China - Vyoos

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China - Vyoos

Long, lonely journey for a short, friendly message

April 7th 2010 04:03

Sitting snugly in a traditional bottle, a message of friendship has travelled about 11,000 kilometres, from Henan in China to a beach off Victoria, Australia.

The message, found on Sunday by a teenager and his father, was written in Chinese and says: “Happy to connect with you. I would like to make friends with you. Would you like too?”

It was not dated, but was signed “Li Xing Bo”, who gave an address in Liu village, Jin Ling town, Luo Yang city, Henan province, China.

Today’s Geelong Advertiser newspaper reported the father, Michael Lawrence, as saying, “It's remarkably well-preserved and someone has had the forethought to put in some tissue paper to absorb any moisture.''

Mr Lawrence, of Lorne, says he will ask his son, Pete, to write a return letter to Mr Li.

image: atbc2008.org

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: China, Australia

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Dare to dream: a return of the Orient Express?

March 10th 2010 10:14

The old Orient Express had many incarnations but is associated mostly with the journey from Paris to Istanbul. The time the journey took varied, but it was at all times the stuff of legend, luxury and romance. It was mentioned in the literary works of Bram Stoker, Agatha Christie, Graham Greene, George McDonald Fraser and Ian Fleming.

The old Orient Express made its first journey on October 12, 1882, from Paris to Vienna. The menu read: oysters, soup with Italian pasta, turbot with green sauce, chicken à la chasseur, fillet of beef with château potatoes, chaud-froid of game animals, lettuce, chocolate pudding and buffet of desserts. The first Paris-Istanbul all-train service was on June 1, 1889.

The service ran for the last time in 2007, when the name Orient Express disappeared from all European train timetables. It was a victim, they said, of high-speed trains and cut-rate airlines. It left the world a sadder place.

The new Orient Express has just been announced.

It will run from London to Beijing. It will pass through Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, Kiev, St Petersburg, Moscow, Astana in Kazakhstan and Khabarovsk in Russia's far east. It will travel at about 320 kilometres per hour, and it will make the journey in just two days. The service could start operating as early as 2020.

It is a business vision from the only economic power on Earth with the energy, momentum and financial muscle to make this work, China.

I should make some caveats here. This is a proposal rather than a firm plan, 2020 is the "earliest possible" completion date, and there is actually no suggestion that it will be called the Orient Express. But they have to call it that, don't they? Please call it that. The world is a sadder place without an Orient Express in it.
www.telegraph.co.uk

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Asia, China, Europe, History

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Today's news: Google smacks China

January 13th 2010 01:42

Google has accused China of hacking into Gmail accounts, and has threatened to walk out of China as a consequence.

Google has just issued a statement saying it has uncovered a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China". The email accounts targeted were those of human rights activists.

Google did not name the Chinese government, but it didn't have to. And it did say it was "no longer willing to continue censoring our results" on its Chinese search engine, as the government requires.

China may be the world's population leader and a global economic super-heavyweight, but this is a fight which it may want to back away from. Civil unrest is never far from the surface in any community ruled by a totalitarian regime, and the humiliation of a Google walk-out, and the focus it would bring on Beijing's heavy-handed approach to many social issues, will have it considering its response to Google's allegations very carefully.

Google is itself a super-heavyweight in the human conscious, and it will not have understaken this course of action lightly. In announcing the end of the co-operative search engine censorship agreement, Google has come out swinging. It decided to do more than put its hand up and complain. It decided to throw a swinging, stinging counter-punch.

That means the Chinese must react — to simply accept Google's smack on the bottom would be an enormous loss of face.

Google is playing hardball on this one, and the world awaits Beijing's reaction. But none more than a billion growingly affluent and cosmopolitan Chinese citizens who have hopes for a better world.
The New York Times

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Asia, China, Politics, Technology

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China's birthday party

September 29th 2009 23:13

The art of propaganda. Translation: 'Make art and propaganda one integrated part of the revolutionary mechanism. Use it as a powerful weapon to organise people, educate people, strike the enemy and eliminate the enemy!'

We would like to wish China's Communist Party a happy birthday. But we won't.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: China, On this day ..., Politics

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Do you buy Australian, or do you buy cheap?

August 16th 2009 03:19

Hannah Kovacs in her $18 wedding dress

In 1991, just before moving overseas to live, I decided to consolidate all my addresses and phone numbers in a new contact book. This item, basically a few blank sheets of paper stuck together with glue, cost me just under A$10. A similar item in an Australian newsagent today will cost a fraction of the price.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: China, Australia, Consumer fights back, Consumer opinion, Economics

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Panda politics

December 23rd 2008 11:34

Things have been warming for some time between Taiwan and the erstwhile bully boys across the strait, but today the relationship got downright chummy.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Asia, China, Taiwan

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Changing Fortune 500

July 12th 2008 10:21

Goodbye Nike, hello China

Hello China indeed. Our heading summarises the 2008 Fortune 500 list, released last Thursday. The iconic sports shoe maker and eight other American companies fell off the list of the world's top 500 companies measured by revenue, cutting the American presence from 162 in 2007 to 153

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Asia, China, Economics, Environment

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Spend a penny

July 8th 2008 05:52

The great Asian clean-up is gathering pace. I blame the Brits, who started it by changing a deeply embedded cultural tradition a few decades ago when they stopped Hong Kongers spitting in the streets.

Then came the news last week that the authorities in China are aiming to make the same change in time for the Olympics.
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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Asia, China, Hong Kong, India

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Panda tale of survival

July 7th 2008 03:03

Proud mother: Chinese earthquake survivor Guo Guo carries in her mouth one of two giant panda cubs born on July 6

Picture: Xinhua

The first giant panda cubs to be born in captivity in the world so far this year were delivered safely yesterday (Sunday, July 6) in Ya'an City, Sichuan Province, China. The birth of the twins, a happy enough event in its own right, is in fact the end of a dramatic story which could have been tragic.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Asia, China, Environment, Happy Spot

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Beijing has more of everything

July 3rd 2008 23:15

Chinese anti-terrorist training

Picture: Xinhua

Beijing is planning for the Olympics by, amongst other things, preparing a welcome committee for would-be terrorists, telling the President of France that he's not welcome, and annoying just about everybody seeking a tourist visa.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Asia, China, Hong Kong, US

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Chinese embassy bombing

May 18th 1999 09:54

I lived in Hong Kong for 16 years until 2007. In 1998 and 1999 I wrote a series of political and social commentaries for a quirky institutional newsletter - quirky in that it was intended to be as much contentious, offbeat and humorous as it was informative. I was working as an editor, and I wrote the articles under the pseudonym Red Inque. I post them here for anyone interested in a look at life in Asia at the time, and in Hong Kong just after its return to Chinese sovereignty.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Asia, China, History, Asia 1998-99, Politics

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