問我anything with OneEye

[Shelley]

wow I suppose it depends on what you call time wasted, anything to do with Chinese is time well spent as far as I am concerned.

 

Facebook will drag me in once every couple of weeks but it is not hard to stop.

 

Really can't see that I would use that sort of thing, interesting to know that it exists though.

[OneEye]

Yeah, that's basically what I use it for. Facebook, forums, blogs. Sites I tend to go to automatically when I'm bored or distracted, which I then end up getting sucked into. Blocking them like that removes the distraction.

[roddy]

You mentioned elsewhere you've been de-anonymising recently. Was that prompted by new business ventures, or something else? How's it gone?

[OneEye]

Yeah, it's basically due to my work with Outlier. It's fine, I guess, just unfamiliar to me.

 

Speaking of which, I met Brendan O'Kane a few days ago, so you and I officially have a mutual friend. The world is shrinking.

[roddy]

Wow. I know you better than I know Kevin Bacon.

[Kenny同志]

I met Brendan O'Kane a few days ago

 

他的大名我兩年前見過。We live in a really small world!

[Angelina]

Question. Would you label Brendan O'Kane a China watcher? 

[Shelley]

What constitutes a China watcher?

 

I ask because I have always considered myself to be a china watcher as defined by one of my Chinese teachers, and I have always been curious as to what this actually means.

[Angelina]

I'm not sure either. People who are interested in what is happening in China, especially Chinese politics. 

[Angelina]

http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/BAUCHI.html#contents

 

This audacious and illuminating memoir by Richard Baum, a senior China scholar and sometime policy advisor, reflects on forty years of learning about and interacting with the People's Republic of China, from the height of Maoism during the author's UC Berkeley student days in the volatile 1960s through globalization. Anecdotes from Baum's professional life illustrate the alternately peculiar, frustrating, fascinating, and risky activity of China watching - the process by which outsiders gather and decipher official and unofficial information to figure out what's really going on behind China's veil of political secrecy and propaganda. Baum writes entertainingly, telling his narrative with witty stories about people, places, and eras.

[Shelley]

Ya, I guess this is about what I thought.

 

But for me its more about China and the people than the politics, never have taken much interest in politics of any country.

[Guest realmayo]

I think of the term more as watching-without-being-involved and associate it with spooks, other government agencies, and media, especially during the time when China was closed to the west and journalists weren't allowed in. Nowadays I'm not sure the term is particularly useful: I mean, what's to differentiate a China-watcher from, say, a Vietnam-watcher or a Russia-watcher?

 

(However I have just realised that the guy is "...and I'm Brendan" from popupchinese podcasts   )

[bokane]

Oh, hey, I felt a sneeze coming on just now, and sure enough...

 

Total digression from the topic of the thread (hi John!), but since Angelina asked, I don't think of myself as a China watcher at all. While I was living there, I had about the level of interest in current events that you'd expect from someone who'd been there a decade and had done occasional translation for journalists and that kind of thing, but now that I'm no longer in China the extent to which I don't care about politics is basically total. 

[Angelina]

[OneEye]

Speak of the devil, or 曹操 as the case may be.

 

Brendan's answer is about on par with what I thought he might say. He's in the throes of a PhD right now, which I'm sure doesn't leave much time to be an anything watcher, if said thing lies outside of his specific field.

[Angelina]

Many people who write about China end up writing about the state of the Chinese economy. It's good to know that Sinologists have not gone extinct by now. 

[giokve]

OneEye, can you have a look at the sample pages of this book (漢字樹2) and tell us what you think? It's the second book of a series of four; I chose it because because it has the best preview among them. Are the entries fairly accurate? Would you recommend it as a supplement to leaf through just for fun?

[OneEye]

I've seen it before, and it's not very good, etymology-wise. Cool design and whatnot, fun pictures, but fairly poor etymology.

[OneEye]

edit: never mind, sorry

[Angelina]

Guys, you seem to be friends with Kaiser Kuo, can you please do a 问我 anything with Kaiser?

I found this

http://m.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/467/transcript

I want to ask him how can we fight for peace, or as my friend puts it, how can we peace for peace? Can he go back to living in pre-May 1999 China?

 

 

The number one song, stadium crowds. Kaiser sometimes looked out from the stage on 30,000 people singing back to them. People recognized him on the street. Things were great. Until May of 1999.

Kaiser Kuo

One morning, I wake up. And it's my brother, my little brother on the phone, telling me oh my god, turn on the news. The US has just blown up the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

Reporter

China says it is outraged after 4 people die and 20 are injured, when NATO bombs hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

Evan Osnos

You may not remember this. But lots of Chinese people do. There's a Chinese monument to it in Belgrade. And the incident is taught in Chinese schools as an example of how superpowers like the United States-- and I'm reading here from a junior high curriculum-- put their interests above world peace and development and use their military advantage to attack whomever they want.

It was the NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, intended to protect ethnic Albanians. And an American B2 bomber flying over Belgrade dropped five bombs on the Chinese embassy. Three Chinese citizens were killed. In America, people saw it as an accident. Not in China.

Kaiser Kuo

My lead singer, my then-girlfriend, and I walked down to the embassy district to see what's happening around the US Embassy. And then everyone's there, shouting at us, saying hey, Tang Dynasty's here in solidarity with the people who are protesting against American hegemony.

Of course, that wasn't my take on it at all. I was thinking-- I thought this through and said, this couldn't have been done deliberately. This must have been some kind of an accident.

Evan Osnos

How did your band members react?

Kaiser Kuo

So initially, they kind of saw things my way. I laid out what I thought was a pretty reasonable case. But it changed really quickly.

That very evening, we get a call from our manager who says, look, I'm going to get you guys on a plane tomorrow. We're flying you down to Shenzhen. And you're going to take part in this peace concert.

Man

[sPEAKING CHINESE (SHOUTING)]

Kaiser Kuo

So they set up a stage in front of the whole thing. And they bussed in all these people who were wearing color-coordinated t-shirts that say [sPEAKING CHINESE]. Today China says no. And I realize that this is not a peace rally, that this is an anti-American rally.

Evan Osnos

It's kind of the opposite of a peace rally, essentially.

Kaiser Kuo

So my hackles are up. And this camera swings into my face. And it's live, and I didn't know this either, at the time. And they ask me, you're an American. Tell me about your reaction to what's happened. And I said, I come here in the interest of peace. And I said, by peace, I don't mean just peace between the Kosovars and the Serbs, not just peace between the Yugoslav Federation and NATO, but also-- and most importantly-- peace between China and the United States after this tragic, tragic accident.

And at the word "accident," of course, everyone's face just blanches. The camera swings away. People start yelling at me. And then I can see that-- I figured that my band mates who were nearby me were mad because they immediately distanced themselves from me.

I mean, we're on stage under this Styrofoam and wood mock-up of the burned-out embassy complex. And it's teetering. And when we finally get up there to play, the lead singer sort of looks at me, glowers at me and then starts saying today, the Chinese people will no longer be bullied by Americans. And [MUMBLES]. And he shoots me a couple looks. Now this is like my best friend for 10 years.

Evan Osnos

The tension in the band got a lot worse. And Kaiser left, before he could be forced out.