|
whatever7 posted:
One question I have for you, what do you mean 3rd world poor countries are worse off than 20 years ago? I think some countries have certainly gotten worse but others have improved dramatically. It's more or less been a reshuffling of the economic deck. Prior to your 20 year mark there were way more small action guerilla conflicts going on globally due to the cold war. So i'd say those 3rd world countries caught in the middle were far worse off in the aftermath even after the end of the USSR.
|
# ? Jun 15, 2012 05:08 |
|
|
# ? May 21, 2024 19:04 |
|
Raenir Salazar posted:On a semi related note one person had said he hoped one day soon "the chinese people will have had enough" regarding dissidents, which I felt was naive thinking considering how disastrous popular uprisings had been for China in the past (Taiping anyone?). Would my reasoning be somewhat accurate in my supposition that a solid majority probably are fine with the government so long as it stays good on its promise to bring them jobs/economic growth and that the 'police excesses' are highly unlikely to; individually nor accumulatively going to result spontaneously in another 1911? And that the things that *may* result in it are Tom Clancyesque levels of contrived stupidity that the central gov't would never do/let happen in real life**?
|
# ? Jun 15, 2012 05:12 |
|
Typo posted:Environmental issues is probably the one issue which could and does result in popular protests across all segments of society. I was listening to Sinica when I was in China (hehe) and I pretty much agree with them when they stated the one thing which could get the Chinese people onto the streets is if they realize the rice they are eating are poisoned.
|
# ? Jun 15, 2012 05:50 |
|
So there are some more details about the tallest skyscraper in the world being built in 6 months. http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2012/06/15/build-the-worlds-tallest-building-in-nine-months-sure-why-not/
|
# ? Jun 15, 2012 08:53 |
|
Throatwarbler posted:So there are some more details about the tallest skyscraper in the world being built in 6 months.
|
# ? Jun 15, 2012 09:46 |
|
Don't want to interrupt you guys, but does anyone here have a smartphone in China? I'm able to access facebook and twitter through their mobile clients on my Nokia right now. It's really throwing me off.
|
# ? Jun 15, 2012 10:37 |
|
It would be nice if sites hosting articles about China, which will inevitably attract a lot of interest from within China itself, could avoid using youtube. Not a big deal, and obviously youtube is easy and popular, but it's hardly the only option.
|
# ? Jun 15, 2012 13:53 |
|
SharpyShuffle posted:It would be nice if sites hosting articles about China, which will inevitably attract a lot of interest from within China itself, could avoid using youtube. Not a big deal, and obviously youtube is easy and popular, but it's hardly the only option. Are there other options? I don't think they can use Youku or any of the Chinese ones because they are throttled outside of China (Chinese advertisers don't pay for American eyeballs)?
|
# ? Jun 15, 2012 14:30 |
|
Curved posted:Don't want to interrupt you guys, but does anyone here have a smartphone in China? I'm able to access facebook and twitter through their mobile clients on my Nokia right now. It's really throwing me off. Some carriers block more the others. China Unicom let me connect to google service, China Mobile blocked google market/reader/etc. This is 3 months ago. Also sim card of the same carrier from different province have different settings.
|
# ? Jun 15, 2012 15:20 |
|
Could someone explain to me what's up with the Zhang Ziyi and Bo Xilai thing? Is this a manufactured scandal?
|
# ? Jun 15, 2012 15:37 |
|
Who knows, but this kind of thing wouldn't be a surprise if it was true.
|
# ? Jun 16, 2012 00:43 |
|
shrike82 posted:Could someone explain to me what's up with the Zhang Ziyi and Bo Xilai thing? As for the rest of the media, they either forgot to do their due diligence or just didn't give a poo poo. This is like the holy grail of Chinese gossip stories so who can blame them?
|
# ? Jun 16, 2012 21:43 |
|
french lies posted:You could write them an email today saying that Li Keqiang hosts gay orgies at the Zhongnanhai and they'd print a story about it tomorrow with you cited as a "reliable source". Someone do this please then report back tia
|
# ? Jun 17, 2012 01:40 |
|
french lies posted:It was a bullshit story from day one.
|
# ? Jun 17, 2012 04:56 |
|
Modus Operandi posted:I wouldn't be so quick to call it b.s. either there have been rumors about Zhang Ziyi in the Taiwanese and HK press that go way back to the start of her career. She was rumored to have slept her way to the top and there are more than a few stories about this. It's clear that she has a penchant for chasing uber wealthy men too. Boxun really has an awful track record. To call it awful might be an understatement, even. You may recall their reporting a few months back when they stated that Zhou Yongkang had been planning a coup with Bo and would be ousted from the Politburo "soon". Lo and behold, we're now in June and Zhou is still sitting pretty. I don't see why this latest concoction of theirs should be any more credible, even if she's a slut like you say.
|
# ? Jun 17, 2012 10:10 |
|
Why are there so many posts about who some lovely movie starlet is loving. Who gives a poo poo. Jesus Christ, 99% of movie actresses are just moderately attractive chicks who most people only see after a ton of makeup and photoshop. You'll see a dozen girls hotter than Zhang Ziyi on the subway every day.
|
# ? Jun 17, 2012 17:16 |
|
Throatwarbler posted:Why are there so many posts about who some lovely movie starlet is loving. Who gives a poo poo. Jesus Christ, 99% of movie actresses are just moderately attractive chicks who most people only see after a ton of makeup and photoshop. You'll see a dozen girls hotter than Zhang Ziyi on the subway every day.
|
# ? Jun 17, 2012 17:32 |
|
Alright, getting ready to put some more effort into the Tibet post and flesh it out a bit. Anyone have questions that have been bothering them about Tibet for a while? Let me know and I'll try to address it, or run it past colleagues who can give a good answer.
|
# ? Jun 17, 2012 20:29 |
|
Electro-Boogie Jack posted:Alright, getting ready to put some more effort into the Tibet post and flesh it out a bit. Anyone have questions that have been bothering them about Tibet for a while? Let me know and I'll try to address it, or run it past colleagues who can give a good answer. Is it true that the Tibetan population decrease after the Lama Buddhism became dominate (due to too many young monks)? Is there any Tibetan related casual novel/movie that's actually entertaining? I will take an audiobook. whatever7 fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Jun 17, 2012 |
# ? Jun 17, 2012 23:04 |
|
whatever7 posted:Is it true that the Tibetan population decrease after the Lama Buddhism became dominate (due to too many young monks)? Tibetan Buddhism has been dominant for a pretty long time, I'll run that past someone and see if they have any ideas. Tibetan films- Pema Tseden has had a few critical successes with The Search and Old Dog, but a lot of people find his movies bleak. 7 Years in Tibet is garbage, Kundun is surprisingly good. The Cup is a fun piece about Tibetan monks in India trying to watch the World Cup. Summer Pasture is a good recent docu about a nomad family in Kham, just following them around for one summer. For the political side, The Sun Behind the Clouds is a good one about the 2008 Uprising and the Tibet movement in exile, and short films like Leaving Fear Behind are on youtube. For books, I'm afraid the only ones I know about tend to be political. "Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk" by Palden Gyatso and "Surviving the Dragon" by Arjia Rinpoche are both pretty accessible, I think, and both describe life before the Chinese annexation and then the tensions of living under China leading to escape, and a life in exile. Oh, and the actual book "7 Years in Tibet" is actually ok, if you skip past the first half where he complains about how cold it is and spends months trying to work his way in to Lhasa.
|
# ? Jun 18, 2012 00:01 |
|
Thanks I will check out The Cup. I have seen Kundun.
|
# ? Jun 18, 2012 03:49 |
|
Electro-Boogie Jack posted:Alright, getting ready to put some more effort into the Tibet post and flesh it out a bit. Anyone have questions that have been bothering them about Tibet for a while? Let me know and I'll try to address it, or run it past colleagues who can give a good answer.
|
# ? Jun 18, 2012 04:29 |
|
whatever7 posted:Is it true that the Tibetan population decrease after the Lama Buddhism became dominate (due to too many young monks)? This is very interesting. I had no idea about Tibet but in Mongolia, where Tibetan 'Lamaism' became the dominant religion, the population began a steady decline. It went on until the population had dropped to about 750,000 Mongols and at that point the Chinese felt it safe enough to start colonising. Then the Mongols turned to Russia for help went 'communist'. With the mass banning of Lamaism and closure of monastaries the population started to grow (except that about 50,000 people were 'purged' which is a big chunk of such a small pupulation). Today in Mongolia the population has risen to about 2,500,000 most of which live in the city. Yes THE city. Lamaism is experiencing a resurgence of interest so we'll see of the population starts to drop again. Some Mongols have the idea that Lamaism deliberately reduced the population of Mongolia so that it wouldn't be a threat any more...
|
# ? Jun 18, 2012 08:50 |
|
The ties between Mongolia and Tibet is interesting. I believe it was the Mongols that created the title of Dalai Lama.
|
# ? Jun 18, 2012 08:54 |
|
Ronald Spiers posted:The ties between Mongolia and Tibet is interesting. I believe it was the Mongols that created the title of Dalai Lama. Not sure. Wikipedia says "In 1578 the Mongol ruler Altan Khan bestowed the title Dalai Lama on Sonam Gyatso."
|
# ? Jun 18, 2012 09:11 |
|
Ronald Spiers posted:The ties between Mongolia and Tibet is interesting. I believe it was the Mongols that created the title of Dalai Lama. They bestowed the title on a Tibetan monk, yes- although IIRC the first person to be given that title was retroactively made the third Dalai Lama because of two people who were identified as previous incarnations. At that time the Gelug sect wasn't nearly as powerful as it would be a century later, though. There used to be a ton of Mongolian monks studying in Tibetan monasteries, especially the big ones nearest to Mongolia- Kumbum and Labrang. French Lies- will add that to the list.
|
# ? Jun 18, 2012 13:36 |
|
In one of the recent Sinica's one of the guests mentioned Sino Platonic Papers, which is a collection of older academic works about China. From what I can tell, it has a pretty heavy linguistics/language/literature bent, but lots of other good resources as well. http://www.sino-platonic.org/
|
# ? Jun 21, 2012 06:24 |
|
menino posted:In one of the recent Sinica's one of the guests mentioned Sino Platonic Papers, which is a collection of older academic works about China. From what I can tell, it has a pretty heavy linguistics/language/literature bent, but lots of other good resources as well. First, most interesting thing I got by skimming the list was a paper by David Moser entitled Covert Sexism in Mandarin Chinese. Anyone care to challenge/defend the conclusions that are in there? Some of them seem kind of far-fetched or incidental to me.
|
# ? Jun 21, 2012 09:25 |
|
Did you actually read the paper?quote:Examples also abound in Chinese, where the male-female ordering is, if anything, Seems on the same level as fighting to use "chairperson" over "chairman" in terms of sexist language.
|
# ? Jun 21, 2012 09:30 |
|
shrike82 posted:Did you actually read the paper?
|
# ? Jun 21, 2012 09:41 |
|
Yeah, and his ren example stinks of BS too.quote:Y6u yige rkn, hkn y6u qiiin. .. He claims that sentences like this imply a reference to a man. I don't see it and I'm a native speaker.
|
# ? Jun 21, 2012 09:43 |
|
shrike82 posted:Yeah, and his ren example stinks of BS either.
|
# ? Jun 21, 2012 09:49 |
|
There's a distinct wording for male person (nan ren) and a corresponding wording for female person (niu ren). Contrast the man/woman construction in English, with woman etymologically deriving from 'wife' - laughably sexist. If a reader presumes ren alone to be male, then that speaks to the cultural bias of the reader, not something that is present in the language. Fangz fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Jun 21, 2012 |
# ? Jun 21, 2012 09:54 |
|
Fangz posted:There's a distinct wording for male person (nan ren) and a corresponding wording for female person (niu ren). Contrast the man/woman construction in English. Edit: Looking back a few pages, we had a discussion previously on why female politicians always have a 女 (nü, female) after their names in lists. Moser is identifying the same problem, but applying it to the language as a whole: Women are relegated to their own linguistic compartment, away from the default which is male. french lies fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Jun 21, 2012 |
# ? Jun 21, 2012 10:05 |
|
He does bring up some interesting points but there is a lot of (CITATION NEEDED) going on.quote:While I know "Well, I don't have any quantitative proof that this is true, but I just think so. (Makes an example sentence) Why would people write this way?" quote:It should be noted that even in the case where the sex of the person is obvious or specifically noted in Chinese, the information about their gender is still not a property of the word itself, but rather incorporated as background Haha, this one is true too. I used to poke fun at people, saying "so is he your boyfriend or girlfriend?!" and stuff, until I realized: so what? Why does the gender of the 3rd person always have to be known? I haven't gotten through the whole thing either but my big dislikes are words like 奸 and 嫉妒. In general, Chinese is about as gender neutral as English in my experience. One issue is that, with the exception of simplification, old characters don't change. But it's nowhere near as bad as Arabic or Japanese where "men's speech" and "women's speech" are so different that you'd sound absurd if you learned from someone who is the opposite gender. hitension fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Jun 21, 2012 |
# ? Jun 21, 2012 13:13 |
|
hitension posted:But it's nowhere near as bad as Arabic or Japanese where "men's speech" and "women's speech" are so different that you'd sound absurd if you learned from someone who is the opposite gender. You're going to have to elaborate on what you mean with regards to Arabic. I've seen strong arguments that suggest that Arabic has such strong genders within language that it's much more empowering as a language than English with its male and female, man and woman, housewife etc.
|
# ? Jun 21, 2012 13:42 |
|
Read a bit more of this article, and it seems still to be bullshit. Moser makes a lot of grand pronouncements about how Chinese people perceive certain sentences, but it seems like he's done no real survey to back this up, and in particular to back up his distinction between cultural sexism of an individual (e.g. presuming someone who is rich to be by default a man) with linguistic sexism. His argument about dyads seem cherry picked, also. What about black-white (hei-bai)? Light-heavy (qing-zhong. Also, note the contradiction with the big-small ordering...)? I'd suggest that Moser's mistake is to seek logical explanations in the words' translation, when what is actually important is the pronunciation. Compare the disparity between the prevalance of lan-lu (blue-green) and lu-lan, which sound similar to male-female.
|
# ? Jun 21, 2012 14:07 |
|
Hong XiuQuan posted:You're going to have to elaborate on what you mean with regards to Arabic. I've seen strong arguments that suggest that Arabic has such strong genders within language that it's much more empowering as a language than English with its male and female, man and woman, housewife etc. You got me- I don't know Arabic. I did learn some of the basics from a friend who interspersed just about every sentence with "If you're a man, you say ..." ; "If you're a woman, you say..." which is why I felt that it was strongly gendered. In my experience, if there's a division of the way men and women talk, it's not going to be in women's favor. I would like to learn more and see the argument you're talk about!
|
# ? Jun 21, 2012 14:21 |
|
From my superficial understanding of Thai, there are different sentence ending according to gender.
|
# ? Jun 22, 2012 01:55 |
|
|
# ? May 21, 2024 19:04 |
|
One of my socio linguistics books (Tannen?) said that Thai women often add (or added, maybe it's not in use now) the particle "ka" to sentences, which actually means "slave". Not sure if Reindeerf or somebody else can verify this. So that's nice.
|
# ? Jun 22, 2012 03:35 |