Category: China

Two weeks ago was the funeral of Murat Nasirov, Kazakhstani Uyghur pop singer in Russia. He died on January 19th when he plummeted from his apartment balcony. There are conflicting stories as to how he died. Officially, it was ruled a suicide. One report in the Russian media claimed that he had been at a nightclub, where one of his friends spiked their drinks with LSD, which led to Murat to behave erratically. His wife, meanwhile, insists he would never commit suicide and was poisoned. In an interview (blocked) with RFA’s Uyghur language broadcast, Natalia Nasirov said that Murat had plans to release a new album and was a proud Uyghur nationalist.

Nasirov’s fans within Xinjiang have remarked on his death as well. On the Uyghur language BBS forum Diyarim, a few threads have opened about him, as does the Xabnam BBS (also in Uyghur Arabic script). Some Uyghur bloggers (blogging in Chinese and Latin alphabet Uyghur) have videos from YouTube and Tudou. And an entire page devoted to mourning the singer appears to have been set up at 163888.net (Chinese, with long written sections in Uyghur posted as images).

The largest thread on Diyarim has one very interesting post on Page 3: an essay by Nebijan Tursun titled “Murat Nasirof and I”. I am not fluent enough to tell you anything about the essay’s content, but I can tell you who Dr. Nabijan Tursun is: he was one of the contributors to the book Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland, probably the most comprehensive collaborative work on Xinjiang. Together with James Millward, he co-wrote a chapter on the history of Xinjiang provocatively titled “Political History and Strategies of Control, 1884-1978”. Reportedly both authors have since been denied visas to China, and one contributor once told me they had heard a rumor that the book was angrily condemned within Zhongnanhai, and banned as subversive.

Murat Nasirov recorded one album of songs in the Uyghur language, Qaldim Yalghuz, a compendium of nakshisi (traditional folk songs), with a Russian pop twist. You can download them, using a proxy if you are in China, here. It is not clear how long these links will last.

Finally, here’s a video of a Russian song by Murat, which appears to be an upbeat pop song sang on a soundstage made to look like the dead Aral Sea, with cameos by members of the Addams Family.

China finally has a TV superhero with a cape.

While I’m waiting for China’s answer to the Matrix to come out, I look forward to seeing China’s “first fantasy” TV show, Magic Cellphone (魔幻手机). The hero gets his powers from his cellphone “robot” (3G?), according to Shanghaiist, which “travels through a time tunnel … and arrives in ancient times, where she meets characters from Chinese mythology such as Monkey King. Then she is brought back to 2006.”

Yeah, but the real question is when does he fight Hiro Nakamura from NBCs Heroes?

I have to agree with Shanghaiist – how they call this the “first” fantasy TV series is beyond me, especially since it will feature the Monkey King, who really has gotten enough TV shows already. Seriously. Stop it.

See more pics at Shanghaiist or their Flickr page.

China Digital Times has the links for five videos from the Crazed Migrant Workers (民工也疯狂), a trio of performers who lip sync to songs like Hotel California (加州旅馆) and Fearless (霍元甲). But my favorite has to be Curse of Golden Flowers (黄金甲) because of the guy in drag with balloons substituting for Gong Li’s cleavage. The video ends with the players, which include a real live migrant worker, introducing themselves.

Claymation daoban (盗版) – pirate CD vendor.

Chinese rock legend and blogger Kaiser Kuo posted “What have you always wanted to know (but were afraid to ask) about the Chinese music industry?” and I peppered him with questions. The first one I asked was “Are there any podcasts or blogs that are genre themed or programmed? Does that have any big potential?” I then realized that, hey, I have the internetz, I can type some Chinese, and I feel like avoiding my responsibilities – why don’t I try and answer that?

Lo and behold, I find Lifepop, a Chinese website for user-generated podcasts. While one of the top shows is apparently a 61 year old guy in Xi’an telling jokes, there are music podcasts as well. One that caught my eye was Punkcity by a guy calling himself Jackass. He’s got a band called Flipside, and they’ve even got a MySpace page. Like other Chinese rock bands, they sing in English. But unlike many others, they are making their own stop-motion music video, which I’ll attempt to paste here but otherwise you can see it at Jackass’s page or the MySpace link or see it at fullscreen here. There’s some pics of the props he’s hand making on the site as well. The video is only about half done, as the animation only last for about a minute and a half and then the rest of the song is subtitles over a black screen. But check it out – its been continuously made and reposted. But I warn you in advance: Flipside listens to emo. Proceed with caution.

Also on Lifepop is what appears to be a podcast by Nu Metal band Twisted Machine, who also have a MySpace page.

As for podcasting in China overall, I found this article from the Wharton School of Business last year. Lifepop founder Wang Xiaobo has these comments:

“China now has between 20 and 30 podcasting sites, with three or four leading the way. And there are about 1 million of users of podcasting.” (Lifepop, last March, had 200,000 of those)

Where are these other sites?

“Currently, the few large blogging sites are competing to burn the money they got from venture capitalists and to define their areas. Even if there are only one or two sites that manage to break even now, that is a miracle. There are few podcasting sites that are big enough, and everybody is in no hurry to turn a profit due to marketing needs and other reasons. So the majority of podcasting sites are not profitable.” But he predicts that “in the next few years, coupled with the development of the 3G technology, there will be an explosive growth in the number of podcasting users. Meanwhile, podcasting will become more integrated with other multi-media applications.”

Hmmm… whither the telecoms?

Apparently some movie called Mo Xiaobai’s Sea Monster Diary (莫小白的水怪日记) came out in January. Or was supposed to. It seems to be about an overimaginative kid’s summer vacation. You can download the trailer here, which uses a song by Joe Hisaishi from the Takeshi Kitano film Kids Return (which is awesome). It also reminds me of another Takeshi film, Kikujiro.

In stumbling around the Chinese internetz looking for maps, I came across this one China’s borders in 1952, shortly after the establishment of the PRC. Some Chinese bloggers find it interesting to contrast it with current borders, like so:

But that’s not why I liked it. I was interested in the provincial borders of 1952, which were a legacy of the Republic. There’s a slightly better map for seeing the changes in the Wikipedia (or the unblocked Answers.com) entry for the Political Divisions of China. Supposedly it’s translated from a page at the Chinese Wikipedia, but I haven’t found that yet. You kinda have to squint to see the dotted lines of the old borders underneath the superimposed contemporary map.

Hardly a single province seems to have been left unscathed by border adjustments, and in fact, the People’s Daily reported in 2002 that, 60 years later:

The first map in China with provincial boundaries having a legally binding force was completed Tuesday, marking a success in internal boundary demarcation.

On past maps, zig-zag lines marking the country’s provincial borders were not official since there were no legal instruments for cartographers to refer to when such boundaries were being drawn.

As a result, some provinces are placing boundary markers – Jilin was busy placing markers along over 40,000 km of it border in 2004 according the rules. It’s worth noting that China’s internal border are even newer, in some cases, than the national ones. Even more interesting, the article states “disputes stemming from the natural resources in the bordering lands at issue kept popping up. ” This had me fascinated: what happens to those areas where new borders are drawn? What kind of disputes are there?

My girlfriend is from Baarle-Nassau, in the South of the Netherlands, where perhaps the weirdest possible combinations of exclaves and enclaves are found. Unbelievably, you can even find “a Belgian parcel within a Dutch parcel within a Belgian enclave, which in turn is surrounded entirely by Dutch territory…” (Correction: my girlfriend supplies this link, noting the most complicated arrangement is six Dutch exclaves within a Belgian enclave) She once told me that, since Belgian taxes are lower, some people whose homes straddle one of the enclave borders will have their front door moved to another side of the house so as to technically reside in Belgium. I wonder if that happens in China.

All of this led me to a really interesting article on a full-scale armed border war that raged between Jiangsu and Shandong for the past half a century, the translation of which will be the topic of my next post: The Fifty Year War on the Banks of Weishan Lake.

Dongtan (东滩), a small town on the eastern tip of Chongming Island (崇明), north of Shanghai, has been slated to become China, and the world’s, first eco-city (生态城市). The Guardian, USA Today, and my personal favorite BLDGBLOG have all given some details as to the ambitious plan laid out by the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC), China’s biggest developer, and Arup, one of the world’s biggest engineering consultancy firms. By 2010, Dongtan is planned to boast a “demonstrator” inhabited by 50,000 people, growing to half a million by 2040.

Image from Plataforma Urbana of the planned development area.

The development will be in the Dongtan Ramsar Wetlands, which could cause serious complications. The Dunlin, a migratory shorebird, goes through the area according to Wetlands International. Complicating things as well is the Shanghai Yangtze River Bridge and Tunnel project, which will be one of the longest ever constructed, and will drop traffic off quite close to Dongtan. With China’s car growth, and the expected boom in cross traffic between Shanghai and it’s northern neighbor Jiangsu Province, this might be a pollution problem for the island. All the same, eco-development in the area is booming, with both Chinese and German firms exhibiting ecofarm projects at Shanghai’s EcoBuild 2006.

Comparison of the Dongtan area to Manhattan and London, again from PlatformaUrbana.

Artists renderings, below, from the USA Today article.

Another artist rendering, perhaps of the visitors centre. All of these are reportedly from Arup.

Dongtan of the future at night. Seems awfully bright for a conservation city.

The proposed marina. The yachts ought to give away who might actually live there.

Noah Shachtman caught this story from Flight Global over at Wired’s Danger Room blog:

German-headquartered SIM Security and Electronic System says it has sold an undisclosed number of its Sky-Eye quadrotor UAVs into China for use by a civilian police organisation. Total sales of the existing system, including the Chinese orders, have exceeded 30 units according to Yves Degroote, Brussels account manager for the firm.

Noah says:

Sales of drones are tightly controlled by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR. Companies usually have to get special clearance to market the things — even in friendly countries. I’m no ITAR expert, but I believe sales to countries like China are even more carefully monitored. About a year ago, officials at Yamaha in Japan were busted for shipping nine robo-copters to the Beijing regime.

Does anybody have any idea how you say “quadrotor UAV” in Chinese? Or would these just be called 天眼 after the brand name?

UPDATE: It’s China time in the Danger Room as Sharon Weinberger points to an English People’s Daily article on Chinese scientists success at controlling the flight of pigeons with brain implants. But they don’t have a picture, so I’ll help by adding the Chinese article.

Since China is rather short on pigeons (at least not in cages), obviously these are for overseas operations. The robocoptor won’t be noticed on the streets of Shanghai, but free flying pigeons would probably surprise the hell out of people. Check out the Shangdong Science and Technology University Robot Research Center website for things like the Electrical Powerline Repair Robotic Arms and other stuff that, so far, is nowhere near as cool or gross as a pigeon with a chip in its skull.