The Weekend Picture: Cattle

Highland Cattle, aka Kyloe

Leaning its head slowly and continuously from one side to the other, it’s grazing the pasture, along with four more of its species from across-the-sea, Northwestern Scotland.

Highland Cattle are small, sturdy, and fairly well-tempered animals, usually. The first of them were imported to Germany around 1975.

North Americans and Australians started breeding them in the early 20th century.

In Scotland itself, they have been around for some 200 years.

To watch them grazing is relaxing. If that still doesn’t relax you, imagine you are one yourself.

Too Dangerous to be Defensible?

Consumer safety will remain a topic for a long time to come. If you buy an adjustable office chair from China, choose simple technology – something to wind up manually. Something that, in the worst case, will break your legs.

Southern Metropolis Daily discussed consumer protection in China in connection with Toyota’s RAV4 on May 1, with some background information as to why relevant legislation in China doesn’t seem to work for the consumers’ benefit.

In a completely unrelated case, two lawyers, Tang Jitian and Liu Wei, who represented a Falun Gong practitioner, have had their licenses permanently revoked this month, the New York Times reported on Monday. According to Liu Wei, they weren’t even informed about the questionable move in written form.

Their client, Yang Ming, wasn’t exactly a nobody. He reportedly staged the silent protest surrounding Zhongnanhai in 1999 after which the Chinese leadership went ballistic and launched a wave of arrests, plus an entertaining, but not really funny narrative industry about grannies trying to fly and almost killing themselves in the process, weeping party officials having gone Falun Gong and being visited by comrades who made them repent, and other sunday-school-like movie material. It added some ten to twenty minutes of airtime to CCTV’s  main evening news for many nights after.

That was eleven years ago. But time – and the rule of law, the essential for a constitutional state – don’t seem to matter when it comes to “sensitive” issues. Whenever a case is Falun-Gong-related, China’s tender legal system is turned into a scrapheap – by exactly those who are supposed to defend it. On the other hand,  convenience goods killing unsuspecting users are apparently no big deal (unless they are made in Japan).

The heart of the matter here isn’t if Falun Gong should be legal or banned. Rule of law is the issue.

Which leads me to the question if Mr Zhicheng Hu, an American citizen who has been released after having been held in China for almost a year on charges of misusing trade secrets, is to receive a decent compensation from the Chinese state, or if he shall count himself lucky for being allowed to leave the country at last.

He had been detained in Tianjin in a business dispute over automobile technology. His wife is quoted as saying that Hu was released this month with no charges filed against him.

Consumers won’t be safe in China any time soon. Not before the law itself will be safe.

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Related
Lawyers’ Licenses Revoked, RFA, May 8, 2010
Arrests: Can Chinese Media keep Track, Aug 2, 2009

Their Place in the Next 5-Year Plan

[...] And then Forbes hits an interesting little nail on the head: the Big Lychee’s officials don’t draw attention to these advantages. Out of fearful, obsequious pragmatism (“deference”) they don’t advertise Hong Kong as the bit of China where there is no censorship, thus no persecution for resisting censorship, no favouritism for state companies, no weird legal decisions to undercut foreigners, plus all the YouTube and Facebook you could ever want, and you can incorporate in a day. Unlike you-know-where.

Our local leaders are silent on this. They just sit there awkwardly, too patriotic to say why we’re better, preferring instead to unnerve us all with fatalistic blather about how our only chance is integration and cooperation and partnership, and getting excited only at the prospect of a mention in the next Five Year Plan. [...]

Big Lychee, May 13, 2010

If this looks familiar to you, maybe you’ve been to Hong Kong.

Or, more recently, to Taiwan.

Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan - and where is Singapore?

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Related
Seven Ways Taipei beats Singapore, January 19, 2010
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Obituary: Norbert Taferner, 1940 – 2010

Norbert Taferner, a retired South African civil aviation official, and his wife Paula died in a plane crash in Tripoli, Libya, on Wednesday. Norbert Taferner was known among amateur radio operators as ZS6ANL, and as a presenter of a technical media program on Radio RSA (now Channel Africa) in the 1980s and the early 1990s. Paula and Norbert Taferner were originally both Austrians. He reportedly took the South African citizenship some time since the 1960s while she remained Austrian. Irish author Bree o’Mara also died in the crash.

The only survivor, a nine-year old boy from the Netherlands, was scheduled to be flown back to the Netherlands today.

Garlic Prices: to Buy is to Believe

The National Reform and Development Commission will dispatch investigators to the main production and sales areas of garlic, following a rise in garlic prices from a few Yuan RMB to nine Yuan per kilogram since 2009. The most recent record price, according to Caijing, was at 16 Yuan RMB per kilogram on Monday. The commission cited several reasons for the price rises today (Friday), one being that in the past, prices for garlic had been too low, which had led to a decrease in fields dedicated to its production, which in turn led to scarce supplies. As production was gradually going up again, the price had started to gradually normalize. Prices for green beans and similar products had also risen, due to unusual weather conditions. But an official with the commission also conceded that it couldn’t be ruled out that some people took the opportunity of malicious speculation, by hoarding and profiteering (也不排除有人借机恶意炒作、囤积居奇). The garlic madness had created many millionaires (“疯狂的大蒜”已造就了不少千万富翁).

China’s consumer price index (CPI) rose 2.8 per cent in April which brought additional attention to the rise in garlic prices, writes Caijing.

Specialists had recently been sent to Guangdong and Yunnan provinces with instructions to handle prices of san-qi products, Enorth (Tianjin) reports. “San-qi” or “3-7″ (三七植物) commonly refers to panax pseudoginseng and appears to include garlic in this context as garlic contains allicin, which is reported to have antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal propertiesis. Garlic is also frequently believed to be a cure against swine flu. Jennifer LaRue Huget, a – lay – medical blogger with the Washington Post, writes that while garlic is probably useful in reducing the length or severity of a cold, there’s nothing to show that garlic has any power over influenza, of the H1N1 variety or any other.

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Related
Two Visits to Baosheng Dadi, May 13, 2010

Taiwan: unknown Tourism Destination?

An Island's Hidden Beauty

“Most guests who have been to Taiwan and to China say that Taiwan is so much better. Taiwan has many advantages, but doesn’t know how to sell that. What did the Taiwanese tourism office, for example, choose as its logo? Taipei 101. Shanghai has some fifty similar towers at its waterfront. I can’t see how a new building can be the main selling point for the island? On the other hand, Taiwan has some 250 mountains with an altitude of more than 300 meters, with snow on the tallest ones, people are friendly – but nobody knows that! Everyone who comes here is pleasantly surprised. [...]

Taiwan is a beautiful island, and I’ve sent people around the island who had a great holiday. Unfortunately, nobody here has thought about how to market tourism. One needs to find out what the Germans, Americans, or Japanese want when they come here.“

Jürgen Klemm, Westin Taipei, in an interview with Taiwan Heute, January 2010.

Wen Jiabao: some deeper causes

Chinese Chief State Councillor Wen Jiabao (温家宝), according to Phoneix TV on Thursday, quoted by Southern Metropolis Daily, told media that besides stronger security measures,  improved efforts to address long-standing social concerns were needed to address the deeper causes (解决造成问题的深层次的原因) of a series of school attacks in recent weeks:

“The government also gives high priority to several cases of homicide, causing casualties among children, which deeply saddens us, and to the tragedy it brings to their families. Besides taking strong security measures, we must also pay attention to solving some deeper causes, including some social contradictions, and resolving disputes, strengthening mediation at the grassroots – all this we are working on. I believe that we can give not only children, but everyone, a harmonious, safe environment.”

政府也高度重视，对于几起凶杀案，造成的儿童的伤亡，心里感到非常难过，对于他们家庭出现的这种不幸，心里也感到非常的难过。我们除了采取强有力的治安措 施之外，我们还要注意解决造成这些问题的一些深层次的原因，包括处理一些社会矛盾，化解纠纷，加强基层的调解作用，这些工作我们都在努力去做。我想一个和 谐、安全的环境，不仅会给孩子们，而且应该给每一个人，我们一定能够做到这一点。

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Related
Make-or-Break Time, January 4, 2010
Wartime Childhood, Sept 7, 2009

Update/Related
Symptom of Progress, China Digital Times, May 13, 2010
The Criminal should be Shot on the Spot, Global Times, May 10, 2010

Taipei: Two Visits to Baosheng Dadi

Incumbent Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌, KMT) announced on Wednesday that he would seek re-election in municipal elections on November 27. He was second at the venue, Taipei’s Baoan Temple, after Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), former DPP prime minister, who had announced his candidacy there in March. Hau dismissed speculation that he chose the temple to challenge Su.

On March 3, Su Tseng-chang had vowed before the Gods that he would speak the truth.

The temple worships the Great Emperor Protecting Life (保生大帝), a divine physician. Apple Daily suggested in March that Su chose the Baoan Temple to announce his candidacy because the Great Emperor Protecting Life had many followers in his native Pingtung County.

Hau Lung-bin, too, paid his respects to the Great Emperor, offering three sticks of incense.

After all, who wouldn’t want a long, healthy life? And who wouldn’t always speak the truth?

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Related
Baosheng Dadi, Wikipedia