Bingfeng Teahouse

danwei is one of my most favorite sites and i visit there quite often, but strangly enough they put a pic of a beautiful lady right on the top of their front page:

at the beginning i think that might be their boss or the daughter of their boss, but one day i click the photo and find out that is a media lady who has nothing to do with the danwei site, she has been interviewed by danwei before, that's why she is there.

for some reasons i don't know, now everytime before i want to check in at the danwei site, the first pic appears in my brain is this lady. so it might be appropriate to call her as "Miss danwei", she looks so nice, intellectual, open-minded and neat, just represents all the good qualities of the danwei brand.

don't take away the photo, please :-)

via: singapore zaobao, the article is: here

rumor says shanghai will build a new disneyland in its pudong area, which is connected with the downtown by metro and maglev trains.

if it's true, hope this will not become another "showcase project", which don't benefit local people but only serve the purpose of showing off shanghai as "an international metropolitan".

am i going to shanghai? Minnie, tell me what a city it is, i am very cold-sensitive!

japanese use chinese characters to name their cities, and the chinese characters for "tokyo" is Dong Jing, which means "the capital of the orient".

chinese don't use Dong Jing any more, but back in Song dynasty, the capital city was named as Dong Jing, and a very famous chinese painting tells us how it looks at that time (below is a small part of the paintings):

view the whole painting here.

one emperor called song huizong is closely connected with Dong Jing and he was a great artist who invented a new chinese calligraphy style called Shou Jin Ti, here are several of his art works, and a book (in chinese) i read last year about this unfortunate emperor:

Huizong or Hui Tsung (1082-1135), emperor, from 1101 to 1125, of China's Northern Song (Sung) dynasty (960-1126), and a great artist and artistic patron. Huizong proved an inadequate emperor, and left factional feuds at court unresolved while he occupied himself with the arts. However, he was a gifted painter, a superb calligrapher, and a committed patron. He devoted most of his efforts to the imperial painting academy, reorganizing the curriculum to raise standards of technical competence, sponsoring an important group of paintings and artists, and promoting styles based on accurate observation and realism. Huizong himself favored the flower-and-bird genre of painting, and had little interest in landscape. His calligraphy, in the graceful style known as “slender gold,” is even more celebrated than his paintings. His talents are well represented by his Five-Colored Parakeet (early 12th century, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts). The picture is meticulously executed and somewhat static, with superbly calculated spacing of the various elements and a fluid and structureless depiction of forms without outlines, whereas the accompanying calligraphy is dynamic, elegant, and entirely original.

To counteract fighting on China's northern frontiers, Huizong formed an alliance with the Jurchen tribes of northern Manchuria against the invading Liao empire. The alliance defeated the Liao, but the Jurchen then turned against the Song Chinese. When faced with a Jurchen invasion in 1125, Huizong gave up his throne to his son. The Jurchen were bought off with territory and a large payment, but in 1127 Huizong and his son were both captured when the Jurchen invaded China once more, sacked the capital of Kaifeng, and replaced the Northern Song dynasty with their own Jin (Chin) dynasty. Huizong and his son were taken north into Manchuria, where they spent their last years in captivity. The Song government fled south and established the Southern Song (Sung) dynasty (1127-1279) with a new capital at Hangzhou. The so-called Academy style of painting formulated under Huizong's leadership remained the dominant painting style for the duration of the Southern Song dynasty.

Microsoft? Encarta? Reference Library 2003. ? 1993-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

via: china daily

rest room map, map of best dating place, map of restaurant, now is thief map ...

via: danwei, also read the previous one: media brainwashing I - danwei case

Mr. B responded to me as below:

Well, there are hundreds of pages at Sina and I only chose those I think hilariously funny... I reviewed Sina's comment page and my selection again. Everyone can check Sina to see whether the posts I quoted are a small fraction, or a significant part of all

maybe i am wrong, but there are 20137 posts under this topic (until 17:43 pm beijing time, Jan 24, 2005), how can Mr. B asserts that his selection represents a significant part of all? did he read all of them or 80% of them? and he says "i only chose those i think hilariously funny", does this sound a little bit funny when he says his selection is "a significant part of all"?

well, let me do a double check here, starting from the latest comments:

seems OK to go to iraq, the government will save you anyway!  2005-01-24 17:13:39 IP:221.232.91.*

who is bombing iraq, anti-america is supported all over the world 2005-01-24 17:13:21 IP:202.98.18.*

only beast will consider terrorists are friends 2005-01-24 16:57:41 IP:220.171.130.*

too bad you can not tell who are the real terrorists 2005-01-24 17:12:51 IP:221.219.80.*

should the government of Pingtan be punished ???? 2005-01-24 17:12:22 IP:219.141.101.*

fujian people always did terrible things that lose chinese face 2005-01-24 16:28:08 IP:202.112.200.*

well said! 2005-01-24 17:10:16 IP:219.232.185.*

well said (only beast will consider terrorists are friends) 2005-01-24 17:10:08 IP:24.132.194.*

nothing is better than coming home 2005-01-24 17:09:03 IP:219.232.52.*

it seems there are problems with their passports 2005-01-24 15:29:17 IP:61.184.42.*

bullshit, everyone can easily get a passport today in china 2005-01-24 17:05:47 IP:221.204.54.*

i live in changle, fujian province, almost every family here has someone working aboard ... 2005-01-24 15:20:44 IP:211.138.144.*

farmers living in south of jiangsu never go aboard to work, there are many places poorer than fujian, why fujian people like to go aboard ? 2005-01-24 11:50:05 IP:222.65.69.*

diplomats won't stand hand by hand with those peasants ... 2005-01-24 16:56:58 IP:221.217.130.*

educate these kids ... 2005-01-24 16:56:06 IP:218.12.76.*

don't eaque those kidnappers with terrorists, they are caused by american invasion 2005-01-24 16:10:37 IP:222.50.3.*

bullshit, they are terriosts, they murder civilians 2005-01-24 16:55:25 IP:220.171.130.*

terrioists are terriosts, they are not human being, it's unbelievable some would thank those kidnappers ... 2005-01-24 15:50:12 IP:218.75.132.*

going aboard to make more money, that's it 2005-01-24 12:54:32 IP:61.149.215.*

well said (going aboard to make more money, that's it) 2005-01-24 16:52:51 IP:218.22.36.*

a mouse want to make money from a cat, these guys are just risk their lives going to iraq 2005-01-24 16:53:41 IP:218.12.76.*

the previous comments are essentially the same as these in page one, as you can see, only 3 out of 21 commented on americans or iraqi war.

now, compare this page 1 with what Mr. B presents to you, don't you think THIS "chinese cyberspace" IS NOT the same with Mr. B's "chinese cyberspace"?

come on, Mr. B, your trick doesn't work.

related links:

the death struggle of a taiwan secessionist

via: peking duck, read the last comments of the original post: here

Projective Method is a technique used in marketing reseach or public opinion poll.

basically the Projective Method is based on the theory that to reveal what a person really thinks, you have to combine what s/he says with the context s/he makes that statement. say for example, if a good friend of yours tells you that she doesn't like to go for dinner with you tonight, does that means she doesn't like you? very possibly she is just low-spirited or get angry with somebody else. and the Projective Method helps the researchers understand what are the real reasons she refuses to dinner with you.

besides the tricks of missampling, many media brainwashing try to mislead their readers by purposefully omitting some very important backgrounds or context. this trick is tiny but also very effective in many cases.

in the peking duck case, a commenter provided a story, in which 14 chinese applauded when they watched news reports of 911 attack. while the behavior of this 14 persons is disgusting and they can not represent the whole chinese people, other commenters failed to see the context of this story to have a better understanding of their behavior.

just 4 months before the 911, a US spy plane killed a chinese pilot and landed on hainan island, after which US tried to send warships and many american wee boys shouted to "nuke shanghai" or "kill all the slanted eyes in the US". one american man who adopted a chinese girl warned other chinese commenters in a message board, "free our people, otherwise you know what i will do to that chinese girl!".

i think this background information might help us understand why that 14 people did such a shameless and ruthless act.

usually common people are not that sophisticated when reading media, and that leaves a big room for media brainwashing, in my view, this kind of brainwashing is the most difficult to defeat.

via: danwei, read the post here: chinese cyberspace reaction to freeing of iraq hostages

a danwei reader called B translated some of the sina bbs comments on the freeing of the 8 chinese kidnapped in iraq. from the 21 comments Mr. B selected, there are 9 comments showing somewhat sympathy towards the iraq kidnappers because these commenters believe kidnappers are fighting against "invaders" in iraq. some comments say:

Thank you Iraqis, wish you victory until liberated!

See, Iraqis are more humane than Americans and Japanese.

May God bless Iraqis, wish them victory over invaders!

Those Iraqis treat Chinese better than Americans treat Chinese. Americans are bandits.

If they were Americans, Japanese or Brits, they are already dead!

Supporting Iraqi people killing American and Japanese.

The fact proves Iraqis are not terrorists. They are just like our anti-Japanese military.

from what Mr. B portraited for us, we will draw the conclusion without any hesitation that chinese (or at least "chinese cyberspace") just hate americans and japanese so much that they support those terrorists that kidnapped their fellows.

but wait a minute, if you go to visit the sina bbs on this topic, you will find that most of the comments are not targeting on americans or japanese, nor on the war there, even not on the kidnappers, besides of those who feel relieved and expresse their thanks to the government, critics focuses on the local Fujian government and the central government, asking why they let the same mistake happened again.

if there are some chinese who are against war in iraq, the presentage of their comments in sina bbs are not as high as Mr. B gives us - a 42%. and don't forget who are using the internet chat rooms or message boards in china,  the CNNIC china internet statistics shows that most internet users in china are predominantly male (60.6%), unmarried (57.2%), below 25 years old (51.7%), without college education (69.3%), monthly income below 2000 yuan (80.6%), and i also wrote a post to indicate the same point.

media brainwashing is to take the initiative to mislead people by either feeding them with pure lies or presenting them with mis-sampled data or a small part of the whole pic. and the second one is particularly effective to those who don't have any idea what a good sampling means.

by purposefully presenting a very small and bad sample, Mr. B sucessfully fooled some, if not most, of danwei readers.

P.S. hey guys, you might guess who Mr. B is, just look how many "japanese" he used in his selected comments. bingo!

below is the full text from that post:

Chinese cyberspace reaction to freeing of Iraq hostages
Danwei reader B writes:

Good to learn that the 8 hostages are now safe. And it could be interesting to note the reaction to this news on China's cyberspace. Sina, one popular destination for Chinese youngsters, has hundreds of pages of comments.

Excerpts (translations mine):

China should financially support the captors in the name of paying ransom. Also we should send them Mao's work 'On Geurilla Warfare'.
Iraqis know who is their enemy and who is their friend.

Thank you Iraqis, wish you victory until liberated!

See, Iraqis are more humane than Americans and Japanese.

I am so proud that I am a Chinese!

Our government is so powerful! Thank our Party, thank Hu and Wen!

May God bless Iraqis, wish them victory over invaders!

This is China's victory!

Shaking hands with insurgents (referring to a Reuters photo) is absolutely OK. Those Iraqis treat Chinese better than Americans treat Chinese. Americans are bandits.

Because our motherland is so powerful, they can be home. Our government is right!

Long live president Hu, Long live PRC!

Chinese are good! If they were Americans, Japanese or Brits, they are already dead! Chinese are friendly, generous!

Our foreign policy is correct.

Our country is strong, that's why.

Long live the great Chinese Communist Party!

People should be obedient, don't make trouble for our Party and government.

Supporting Iraqi people killing American and Japanese.

China has the highest reputation in the world!

I'll donate for Iraqis!

China is rising!

The fact proves Iraqis are not terrorists. They are just like our anti-Japanese military