaomiao, on the northeast corner of BeiGongDa, looks more like an old lower working class quarter of Taiyuan than anywhere in Beijing. But that’s ok, T eats there often, I’ve eaten there several times, and neither of us has ever suffered any ill effects. And I’ve heard no complaints from Roubaozi or D, either.
It was nice, though, when one of our students, who happened to be passing by, stopped over at our table to warn us that the food wasn’t necessarily very clean. We told him we were well aware of that and were quite happy about it.
Roubaozi and D had to run off to class, and when they left T and I sat back and relaxed into our Friday lunch routine. Empty bottles piled up, many yarns were spun, the afternoon wore on. That would be fine, except that the local toilet is probably one of the very, very few shallow concrete trench jobbies left within the Fourth Ring. Not normally a problem for me, no matter how bad the toilets may get in this city, I’ve still used worse. But somehow between my last visit to this restaurant (which was at least a month ago, I’ll admit, if not two), the local men had somehow gotten really, really lazy.
I mean, really lazy.
The men’s side of that toilet now has a clear patch of floor just inside the door measuring at most two square metres. The rest of the floor is covered in crystallised urea. I kid you not.
And of course, once you’ve broken the seal (something T delayed as long as was humanly possible)…..
My second trip to the toilet got me the confirmation I didn’t need: A security guard (from the BeiGongDa East Gate, no doubt. Go BeiGongDa! Defend that reputation!) walked just inside the door and turned 90 degrees so he was facing the crystallised urea and….
….well, added to it, as if you needed to be told.
Well, anyways, apart from the rather primitive public loo 50 metres down the road, I still can’t think of any reason to dislike that restaurant.
Well, we couldn’t sit there all afternoon, and T went about his business while I headed home. But arriving at the front door of our building, I parked and locked my bike, pulled the house keys out, and
OH
SHIT
!
No swipe card for the front door!
When foreign teachers at this university are issued their keys, the swipe card comes hung on the key ring. Trouble is, that thin sliver of plastic holding card to key ring breaks easily, and had done. I’d been very careful, as I almost always am, to keep the card with my keys, but obviously somehow it had fallen out of my pocket somewhere. It was nowhere on the ground behind me. Obvious place to check: The public loo I had stopped in on the way home. Nope. The restaurant. Nope. Shit. Where then? Before the restaurant I’d been at the office, check there. No. Bank. No. Security guard even checked with the managers and came with me to examine where I’d parked my bike. Shit out of luck. Bugger. Oh wait, I’d stopped at the East Gate waiting for Roubaozi, and had pulled my phone out of the same pocket. Whip through the grass I’d been standing next to and check with the guard- who remembered seeing me waiting there- and no.
I’d retraced all my steps and searched everywhere I could search, and no luck. Only one thing to do now, and that is go to the front desk of the Foreign Students Dorm (they also manage foreign teachers’ accomodation) and ask for a new card. 50 kuai and an admonition to not put the card on my key ring (BUT YOU PUT IT ON MY KEY RING!) later, and I have a new card and can go home.
And so what was left of my Friday afternoon was hijacked by my own carelessness. Stupid thing is I’m almost never careless like that- lzh got mad at me when I told her this story and yelled at me for losing stuff all the time. I said, oh yeah, what have I lost? The sipe card for the door. Yeah, and? The swipe card for the door…. And? Oh, right. Oh well, gotta screw up once in a while.
Then today, of course, was a Monday timetable to make up for Monday being included in the National Day holiday. Monday’s my busiest day, but transferred to a weekend? Media studies. Still, watching the same film four times in a row can be surprisingly exhausting. Funnily enough, attendance at the afternoon classes was in the 9 or 10 range (out of 30+). Tomorrow’s classes have been cancelled or postponed (although the students seem to interpret postponement as cancellation) so I get an extra day off, which I am very, very much looking forward to.
Funny thing is, the first years are still showing up in full force…. as far as I can tell. I don’t have first years on a Monday, but those first year classes that were happening near me where packed full. Ah, freshers. They’ll lose their naive, eager earnestness soon enough. For now, it’s sweet to observe.
And with a bit of luck (and based on past experience, this bit of luck should happen) lzh will get off work at midday tomorrow, allowing us to join the crush of Yanqingren heading home for the holiday. See, a crowd of Yanqingren heading home is no hassle, because everybody knows how everything works already. A crowd of tourists, which is what we’ll most likely see if we have to wait till Monday, is far more trouble.
wet
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing, random, weather on September 24, 2008
Such a wet autumn! Strange. I would’ve expected the weather to be slowly drying out, but no, the rain keeps coming.
Oh no, I’m not complaining. Rain is good. Any kind of precipitation is good in the parched north. Well, almost. Precipitation that causes no damage is good. Hail would be bad, as it tends to smash things up, and that’s bad.
But I’m not sure this autumn rain is all good. I mean, an awful lot of people have crops to be harvesting right about now. I’m not sure exactly how rain affects the harvest, but in past National Day holidays up in Yanqing I’ve noticed rain tends to mean people sitting around the house instead of heading out to the fields to bring in the corn.
And well, Wednesday afternoon, and Prince Roy seems to have pried open quite a can of worms, and three quarters of my weekly teaching-load is done… Oh, wait, not this week. Catch-up classes for the National Day break this weekend. Damn. Saturday is a Monday meaning I have my biggest day twice this week. But never fear- I have a cunning plan. I have in my possession a film which is directly relevant to the theme chapter we’re up to and which should be good for sparking some extra discussion. We shall see.
Enough of this silly rambling.
good news and infuriating news
I was going to translate this good news in 新京报/The Beijing News: The completion and opening of the New State Highway 110. That’s good because it means passenger and freight transport between Beijing and parts northwest will be separated, which will hopefully relieve traffic pressure on the Badaling Expressway.
Trouble is I just discovered that half of this post just disappeared into the ether. Most, most, most irritating considering the amount of time and effort that took. Well, not half, but the final dozen paragraphs, everything from the caption of the second photo on. Infuriating.
oops….
Posted by wangbo in Chinese study on September 20, 2008
Forgot to mention nciku. I dunno, it’s a little strange, but I’m not complaining. Both the campus network and my ability to access nciku improved dramatically over the summer. At first I assumed it was the lack of students playing games, downloading illegal movies, and generally clogging the pipes, but this relatively decent access- to nciku most notably, but the big, wide world in general- has continued after the start of semester.
Easier access and the fact that nciku has been working hard to improve their service mean I’m pretty happy. Go nciku!
using a lens to export China
Posted by wangbo in Chinese study on September 20, 2008
ESWN has a link in the recommended readings- Greater China-Chinese section which I found interesting. Long, but interesting. It’s a Southern Weekend article entitled “Using a Lens to Export “China”“, by Li Nan and Zhu Youke, and it comes with a couple of cool photos from the early 80s.
用镜头出口“中国”
Using a Lens to Export China
发自广州 2008-09-17 17:34:21
By Li Nan and Zhu Youke, from Guangzhou
2008年9月7日，在广东美术馆多功能厅，刘香成先生与第三届广州三年展策展人、印度裔英国艺术家萨拉·马哈拉吉现场对话。并播映刘香成的“透过图象思考”的中国图片，没有解说，但配了背景音乐，都是各个时期烙印最深的旋律，看后有一种深深的感动。
On September 7, 2008 in the multi-media hall of Guangdong Museum of Art, Mr Liu Heung Shing and curator of the Third Guangzhou Triennial, British artists of Indian descent Sarat Maharaj held a dialogue. Although the broadcast of the photographs of China from Liu Heung Shing’s “Thinking Through Images” had no explanation, but the music matched with the backdrop, was all the most deeply branded melodies of each period, and watching left one very deeply moved.
two randomnesses
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing, random on September 18, 2008
One: Did I accidentally rip off No. 1 Restaurant last night? Hehehehe…. oops. No, actually, I don’t think so. The waitress said 65 kuai. We were sitting outside under a string of lights they said was broken (we said ‘so why haven’t you fixed it?’, they said, ‘不好意思 (sorry/embarrassed)’, I won’t go into what I was thinking), and so the light wasn’t good, but I opened my wallet and pulled out what for all the world looked, in the poor light, like a 50, a 10 and a 5. Now, my maths ain’t great, but that adds up to 65 in my brain. The waitress inspected the notes and walked away, apparently satisfied. But at least three times through the course of the meal a more senior staff member came up to our table to inquire as to whether we had handed over two tenners or a 50 and a 10. Now, I stuck to my guns: “I gave you a 50, a 10 and a 5”, and insisted on that. No way was I backing down. First of all, the waitress had inspected and then accepted the notes. So if there’s a problem, it’s with the waitress, not me. I handed over what I believed to be the correct amount in good faith, she accepted that. Secondly, how do I know the restaurant is not trying to con me into covering some loss from some other table earlier in the night? It’s possible. The old switcheroo in which a fake note mistakenly accepted earlier in the evening is switched for a genuine one provided later by an honest customer, the honest customer thereby being scammed into taking the restaurant’s loss, is not unknown, and there are other possibilities of similar scams. Basically, it boils down to my word against theirs, and my attitude is I handed you what I believed to be the correct amount and the waitress inspected and then accepted my money, therefore it’s all good. Had I accidentally handed over 2 tenners- which would have been easy to do considering the poor light around our table- the waitress could’ve and should’ve easily raised the issue right then and there and I would’ve happily and apologetically offered the correct amount of money.
Clarifications: There was a group of us, lzh, myself and two of my colleagues, and we were eating at the outside seating the BeiGongDa No. 1 Restaurant set up at the start of summer. They make you pay as you go there, presumably to prevent the very easy possibility of the eat-and-run. That’s how we could have been bugged through the meal about this issue. And secondly, and most importantly: The waitress accepting my money inspected each note individually before accepting it. lzh was present, and therefore any potential ‘holy shit, it’s a foreigner!’ bullshit was irrelevant. And most people manage to communicate it when foreigners have made a mistake with money (common enough among tourists and newbies who haven’t yet figured out how Chinese money works).
But yes, it has bugged me. But I just checked with lzh, who watched me count out and hand over the money, then watched the waitress inspect, count and accept the money, and she says I was in the right and probably they’d broken the fifty with some other table and therefore had a bunch of tenners where the boss thought a fifty was.
2: We just found a good, clean, cheap noodle joint, specialists in 兰州拉面 (Lanzhou-style pulled noodles). Clean restaurant, big bowls of noodles costing 5 kuai and ginormous bowls 6 kuai, Tsingtao for 4 kuai and Yanjing for 3- price differentials at which I decide the extra kuai is worth it for the relative lack of formaldehyde, even if the taste is pretty much the same- and other dishes (we got a couple of cold dishes) for comparably cheap prices. The noodle soup was relatively lacking in beef, but you get what you pay for, and in this day of absurd inflation, your money doesn’t go so far any more. Next time I’ll order that cold beef dish to go with the noodles. But here’s the key:
It hit exactly the spot I was looking for.
See, my appetite took a beating in the early part of the week, probably a side-effect of the cold I caught up in Yanqing over the holiday. Lack of appetite combined with all but one of my lessons being on the top floor of buildings with no lifts and my apartment being on the top floor of a building with no lifts meant that by the time I got out of class this afternoon I was feeling pretty shattered and my thighs were burning. But walking running up the stairs home after that big bowl of noodles I felt fine.
Or in other words: lzh had a bowl of noodles exactly the same size, and by the time she was half way through she was sweating like a pig and complaining about the heat. I felt entirely comfortable even after consuming the entire bowl. Which just confirms in my mind that I was desperately lacking in energy and in desperate need of a heavy dose of carbohydrates.
See, noodles are very heating, and normally the only noodles I can eat in the warmer months are the cold variety, and that at a stretch. Otherwise, I’ll spontaneously combust. But tonight, in spite of the warmth of the weather and size and heat of the bowl of noodles, I felt, and still feel, entirely fine.
Well, I’ll still need a solid breakfast tomorrow and more carbs at lunch before I get back to normal, but those noodles really did exactly the trick I was looking for.
Definitely going back to that noodle joint, though, especially once the weather cools down. It didn’t just hit the needed spot, the noodles were good, real good.
the last closing ceremony
Well, we didn’t see all of last night’s Paralympics closing ceremony. We missed the first 15 or so minutes because we were later leaving the restaurant than planned. But we saw most of it.
And it was good. Less spectacular than the previous three ceremonies, but good. I found it a much calmer ceremony in which spectacle and surreal and drama and music and pomp and circumstance were kept in a balance lacking from the other ceremonies. It was gentle, and that was good.
But London’s eight minutes sucked again. What is it with London? Why did they make themselves look like they’d just escaped the eighties? Is it really going to be London 2012- four years after and 20 years behind Beijing? At least ol’ Boris Johnson managed to remember to shake his counterpart’s hand this time. Then on his way out he stopped to pick some piece of paper out of the sole of his shoe and have a look. What a clown.
But the rest of the ceremony was good, in a gentle, balanced kind of a way. It felt like a relief after the Olympics’ spectacular opening and closing ceremonies and the Paralympics’ awful opening ceremony.
And now it’s all over and on the 20th the Olympic period officially ends and then hopefully everything goes back to normal.
oh no
Along with a variety of other things discussed in the press conference reported on here is the bad, bad news that the odds/evens traffic restrictions will end on September 20. The only positive side of this is that the possibility of future traffic restrictions is still being studied.
Dammit, we’re about to head back to the awful traffic and bad, bad air we had before the Olympics.