January 13, 2012 Filed under Feature
By Huang Daohen
The largest seasonal human migration on Earth is underway.
Earlier this week, tens of millions of college students and migrant workers began the search for a way home to celebrate the most important holiday in the Chinese calendar.
According to the National Development and Reform Commission, a total of 3.16 billion passenger trips are expected during the 40-day Spring Festival travel rush, a 9.1 percent increase from 2011.
Bandwidth battle
Getting a train ticket during the Spring Festival travel peak has been borderline impossible for the last few years – a fact not lost on the Ministry of Railways.
Among the ministry’s new efforts to improve access to train tickets is a new booking system that allows phone and Internet reservations, as well as the issuing of new tickets that are tied to the buyer’s name.
Many have lauded the new system for helping to clamp down on scalping, which has made Spring Festival tickets expensive and hard to obtain for many years.
“It sure makes things convenient,” said He Miao, a local office worker. “I wanted to book a ticket for January 18, and this time I was able to confirm its availability over the phone and buy it online.”
Statistics from the ministry show that a third of the Spring Festival passengers have purchased their tickets through the new booking system, with more than 2 million tickets sold on January 7 alone.
But He was lucky when he managed to log into the booking website, 12306.cn. Many users have complained of frequent crashes and failed reservations. A few users reported having paid through the system only to discover their reservation was never processed.
“I paid 410 yuan for a ticket from Beijing to Shanghai online. When I went to get the ticket, the clerk told me there was no record of the sale,” Dong Gua, an Internet user, complained on his Weibo microblog.
Like Dong, many passengers flooded social networking sites to vent their disappointment in the booking system.
“I spent hours trying to access the site, only to find that tickets allocated for that day were already sold out,” said Jiang Xiaoyu, another microblogger.
He, who managed to get a ticket to Shanghai, said the secret to a successful booking is patience.
“You need to be patient when logging onto such a congested website,” she said. “I tried for hours to use both the website and telephone hotline to make my reservation, and finally I succeeded,” she said.
The ministry said the online ticket system was temporarily paralyzed by the enormous traffic.
The site, which has as many as 10 million registered users, has received more than 1 billion hits each day since January 1.
The ministry vowed to increase network bandwidth to decrease congestion and to issue refunds to passengers whose money was lost by the system.
Migrants’ dream
However, most users of the online booking system are college students and young office workers.
Migrant workers, who find Internet and phone booking expensive and inconvenient, still prefer to go to the station to buy their tickets in person.
“We have no idea how to use the Internet and the phone lines are always busy,” said Wu Youcai, a worker looking for a ticket home.
Wu said the system has had one visible effect: it made the lines at the train station much shorter.
On Tuesday morning, fewer than 30 passengers were waiting at each ticket booth. Last year, the number of people waiting in each line numbered in the hundreds.
To help migrant workers buy their tickets, the railway station opened special booths last Sunday.
Wu finally purchased a hard-seat ticket to Chengdu on Tuesday morning. But the 30-hour-trip will not be the end of his journey. After getting off the train, he will take a bus out to a neighboring county and walk for 30 minutes to his village.
Included in his luggage is an electric toy car for his 2-year-old son.
Taking to flight
This year, more people are choosing to fly than ever before.
According to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), passengers are expected to make about 35 million trips by air during the holiday this year, up 7 percent from 2011.
To meet the massive passenger flow, the ministry also has given the green light for domestic airlines to add 14,000 flights, Xia Xinghua, deputy director of CAAC, said at a recent press conference.
Xia said airlines are running nearly 8,000 flights each day and can carry up to 1 million passengers each day.
But not all those taking airlines are doing so with newfound riches. Some are boarding the airplanes to get around seating limits on their normal train routes.
Among the most widely circulated stories was one about a woman in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province who found the cheapest way to fly to her hometown in Kunming, Yunnan Province was to have an international layover in Bangkok, Thailand.
The story could be apocryphal, but such roundabout trips are nothing new. Many people who are planning to carpool for the new year are having to wind through several cities and transfer to alternate carpools.
The fundamental problem with Spring Festival migration is the nation’s huge population, said Jin Lu, a railway expert at Beijing Jiaotong University.
China has 1.3 billion people and only 91,000 kilometers of rails on which to carry them.
“The launch of the online booking and real-name ticketing system may help to curb scalping activities, but tickets will remain scarce,” he said
By Huang Daohen
The largest seasonal human migration on Earth is underway.
Earlier this week, tens of millions of college students and migrant workers began the search for a way home to celebrate the most important holiday in the Chinese calendar.
According to the National Development and Reform Commission, a total of 3.16 billion passenger trips are expected during the 40-day Spring Festival travel rush, a 9.1 percent increase from 2011.
A child looks out from the train. Starting from January 8, the country's transport system will be besieged in a 40-day travel rush. IC Photos
Bandwidth battle
Getting a train ticket during the Spring Festival travel peak has been borderline impossible for the last few years – a fact not lost on the Ministry of Railways.
Among the ministry’s new efforts to improve access to train tickets is a new booking system that allows phone and Internet reservations, as well as the issuing of new tickets that are tied to the buyer’s name.
Many have lauded the new system for helping to clamp down on scalping, which has made Spring Festival tickets expensive and hard to obtain for many years.
“It sure makes things convenient,” said He Miao, a local office worker. “I wanted to book a ticket for January 18, and this time I was able to confirm its availability over the phone and buy it online.”
Statistics from the ministry show that a third of the Spring Festival passengers have purchased their tickets through the new booking system, with more than 2 million tickets sold on January 7 alone.
But He was lucky when he managed to log into the booking website, 12306.cn. Many users have complained of frequent crashes and failed reservations. A few users reported having paid through the system only to discover their reservation was never processed.
“I paid 410 yuan for a ticket from Beijing to Shanghai online. When I went to get the ticket, the clerk told me there was no record of the sale,” Dong Gua, an Internet user, complained on his Weibo microblog.
Like Dong, many passengers flooded social networking sites to vent their disappointment in the booking system.
“I spent hours trying to access the site, only to find that tickets allocated for that day were already sold out,” said Jiang Xiaoyu, another microblogger.
He, who managed to get a ticket to Shanghai, said the secret to a successful booking is patience.
“You need to be patient when logging onto such a congested website,” she said. “I tried for hours to use both the website and telephone hotline to make my reservation, and finally I succeeded,” she said.
The ministry said the online ticket system was temporarily paralyzed by the enormous traffic.
The site, which has as many as 10 million registered users, has received more than 1 billion hits each day since January 1.
The ministry vowed to increase network bandwidth to decrease congestion and to issue refunds to passengers whose money was lost by the system.
December 23, 2011 Filed under Feature
Chinese soccer fans witnessed another year of fiascos, but this time, they have accepted it gracefully.
Both players and fans feel nothing unusual after seeing so many failures in recent years. Many say that Chinese soccer is “beyond redemption.”
It’s a small wonder that fans are so pessimistic.
The Chinese men’s national team failed to qualify for the last two FIFA World Cups, and this time things were worse – they almost lost hope after the first four games in the third round of the Asian qualifiers and were eliminated after a useless victory over Singapore at the penultimate group game.
One can’t blame head coach Jose Antonio Camacho, the Spaniard who took over for Gao Hongbo just 20 days before the first qualifying match. Three straight defeats to Jordan and Iraq sentenced the team to death. Some fans complained that the Chinese Football Association didn’t replace Gao earlier, squandering what could have been four years of valuable training time.
Even Miroslav Blazevic couldn’t change the fate of the Chinese Olympic team. After some hard fighting against an Omani opponent, the team failed to qualify for the 2012 London Olympics and set their worst ever record in the qualifying round.
The hard-working Croatian tried his best to teach the young boys in the six months before the Olympic Asian qualifiers. Blazevic overestimated his players’ ability to follow his tactics, which were exacerbated by crucial errors by a referee in an away match. Although Blazevic didn’t want to leave with regrets, he bid farewell after a dispute with the CFA.
To rub salt into the wound, the Steel Roses suffered a heavier blow. After losing the chance to qualify for the World Cup last year, the once formidable Chinese women’s team failed to qualify for the London Olympics.
Native coach Li Xiaopeng resigned after the qualifiers, claiming that the team had tried everything. The young women were in tears after the exit, unlike their men’s counterparts who already felt numb and sad.
Chinese soccer must have a thorough revolution in the coming years to get rejuvenated, and combined efforts should be made to develop the professional leagues, which have been troubled with match-fixing, gambling and corruption.
The government launched a nationwide crackdown on soccer gambling, match-fixing and corruption, which led to busts of former CFA vice presidents Xie Yalong, Nan Yong and Yang Yimin.
The first round of trials of corrupt soccer officials, referees and club managers opened on December 19 in two local courts in Liaoning Province.
The anti-corruption movement has helped to clean up the soccer environment, but stricter supervision and better control of the professional leagues and the CFA officials will be required before the nation sees real change.
Nevertheless, there are some positive things to say about Chinese soccer.
The youth training system has improved. The Chinese Ministry of Education and the General Administration of Sports have made efforts to build a nationwide campus-based youth soccer training system, which now includes some 48 cities and 2,600 primary schools and middle schools, with some 470,000 league games to be played by the teens every year. The CFA also started to send young players between the ages of 12 and 18 to Europe and South America for training.
More than 100 young players have been sent to learn the game overseas in a project named “Future Stars” during the past one and a half years. Some boys even had the luck to be accepted by big clubs like Lyon, Liverpool, Valencia and Porto. A few may become prominent stars in the next eight years.
Second, the Chinese Super League (CSL) began to win back fans in the past season. Some real estate tycoons like Xu Jiayin of Guangzhou Evergrande club invested heavily in signing big stars such as Dario Leonardo Conca, MVP of the Brazilian top class league, to enhance the CSL. The appearance of foreign players and famous coaches like Philippe Troussier has helped to elevate the league.
For the next season, Shanghai Shenhua signed Nicolas Anelka from Chelsea, and the CSL teams may have better performance in the AFC Asian Champions League.
The CSL saw its best-ever average attendance per game reach 17,600 in the 2011 season. And the Chinese central television station CCTV will begin live broadcasts of CSL games after a three-year ban that began in 2008.
Camacho and his assistants will remain to guide the national team under a three-year contract. The former Spanish coach’s attack-minded theory has changed the Chinese players a little, and the tempo of the team has been increased. The Chinese players may learn more under the Spaniard and change their basic understanding of soccer.
Moreover, the Chinese youth national team is now under the leadership of Dutch boss Jan Riekerink, the former Ajax youth team coach.
If the Chinese players can learn from these foreign coaches and be more creative on the field, they can help Chinese soccer follow the trends of neighbors in Japan and South Korea. (Xinhua)
Soccer fans hoist a banner saying "Never give up" to support the national team as it fails to qualify for yet another FIFA World Cups. CFP Photo
Chinese soccer fans witnessed another year of fiascos, but this time, they have accepted it gracefully.
Both players and fans feel nothing unusual after seeing so many failures in recent years. Many say that Chinese soccer is “beyond redemption.”
It’s a small wonder that fans are so pessimistic.
The Chinese men’s national team failed to qualify for the last two FIFA World Cups, and this time things were worse – they almost lost hope after the first four games in the third round of the Asian qualifiers and were eliminated after a useless victory over Singapore at the penultimate group game.
One can’t blame head coach Jose Antonio Camacho, the Spaniard who took over for Gao Hongbo just 20 days before the first qualifying match. Three straight defeats to Jordan and Iraq sentenced the team to death. Some fans complained that the Chinese Football Association didn’t replace Gao earlier, squandering what could have been four years of valuable training time.
Even Miroslav Blazevic couldn’t change the fate of the Chinese Olympic team. After some hard fighting against an Omani opponent, the team failed to qualify for the 2012 London Olympics and set their worst ever record in the qualifying round.
The hard-working Croatian tried his best to teach the young boys in the six months before the Olympic Asian qualifiers. Blazevic overestimated his players’ ability to follow his tactics, which were exacerbated by crucial errors by a referee in an away match. Although Blazevic didn’t want to leave with regrets, he bid farewell after a dispute with the CFA.
To rub salt into the wound, the Steel Roses suffered a heavier blow. After losing the chance to qualify for the World Cup last year, the once formidable Chinese women’s team failed to qualify for the London Olympics.
Native coach Li Xiaopeng resigned after the qualifiers, claiming that the team had tried everything. The young women were in tears after the exit, unlike their men’s counterparts who already felt numb and sad.
Chinese soccer must have a thorough revolution in the coming years to get rejuvenated, and combined efforts should be made to develop the professional leagues, which have been troubled with match-fixing, gambling and corruption.
The government launched a nationwide crackdown on soccer gambling, match-fixing and corruption, which led to busts of former CFA vice presidents Xie Yalong, Nan Yong and Yang Yimin.
The first round of trials of corrupt soccer officials, referees and club managers opened on December 19 in two local courts in Liaoning Province.
The anti-corruption movement has helped to clean up the soccer environment, but stricter supervision and better control of the professional leagues and the CFA officials will be required before the nation sees real change.
Nevertheless, there are some positive things to say about Chinese soccer.
The youth training system has improved. The Chinese Ministry of Education and the General Administration of Sports have made efforts to build a nationwide campus-based youth soccer training system, which now includes some 48 cities and 2,600 primary schools and middle schools, with some 470,000 league games to be played by the teens every year. The CFA also started to send young players between the ages of 12 and 18 to Europe and South America for training.
More than 100 young players have been sent to learn the game overseas in a project named “Future Stars” during the past one and a half years. Some boys even had the luck to be accepted by big clubs like Lyon, Liverpool, Valencia and Porto. A few may become prominent stars in the next eight years.
Second, the Chinese Super League (CSL) began to win back fans in the past season. Some real estate tycoons like Xu Jiayin of Guangzhou Evergrande club invested heavily in signing big stars such as Dario Leonardo Conca, MVP of the Brazilian top class league, to enhance the CSL. The appearance of foreign players and famous coaches like Philippe Troussier has helped to elevate the league.
For the next season, Shanghai Shenhua signed Nicolas Anelka from Chelsea, and the CSL teams may have better performance in the AFC Asian Champions League.
The CSL saw its best-ever average attendance per game reach 17,600 in the 2011 season. And the Chinese central television station CCTV will begin live broadcasts of CSL games after a three-year ban that began in 2008.
Camacho and his assistants will remain to guide the national team under a three-year contract. The former Spanish coach’s attack-minded theory has changed the Chinese players a little, and the tempo of the team has been increased. The Chinese players may learn more under the Spaniard and change their basic understanding of soccer.
Moreover, the Chinese youth national team is now under the leadership of Dutch boss Jan Riekerink, the former Ajax youth team coach.
If the Chinese players can learn from these foreign coaches and be more creative on the field, they can help Chinese soccer follow the trends of neighbors in Japan and South Korea.
(Xinhua)
December 16, 2011 Filed under Feature
By Annie Wei
It has been almost a year since Youku and Tudou walked home from their IPOs with bags of money.
Today, the former piracy havens are buying the rights to broadcast popular shows from home and abroad and giving Chinese viewers a legal way to keep up with their favorite series.
But going legal has put an incredible drain in the number of shows available.
Sohu.com has only four of the latest American shows: Nikita, The Big Band, Gossip Girl and Terra Nova. New episodes come out only every two to three weeks, often with horrible subtitle translations and missing scenes.
It’s a far cry from the quality that viewers came to expect after watching fansubs of the shows.
But fansubs are no longer an option. The loose organizations of hobbyists who collaborated to create subtitles for each new episode are now finding their websites forcefully shut down after a decade of mainstream acceptance.
Dawn of fansubs
The Chinese fansubbing scene has its roots in the late 1990s, when students began taking advantage of high-speed Internet access to pirate the latest foreign movies, TV dramas and cartoons.
Many high school students were especially passionate about Japanese comics, so cartoons from the country were an early target.
Fansubbers soon branched out to work on Japanese, Korean and American shows. Within 11 years, there were many fansubbing groups.
Members are usually between the ages of 20 and 30 and are students enrolled in a foreign language major or young bilingual office workers.
Chen Xin, one fansubber, finished high school in 2006. He joined a known fansubbing group during his summer break because he was obsessed with the Japanese cartoon Mobile Suit Gundam SEED. He contributed to the group throughout his four college years but left last year after finding a job in a Japanese company.
“College students are the main members because they have the most free time,” Chen said. “We kept in touch over QQ and rarely knew each other’s real names and ages.”
Chen said his fansubbing group had more than 300 members, but fewer than 100 were active and only 40 were regular contributors. Whenever a new show premiered, they would hold a QQ conference to decide who should lead the project.
A 25-minute Japanese cartoon takes five to six people at least five hours of work to complete. Sometimes the fansubbers would work through several nights to be the first to release a show.
“Quality translation is the soul of fansubbing,” Chen said.
When a new episode finished airing at 10 pm in Japan, Chen and other members would spend two to three hours downloading a rip of the show. Their first draft of the translation would be completed in two to three hours. After that came subtitle timing and editing work.
“Most of the time, I could finish uploading the new episode by 7 or 8 am the next day. After that, I would go to class directly,” Chen said.
ViKi wins funding
While Chinese fansubbers were working to bring in foreign shows, a few stepped up to introduce domestic TV shows to foreign viewers.
Among the first Chinese shows to be fansubbed for foreign viewers were The Twins, Soldier, Go!, The Pearl Princess – Where Are We Going? and No Sincerity, No Disturb.
Among the many fansubbing groups, ViKi.com seems like the first to be building a business model.
Hollywood accounts for only 15 percent of the world’s film and TV output each year. The rest falls into obscurity due to language barriers.
Seeking to pick up the 85 percent that falls through the cracks, ViKi designed a video sharing community that would enable each episode to be quickly translated into several languages.
The popular Chinese show Startling by Each Step had its English subtitles completed by ViKi, from which it was translated again into French, German, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese.
Razmig Hovghimian, CEO of ViKi, said in October it had received $20 million in venture capital from the BBC and SK Telecom.
ViKi purchases the rights to a show and then crowdsources the translation on its website. Users can fill in missing subtitles using a program available on the website.
Chinese fansubbing groups require members who live abroad to obtain the source material and upload it to the subtitling team.
ViKi’s platform removes this barrier by letting any viewer participate in watching and translating the show legally.
The website has seen amazing user growth. One of its most successful shows is a Korean drama that has been translated into 40 languages. Many translations are completed within a day of the show’s upload.
The huge number of users brings advertising revenue to ViKi, and the subtitles give users a reason to come back and interact. The site has helped 25 shows from three countries to debut on Hulu and Netflix, two popular video sites in the US.
Strict policy
Aside from financial problems, Chinese fansubbers face other obstacles – buying Web space requires members to contribute their own money under their own names.
ViKi’s business model may be a tough transition for the groups, said Li Liang, a leading fansubber.
Li said the Chinese fansubbing scene mirrors what Taiwan had only a decade ago. At that time, the population was only gradually becoming aware of copyrights. Many fansub groups attempted to reinvent themselves as agencies.
On the mainland, most shows sell their broadcasting rights directly to companies like Qiyi, Tudou and Youku. These rights enable the sites to get the source material even before broadcast and beat the fansubbers to any release.
The inability to be first to release a show has made many fansubbers throw in the towel, even though the quality of their subtitles are often abysmal.
A few groups are trying to work with the video sites or copyright holders to do a better translation job than the often backward and rushed state-owned translation companies.
“The mainland isn’t Taiwan. Even if we say we are developing the culture industry and have policies to bring in foreign media – like Japanese comics and cartoons – I don’t think a private company can ever be approved to introduce them,” Li said.
The government’s harsh regulations and censorship of foreign shows makes it easier for a company like ViKi to work with foreign companies to introduce China’s shows to the world rather than to bring the world’s shows to China, Li said.
By Annie Wei
It has been almost a year since Youku and Tudou walked home from their IPOs with bags of money.
Today, the former piracy havens are buying the rights to broadcast popular shows from home and abroad and giving Chinese viewers a legal way to keep up with their favorite series.
But going legal has put an incredible drain in the number of shows available.
Sohu.com has only four of the latest American shows: Nikita, The Big Band, Gossip Girl and Terra Nova. New episodes come out only every two to three weeks, often with horrible subtitle translations and missing scenes.
It’s a far cry from the quality that viewers came to expect after watching fansubs of the shows.
But fansubs are no longer an option. The loose organizations of hobbyists who collaborated to create subtitles for each new episode are now finding their websites forcefully shut down after a decade of mainstream acceptance.
Fansubbed videos used to be easy to find on the web. The closure of several major group sites is making them more difficult to procure. Photos provided by Google.com
Dawn of fansubs
The Chinese fansubbing scene has its roots in the late 1990s, when students began taking advantage of high-speed Internet access to pirate the latest foreign movies, TV dramas and cartoons.
Many high school students were especially passionate about Japanese comics, so cartoons from the country were an early target.
Fansubbers soon branched out to work on Japanese, Korean and American shows. Within 11 years, there were many fansubbing groups.
Members are usually between the ages of 20 and 30 and are students enrolled in a foreign language major or young bilingual office workers.
Chen Xin, one fansubber, finished high school in 2006. He joined a known fansubbing group during his summer break because he was obsessed with the Japanese cartoon Mobile Suit Gundam SEED. He contributed to the group throughout his four college years but left last year after finding a job in a Japanese company.
“College students are the main members because they have the most free time,” Chen said. “We kept in touch over QQ and rarely knew each other’s real names and ages.”
Chen said his fansubbing group had more than 300 members, but fewer than 100 were active and only 40 were regular contributors. Whenever a new show premiered, they would hold a QQ conference to decide who should lead the project.
A 25-minute Japanese cartoon takes five to six people at least five hours of work to complete. Sometimes the fansubbers would work through several nights to be the first to release a show.
“Quality translation is the soul of fansubbing,” Chen said.
When a new episode finished airing at 10 pm in Japan, Chen and other members would spend two to three hours downloading a rip of the show. Their first draft of the translation would be completed in two to three hours. After that came subtitle timing and editing work.
“Most of the time, I could finish uploading the new episode by 7 or 8 am the next day. After that, I would go to class directly,” Chen said.
December 9, 2011 Filed under Feature
By Chu Meng
In spite of Beijing’s plans to transform itself into a national cultural and artistic powerhouse, grassroots groups and individual performers are being denied access to performance spaces by district-level government.
Among the casualties of this policy is Beijing Jili Comic Group, a slapstick troupe led by local migrant worker Wang Huajiang.
Wang has spent the past 10 months petitioning the Chaoyang District Cultural Commission for permission to stage his original comedies for profit in the city.
Wang Huajiang was crestfallen last Wednesday.
The 42-year-old farmer from Hubei Province was hoping for good news after 10 months of campaigning to stage one of his comedies in the capital. Unfortunately, the Chaoyang District Cultural Commission chose to reject his application for a seventh time.
The reason? His actors “lacked professional performing qualifications” and university diplomas.
Ten months ago, Wang founded Beijing Jili Comic Group, a blue-collar comedy troupe composed of seven other farmers who had come to the city to work as day laborers.
The performers were selected by Wang from around 50 candidates. The group relies on physical humor, utilizing miming and slapstick like the famous silent film comedian Charlie Chaplin.
Wang is the group’s script writer, director, artistic consultant, filming technique director and logistics manager.
But Wang’s performing group was refused the necessary certification to stage commercial performances because neither he nor his performers had been registered by the cultural commission.
For Wang’s troupe, such registration is impossible. The Ministry of Culture requires that at least three members of all performing groups in the country have professionally-recognized qualifications or a degree in the performing arts granted by an accredited university.
“We came to the capital as migrant workers precisely because we never had access to such education,” Wang said.
“Anyone wishing to put on a commercial performance that sells tickets or turns a profit must have graduated from an arts college or hold professional acting certification. That is the most basic requirement imposed by the authorities to ensure the quality of the nation’s cultural and performing industry,” a spokesperson for the commission speaking on its hotline said.
In addition, all performing members must have a permanent address and a fixed place to perform, rehearse and store equipment. They must also deposit a large sum of capital in order to “ensure their sustainability.”
The group must also be classified as an existing performance art style, such as Peking opera, acrobatics or theater, the spokesperson said. Each style is supervised by a separate administrative authority or organization.
Wang fell in love with acting as a child, and was inspired to found a comic troupe after seeing a Charlie Chaplin video at a wholesale market on the south side of Beijing in 2009.
“Suddenly, I felt like his style was something I was born to emulate,” he said.
Immediately, he decided to write his own comedies telling stories about migrant workers living in the capital. He quit his job of delivering papers at the Beijing Time’s circulation department in March, going back home engaged in script writing only.
He began interviewing more than 50 graduates from professional schools such as the Beijing Film Academy, but they were not able to perform in a natural or funny way.
“Chaplin’s slapstick was neither serious drama nor crosstalk. My scripts were based on the real experiences of migrant workers in Beijing,” he said.
In the end, seven performers without a professional background made the cut, including Wang’s 18-year-old son.
“It’s not that I don’t want professionals with solid training. They’re simply not suitable for my comedy, and I can’t meet their expected wages,” said Wang.
Wang invested more than 100,000 yuan and spent two years honing his debut script, Living in the City of Beijing. The story followed a farmer who came from Hubei Province to Beijing, and was inspired from Wang’s own experiences.
Wang was told their club could not perform commercially, although they had registered with the municipal administration of industry and commerce as a private drama club.
“That limited us to non-profit performances. But I wrote these plays and I want to sell tickets. I want to see whether my art can survive in the market,” he said.
Very few performances have ever been crafted about the lives of migrant workers. Even fewer have been created by migrant workers.
“A cultural commission employee suggested I find an agent so that we don’t need to worry about qualifications. But I don’t want others telling me what to do or setting restrictions and requirements,” he said.
For the past 10 months, Wang has leased a 200-square-meter rehearsal hall in Xiaxinbao Village, outside the East Fifth Ring Road. He, his wife and son and the seven actors live nearby. The group rehearses from 9 am to 6 pm every day.
Zhang Zhongfei, 27, a group member from Henan Province, said he felt happy performing, and that Wang pays each actor a monthly salary and provides lunch.
“I used to be a movie extra earning 30 yuan and a free lunch each. Now I make 2,400 yuan per month. I hope we’ll be able to perform in a real theater and become famous – even without professional instruction,” Zhang said.
Wang is now working on extending the first play into a series. He plans to follow Living in the City of Beijing with another play named Beijing Spirits.
“Few stories are told by the mouths of farmers working in the city. I want Beijing Spirits to be about our dedication to struggle – for migrants, no struggle means no success,” Wang said.
He hopes that grassroots performers like his troupe can find performing opportunities even without professional qualifications. The market should decide whether or not a group has what it takes to succeed.
Zhao Ningyu, a professor at Communication University of China and movie critic, said that while private actors and performing groups were not barred from performing, they are barred from profiting from their work.
“Grassroots groups should be encouraged to go on stage and fulfill their dreams. Authorities need to be more innovative when administering China’s cultural industry to give dedicated performers like Wang a chance,” he said.
By Chu Meng
In spite of Beijing’s plans to transform itself into a national cultural and artistic powerhouse, grassroots groups and individual performers are being denied access to performance spaces by district-level government.
Among the casualties of this policy is Beijing Jili Comic Group, a slapstick troupe led by local migrant worker Wang Huajiang.
Wang has spent the past 10 months petitioning the Chaoyang District Cultural Commission for permission to stage his original comedies for profit in the city.
Charlie Chaplin, an icon of silent film, is Wang Huajiang's inspiration.
Wang Huajiang was crestfallen last Wednesday.
The 42-year-old farmer from Hubei Province was hoping for good news after 10 months of campaigning to stage one of his comedies in the capital. Unfortunately, the Chaoyang District Cultural Commission chose to reject his application for a seventh time.
The reason? His actors “lacked professional performing qualifications” and university diplomas.
Ten months ago, Wang founded Beijing Jili Comic Group, a blue-collar comedy troupe composed of seven other farmers who had come to the city to work as day laborers.
The performers were selected by Wang from around 50 candidates. The group relies on physical humor, utilizing miming and slapstick like the famous silent film comedian Charlie Chaplin.
Wang is the group’s script writer, director, artistic consultant, filming technique director and logistics manager.
But Wang’s performing group was refused the necessary certification to stage commercial performances because neither he nor his performers had been registered by the cultural commission.
For Wang’s troupe, such registration is impossible. The Ministry of Culture requires that at least three members of all performing groups in the country have professionally-recognized qualifications or a degree in the performing arts granted by an accredited university.
“We came to the capital as migrant workers precisely because we never had access to such education,” Wang said.
“Anyone wishing to put on a commercial performance that sells tickets or turns a profit must have graduated from an arts college or hold professional acting certification. That is the most basic requirement imposed by the authorities to ensure the quality of the nation’s cultural and performing industry,” a spokesperson for the commission speaking on its hotline said.
In addition, all performing members must have a permanent address and a fixed place to perform, rehearse and store equipment. They must also deposit a large sum of capital in order to “ensure their sustainability.”
The group must also be classified as an existing performance art style, such as Peking opera, acrobatics or theater, the spokesperson said. Each style is supervised by a separate administrative authority or organization.
November 25, 2011 Filed under Feature
By Zhang Dongya
Meteorologists may claim the season is having unusually warm temperatures, but the fledgling group purchase industry is facing an extremely cold winter.
Many small websites shut down during the past two months, and bigger firms have shuttered their branches, sacked employees, slashed wages and cut benefits. After two years of prosperity, trouble has come to the group purchase model.
Tightening market
The group purchase explosion began last march, when Meituan closed its first deal. By October 2011, more than 5,000 group purchase websites had opened to cash in on the trend.
But the explosion has slowed to a trickle. In September, only 19 new group purchase websites were registered. Worse yet, the big players seem to be in retreat.
Manzuo closed 312 of its branches, leaving only 41 in operation, and slashed employee pay by 25 to 50 percent. Many departments had their bonuses cut, which for many meant a loss of one third of their pay. The company itself relocated to a low-cost office in Jiuxianqiao in October.
That’s scary given that a survey conducted by Tuan800, a ranker of group purchase websites, showed Manzuo ranked fourth in sales as of September.
This month, 24quan closed its branch in Huai’an, Jiangsu Province and scurried away in the night, leaving hundreds of thousands of local merchants holding the debt.
24quan fired some 3,000 of its 5,000 employees and closed branches all over the country during the last two months.
Both Manzuo and 24quan were among China’s Top 10 group purchase websites. Small and medium players like Ximi and Youpin have already declared bankruptcy and closed down.
Industrial minefield
Rex felt lucky when he heard that group purchase companies were experiencing such a big shake-up. He worked in brand promotion for one of the big players from last March, when it was founded, and left at the end of 2010.
“There are many problems in the industry. Although they offered a high salary, I saw little hope for the future,” he said.
During the months Rex worked for the group purchase website, the company and industry were expanding at a breakneck pace.
“It developed too rapidly. Within several months, they had recruited thousands of employees and set up hundreds of branches around the country,” he said.
“Monthly costs climbed to 15 million yuan, and they were throwing away money by advertising in the subways. The three PR companies working with the brand were billing them for 300,000 yuan each month.”
Almost overnight, the group purchase companies moved from advertising in subways to advertising on television. Many people with no experience in E-business hopped into the industry in hopes of getting a share.
“It turned ‘abnormal’ last September. Employees were being offered pay raises and welfare – especially the employees working in marketing and brand promotion department. But that was really unrealistic,” Rex said.
He voiced opposition to the high-cost expansion but was shot down.
“I saw too many perils.”
The local group purchase websites based in Beijing have had problems branching out to other regions. The people they sent to other provinces made little headway.
At some branch websites in small cities like Wujiang in Jiangsu Province and Handan in Hebei Province, the items available for group purchase were limited to products people could purchase anywhere – never local products or services.
The rapid expansion has made many early investors comparatively cautious.
Rex said investors have started pressuring the companies to meet their targets, putting even great financial pressure on the new businesses.
“With Chinese New Year’s coming up, the cash flow will be tighter than ever during the next two months,” he said.
Dimming business
Of the Top 10 group purchase websites, only Ftuan received a cash injection of US $60 million (381 million yuan) in the fourth quarter.
Other companies were cautious about changes in the industry.
Nuomi, founded last June, remains in the Top 10 but has fewer than 900 employees.
Its manager Shen Boyang said they will continue to hold the staff count below 1,000 after a new recruitment drive at the end of the year.
“Our competitors are throwing money at advertising and expansion. For us to succeed, we need to avoid getting caught up in the craze and make small and steady progress,” Shen said Tuesday. He said his company is considering cooperating in new cities, but remains very cautious about their market potential.
That’s no surprise, given the whole group purchase industry is losing profits. The rate of gross profits crashed from 20 percent to less than 5 percent in the span of 2011.
Poor performance by group purchase companies has cast a melancholy mood over the entire e-business market this year.
Bi Sheng, the CEO of online shoe seller Letao, called Chinese e-business a “fraud.”
“It is a ‘bottom’ industry. Doing the business is like diving, because you can only sink. When you are nearly submerged, some investor throws you money and you emerge from the water. Then you sink again while you wait for the next investment,” he said.
“Death comes when the rich people stop throwing money.”
Letao cut its advertising budget by 80 percent and is considering making transformations as soon as possible.
The Tuesday after Bi’s comments, 360buy Jingdong Mall, China’s biggest online retailer, declared an end to its popular free shipping policy, charging an extra 5 yuan for all orders of less than 39 yuan.
Liu Qiangdong, CEO of 360buy, said on his microblog it was a necessary move even though people would complain.
“E-business needs to survive another five years to have a future,” he said.
By Zhang Dongya
Meteorologists may claim the season is having unusually warm temperatures, but the fledgling group purchase industry is facing an extremely cold winter.
Many small websites shut down during the past two months, and bigger firms have shuttered their branches, sacked employees, slashed wages and cut benefits. After two years of prosperity, trouble has come to the group purchase model.
55tuan, one of the Top 10 group purchase websites, fired more than half its employees in October. The company claimed it was normal "optimization," but insiders say it betrays the bad situation of the industry. CFP Photos
Tightening market
The group purchase explosion began last march, when Meituan closed its first deal. By October 2011, more than 5,000 group purchase websites had opened to cash in on the trend.
But the explosion has slowed to a trickle. In September, only 19 new group purchase websites were registered. Worse yet, the big players seem to be in retreat.
Manzuo closed 312 of its branches, leaving only 41 in operation, and slashed employee pay by 25 to 50 percent. Many departments had their bonuses cut, which for many meant a loss of one third of their pay. The company itself relocated to a low-cost office in Jiuxianqiao in October.
That’s scary given that a survey conducted by Tuan800, a ranker of group purchase websites, showed Manzuo ranked fourth in sales as of September.
This month, 24quan closed its branch in Huai’an, Jiangsu Province and scurried away in the night, leaving hundreds of thousands of local merchants holding the debt.
24quan fired some 3,000 of its 5,000 employees and closed branches all over the country during the last two months.
Both Manzuo and 24quan were among China’s Top 10 group purchase websites. Small and medium players like Ximi and Youpin have already declared bankruptcy and closed down.
November 18, 2011 Filed under Feature
“Markets develop where there is a need. A black market forms when there is a demand that the law drives underground.”
By Chu Meng
The capital’s black market trade in human ova is targeting female students at highly ranked universities, whose eggs can sell for tens of thousands of yuan, the Beijing News reported Monday.
Despite the Ministry of Health’s 1998 ban on commercialization of human embryonic stem cells – including ova and sperm – there are reports of a number of agencies in Beijing controlling a sophisticated chain that solicits students as ova sellers and performs both invitro fertilization and the surgery to implant the egg.
Students at Tsinghua University and Peking University are among the most sought after. According to the report, ova traders have paid off many obstetricians and nurses to assist in physical examinations and surgery.
Clients, usually middle-aged couples who are infertile, usually discover the black market on the Internet.
A Beijing News reporter posed as a Peking University student carried out the undercover investigation. In mid-October, she accessed the Peking University campus network to read its forums and found advertisements offering to buy students’ ova. Contact information for these ads was a QQ number or an account at the social networking site Renren.
The reporter contacted one of the most popular advertisers, nicknamed “Mo Mo” on QQ, and was asked to attend an interview with an intermediary agent at a cafe in Zhongguancun.
The agent said ova from students at Tsinghua University and Peking University sold for 30,000 yuan, and ova from students of all other universities sold for 5,000 yuan.
“Prices are set according to the specific requirements of the client. Some ask only for girls with double-fold eyelids or good eyesight,” the agent said.
On October 22, the reporter sat with more than 10 students from surrounding universities at a cafe to face the clients, most of whom were middle-aged couples.
Mo Mo introduced each of the students and allowed the clients to examine them from a distance. Students and clients were not allowed to speak to each other, and all questions were filtered through Mo Mo. Most couples asked about the students’ height, blood type, health, personalities and hobbies.
The interview ended after 40 minutes.
The agent told the students they would be notified in seven days if they had been selected by one of the couples.
From the interview, the reporter found Li Qing (pseudonym), a 20-year-old student, had donated an ovum in a surgery in early 2010.
After physical examination at a private hospital, whose obstetricians and nurses were in the employ of the black market, she was injected with medicines that encourage the formation and release of ova.
“They stuck me with one needle per day for eight consecutive days,” she said. Her body did not feel any different, except for aches in her arms, after each injection.
After that, she had a non-surgical procedure to remove the ovum. A tube was inserted into her vagina, and the ovum was removed and frozen immediately.
Li said she felt uncomfortable during the operation, but quickly recovered after a few days resting at the dorm. She had received 5,000 yuan for “nutrition fees” before the procedure.
“I didn’t know anything about what came next. No one told me whether the clients would be receiving invitro fertilization at the same hospital,” she said. While Li does not regret selling her ova, she said she would never tell her friends, classmates, family or boyfriend about it.
Li’s ovum was artificially fertilized before it was put into the female client or surrogate, Mo Mo told the Beijing News’ reporter over QQ.
“This is forbidden in regular hospitals, so we usually go to private or foreign-invested hospitals,” she said.
There are no contracts or agreement papers signed between the donor and the agency, or between the agency and the client. The business is run mouth-to-mouth and leaves no tangible evidence.
Xue Qing, a doctor at the Maternity and Children’s Hospital of Peking University, said private operations do little to guarantee the rights of the donors.
She also warned that artificially induced ovulation may result in ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome, which can result in bloating, pulmonary embolism, kidney failure and death.
The mature industry and huge profits are a reminder of how few avenues there are for legal egg donation, egg acquisition and surrogacy.
“Markets develop where there is a need. A black market forms when there is a demand that the law drives underground,” said Wang Yanguang, a researcher at the Beijing Institute of Life Science at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Data from 2004 showed that nearly 10 percent of Chinese couples are infertile, either because of the man or the woman. But today, the country lacks both a legal ova pool and legal channels for buying and selling ova.
“There is not even a standard medical procedure for infertile couples to acquire ova from the hospital,” he said. “Under Chinese law, it is illegal to buy human eggs or receive them for free. Only women who have extra eggs while undergoing invitro fertilization can donate their eggs to others. This is extremely rare.”
The demand for eggs and the ban on their sale has resulted in a black market where infertile couples are happy to pay 50,000 to 100,000 yuan to find willing women donors or surrogate mothers.
Li Benfu, professor and director of the Chinese Society of Medical Ethics, said the country is in serious need of legal ova pools.
“It will not only benefit infertile couples, the country’s regular embryonic stem cell researchers need access to such pools too. Embryonic stem cells, including ova and sperm, can be used to find new treatments for disease and to develop new medicines,” Li said.
“Markets develop where there is a need. A black market forms when there is a demand that the law drives underground.”
Students are contacted through their campus network and taken to Zhongguancun to meet with black market ova traders. CFP Photos
By Chu Meng
The capital’s black market trade in human ova is targeting female students at highly ranked universities, whose eggs can sell for tens of thousands of yuan, the Beijing News reported Monday.
Despite the Ministry of Health’s 1998 ban on commercialization of human embryonic stem cells – including ova and sperm – there are reports of a number of agencies in Beijing controlling a sophisticated chain that solicits students as ova sellers and performs both invitro fertilization and the surgery to implant the egg.
Students at Tsinghua University and Peking University are among the most sought after. According to the report, ova traders have paid off many obstetricians and nurses to assist in physical examinations and surgery.
University students await an interview with the clients.
Clients, usually middle-aged couples who are infertile, usually discover the black market on the Internet.
A Beijing News reporter posed as a Peking University student carried out the undercover investigation. In mid-October, she accessed the Peking University campus network to read its forums and found advertisements offering to buy students’ ova. Contact information for these ads was a QQ number or an account at the social networking site Renren.
November 11, 2011 Filed under Feature
By Huang Daohen
With diplomas from foreign schools and a couple years of experience in Silicon Valley, China’s returning students are bringing back both new technology and management concepts.
But rather than take those skills to the nation’s state-run companies, many prefer to start new companies in the red-hot tech sector.
Starting a business is hard work. While their peers may finish work at 5 pm, those at start-ups work late into the night, on weekends and through the national vacations.
Return or not
“What do you think about the opportunities in China?”
It is the most frequent question Charles Cao runs into when he meets people studying or working in the US and Europe.
Cao gave up a comfortable life in the San Francisco Bay area in 2003 to return to China, bringing his wife Windy and his US-born daughter, seven-year-old Clare.
He first worked for a multinational enterprise, then became a partner at a domestic firm. Now the 36-year-old is in business for himself.
“When I decided to return, many said it wasn’t the right time. Now they say maybe it was a little too late,” Cao said.
Coming back to China was not an easy decision. At that time, it was trendy for people to return to China abroad and try their luck in the domestic industry.
“But I saw many frustrated husbands who moved back to the States, disappointed, because their wives were unhappy and their kids had trouble at school,” Cao said.
Their workplace mannerisms, learned in foreign enterprises, often rubbed locals the wrong way and were often mistaken for arrogance.
But Cao soon found his years of overseas study and work had prepared him for the market in China. He has a master’s degree in business management and seven years of experience in multinational companies, where he ran the IT department.
“There are some pros and cons involved in adjusting to local life, but in the end, life is all about trade-offs,” Cao said. “It is good to have options, though sometimes it is hard to make choices.”
The start-up venture
Cao finds his new work exciting, even though it does keep him occupied on the nights and weekends.
“Here I feel like I’m starting a real career, not just another job,” he said.
Cao’s company, which offers Internet solutions, recently launched an online travel site. The idea came when he met Fritz Demopoulos, co-founder of Qunar.com, a travel search site which received a $308 million (1.96 billion yuan) investment from Baidu in June.
Cao was stunned when he learned about Qunar’s development. In just three years, the site’s reach per million users has even surpassed the Qihoo search engine on Alexa, Amazon’s traffic measurement tool.
Qunar’s progress offers hope for Wanli, Cao’s site.
But Wanli faces a market with existing strong players like the Nasdaq-listed Ctrip and eLong.
Cao isn’t without his plan. Bloomberg described the country’s online travel search market as having “a few gorillas and lots of monkeys.”
“That’s exactly the situation we have in the China market. We have gorillas like Ctrip and eLong, and also have smaller simians like Wanli and individual agencies,” he said.
The country is vast and fragmented enough to make businesses like Ctrip and eLong useful to consumers. “About 80 percent of the hotels in the US are chain-affiliated,” Cao said. “But in China that number is less than 20 percent. The Chinese market is even more fragmented than Europe’s.”
Money and talent
But starting a business turned out to be more complicated than Cao had expected.
On a recent Tuesday morning, Cao huddled with his team – seven IT engineers in their 20s – in a 70-square-meter room for a daily meeting on the ninth floor of Tsinghua Science Park Building in Haidian District.
On the same floor, there are new start-ups like a chip designer, an online payment company and a few dozen software companies.
But Room A0913 is a lucky one: its former tenant, which designed chips for set-top boxes, received $10 million (63.5 million yuan) in venture capital earlier this year and moved to a more upscale building.
Cao has more modest goals.
Wanli only needs $1 million, at least for now. Cao said he’s been talking to a few investors, “but so far there are no solid commitments.”
When money stops coming in, start-ups are left to live or die on their ability to control costs. Cao has discovered that there are ways to keep costs down in the Zhongguancun area.
Cheap food is one way to start. Cao and his team eat at a Sichuan restaurant near the office. It serves meals at a very competitive 10 yuan per dish.
“We’re trying to save every penny we can,” Cao said. Some of the office furniture was bought from a neighborhood market.
The real difficulty, Cao said, is locating talent.
The problem, Cao said, is that the first choice for most graduates of top schools is a big multinational: someone like P&G, Microsoft, Huawei or Lenovo.
“To most of them, start-ups like Wanli offer no security even if the pay is competetive,” Cao said.
Start-up culture
Successful or not, returnees like Cao are laying a foundation for start-up culture, said Wen Chenjun, a researcher at the Institute of China’s Economic Reform and Development at Renmin University of China.
Statistics show that enterprises started by returnees are much likelier to be successful and hire more employees than start-ups created by Chinese people who never studied or worked abroad.
Wen said that may be partly due to the culture. Chinese workers are more likely to value stability and fear failure, making the high-risk nature of start-ups a turn off.
“Many people don’t know how to shape a start-up,” Wen said. “No one teaches that kind of risk-taking here. Instead, teachers tell students to behave and follow what society expects them to do.”
By Huang Daohen
With diplomas from foreign schools and a couple years of experience in Silicon Valley, China’s returning students are bringing back both new technology and management concepts.
But rather than take those skills to the nation’s state-run companies, many prefer to start new companies in the red-hot tech sector.
Starting a business is hard work. While their peers may finish work at 5 pm, those at start-ups work late into the night, on weekends and through the national vacations.
The nation hosts many exhibitions and forums to entice students to return home from abroad. CFP Photo
Return or not
“What do you think about the opportunities in China?”
It is the most frequent question Charles Cao runs into when he meets people studying or working in the US and Europe.
Cao gave up a comfortable life in the San Francisco Bay area in 2003 to return to China, bringing his wife Windy and his US-born daughter, seven-year-old Clare.
He first worked for a multinational enterprise, then became a partner at a domestic firm. Now the 36-year-old is in business for himself.
“When I decided to return, many said it wasn’t the right time. Now they say maybe it was a little too late,” Cao said.
Coming back to China was not an easy decision. At that time, it was trendy for people to return to China abroad and try their luck in the domestic industry.
“But I saw many frustrated husbands who moved back to the States, disappointed, because their wives were unhappy and their kids had trouble at school,” Cao said.
Their workplace mannerisms, learned in foreign enterprises, often rubbed locals the wrong way and were often mistaken for arrogance.
But Cao soon found his years of overseas study and work had prepared him for the market in China. He has a master’s degree in business management and seven years of experience in multinational companies, where he ran the IT department.
“There are some pros and cons involved in adjusting to local life, but in the end, life is all about trade-offs,” Cao said. “It is good to have options, though sometimes it is hard to make choices.”
November 4, 2011 Filed under Feature
By Annie Wei
Recent food safety concerns have led thousands of urban shoppers to explore Farmer’s Market, a volunteer group bringing organic produce to the capital.
More than 30 farmers attended the most recent event last Saturday at Phoenix City on the northeast corner of Third Ring Road. Volunteers set up a Halloween stage for children.
“This was our largest market meet yet, and it took a lot of preparation,” said Qi Yang at a restaurant in Phoenix City the day before. The restaurant was allowing Farmer’s Market volunteers to borrow some of its tables free.
Qi and the other volunteers, many of whom came directly from work, spent Friday night drawing posters and decorating the stage for the 4,000 visitors who came the next day.
Too pricy?
Farmer’s Market has been operating since 2010. But unlike similar markets abroad, Beijing’s is less like a flea market for fresh produce than a trendy lifestyle destination for well-to-do families.
With 18,000 followers of its Sina Weibo (@farmersmarketbj), the market has made considerable efforts to keep addressing any misunderstandings about its sales. A minority of shoppers have complained about prices that, in some cases, exceed eight times the going supermarket rate.
But organic produce costs more: especially in China – and especially in a city like Beijing, which is notorious for its poor and polluted soil.
“You cannot expect to pay the same as you would at a supermarket,” said Jin Jiashu, 39, a market volunteer who works in the IT industry.
Jin moved from Shenzhen to Beijing in 2008 with the dream of starting a direct organic market in the capital. But he soon found that China’s organic farms were scattered all over the country and totally disconnected from an efficient distribution network.
“That was when I ran into Farmer’s Market. As I got to know the organizers, I found we were very like-minded,” Jin said. He has since shifted his start-up plans to a low-carbon social network called Lohasoo.com.
With much of the design and programming work being handled by other engineers, Jin prefers to donate his time at the market.
A trusting system
But can the vendors be trusted?
“At first, the market was just a few farmers that we trusted. Then it started to explode,” said Chang Tianle, a former NGO worker and full-time Farmer’s Market volunteer.
One of the most important jobs at the market is to visit each farm and interview its owners before inviting them to sell in the market.
There is currently a very long list of vendors looking to get into the market, but without more volunteers to inspect their farms, Cheng said they will have to wait. Chang is considering switching to a system that would assign vendor screening to a third party.
Market organizers use their Sina Weibo account to announce their inspection visits for each new farm so interested customers can ride along.
“We hope our customers’ experience with organic produce doesn’t end at the market. They should learn more about how organic food is actually grown, where it comes from and more about the farmers,” Jin said.
Little kitchen
The volunteers’ effort has not gone unappreciated. Of the current 30 vendors, almost all attend every Farmer’s Market events, Chang said.
Dealing with their customers face to face has helped many farmers learn what consumers want. The praise they’ve received for the quality of their produce has helped bolster their confidence in organic farming, Chang said.
It doesn’t hurt that the vendors are not charged for their stands.
To raise more money for advertising, market organizers began a second project called “Little Kitchen.” The kitchen concept was first proposed by Emi Uemura, a Japanese woman and the founder of Farmer’s Market.
At one market session this January, the venue decided to charge the group 500 yuan. Farmers donated some of their vegetables and volunteers decided to cook and sell food, using that to raise money.
The amount of food they sold could barely meet the demands of shoppers.
“Last Saturday we earned 10,000 yuan through Little Kitchen because the Halloween party brought in 4,000 visitors. We prepared a lot of food,” said Yu Lu, the head chef of Little Kitchen.
Yu came to Beijing from Shanghai earlier this year after marrying a Beijing man. She quickly discovered Farmer’s Market, and Chang encouraged her to get involved with the kitchen.
For the Halloween event, Yu and three volunteers began preparing dishes three days in advance. At most market events, Little Kitchen earns between 1,000 and 2,000 yuan. On its worst month, it earned only 80 yuan after deducting the cost of raw materials.
Priority issues
Having found reliable vendors, venues and customers, the market is now looking for full-time employees.
While core volunteers like Jin Jiashu, Yu Lu, Chang Tianle and Qi Yang have worked essentially for free, the hope the next round of people involved in the market will be able to get something back for their contributions, Chang said.
Ma Xiaochao, 25, a Beijinger who recently returned to the capital after working on a farm in Anhui Province, is one such member.
“When I was in school, I was very interested in Chinese agriculture,” Ma said.
She previously worked with an NGO providing aid to migrant workers in Shanghai. After that she got involved in organic farming.
While cities such as Chengdu and Guangzhou have a long history of organizing farmer’s markets, the groups have done little to help farmers and consumers expand their knowledge of organic agriculture, Chang said. Unpaid volunteers could never devote enough time to the cause.
“Beijing is different,” she said, because it became so popular so quickly.
“At first we only planned to host it once every several months as a symbolic gesture of our support for organic food, but the strong response from consumers showed we would be able to make a difference,” Chang said.
By Annie Wei
Recent food safety concerns have led thousands of urban shoppers to explore Farmer’s Market, a volunteer group bringing organic produce to the capital.
More than 30 farmers attended the most recent event last Saturday at Phoenix City on the northeast corner of Third Ring Road. Volunteers set up a Halloween stage for children.
“This was our largest market meet yet, and it took a lot of preparation,” said Qi Yang at a restaurant in Phoenix City the day before. The restaurant was allowing Farmer’s Market volunteers to borrow some of its tables free.
Qi and the other volunteers, many of whom came directly from work, spent Friday night drawing posters and decorating the stage for the 4,000 visitors who came the next day.
Farmer's Market is supported by a group of volunteers. Photo by Liu Yanyun
Too pricy?
Farmer’s Market has been operating since 2010. But unlike similar markets abroad, Beijing’s is less like a flea market for fresh produce than a trendy lifestyle destination for well-to-do families.
With 18,000 followers of its Sina Weibo (@farmersmarketbj), the market has made considerable efforts to keep addressing any misunderstandings about its sales. A minority of shoppers have complained about prices that, in some cases, exceed eight times the going supermarket rate.
But organic produce costs more: especially in China – and especially in a city like Beijing, which is notorious for its poor and polluted soil.
“You cannot expect to pay the same as you would at a supermarket,” said Jin Jiashu, 39, a market volunteer who works in the IT industry.
Jin moved from Shenzhen to Beijing in 2008 with the dream of starting a direct organic market in the capital. But he soon found that China’s organic farms were scattered all over the country and totally disconnected from an efficient distribution network.
“That was when I ran into Farmer’s Market. As I got to know the organizers, I found we were very like-minded,” Jin said. He has since shifted his start-up plans to a low-carbon social network called Lohasoo.com.
With much of the design and programming work being handled by other engineers, Jin prefers to donate his time at the market.
October 28, 2011 Filed under Feature
By Han Manman
Environmental protection and sustainability are pressing subjects for China, where the environment has suffered rapid and irreversible damage due to the development and industrialization.
Many international and domestic NGOs have frequently warned China of the worsening situation and have launched campaigns to educate the public about environmental protection.
One group of individuals, without the distinguished background or commercial support of their NGO peers, is making its own effort to save nature for the next generation. A Taiwanese couple is among them.
A model for an eco
community
Grace Tong and Mantow Chow have lived on the mainland for 10 years.
In that short time they have seen China’s environment degenerate rapidly. Now they believe it is time to make common people realize how important the environment is and stimulate them to take action for the sake of the next generation.
To inspire people to be more ecologically minded, the couple founded the documentary group called Saving Nature with Harmony several years ago.
Their latest project is a documentary filmed in Findhorn, a small village in Scotland and a role model for sustainable human settlements.
As one of the first Chinese groups to visit the place, Tong and Chow hope their experience can inspire more urban planners and residents to learn about the community’s organic food chain, ecological constructions and energy systems, as well as the local residents’ sustainable lifestyle.
Two ‘fools’
In Taiwan, Tong and Chow are known as “fools” because they gave up fame, status and salary to undertake a public project that has cleaned out their savings.
The 50-year-old Tong was a well-known TV host in Taiwan during the 1980s, a time when Taiwan had only three TV stations. She was also the first to create a news interview program in Taiwan.
At the height of her career, Tong became disillusioned with the direction of the island’s profit-oriented media, where programs are selected for their profitability rather than their impact. When increased ratings became the basis for decision making, the media became obsessed with sex, violence and scandals.
“It’s hard to find pure in [Taiwan’s media],” Tong said.
When she came to view media work as a waste of her life, Tong looked to something more meaningful: the environment.
Her years of reporting had given her a unique perspective on ecological deterioration – a problem shared by both Taiwan and the mainland. She resolved to do something to save the environment and promote awareness of its plight.
The plan won big support from her husband Chow, even though he knew from experience that it would land them in the poor house.
Popularly known as “Uncle Mantow” (Uncle Bun), Chow was a big name in Taiwanese baseball during the 1990s. Despite being born into a rich family and having flirted with business, Chow became obsessed with the idea of starting a youth baseball team on the mainland.
Chasing that dream cost him his fortune. He paid to introduce an experienced Taiwanese baseball coach to train the mainland baseball team, which was a very weak performer in the 1990s. He also paid to take the team to Australia to compete in the Baseball Asia Cup in 1993. Although they lost all the games, the players found confidence when they saw their skill level wasn’t that far behind their competitors. He also paid to send the national team to the US for a three-month baseball camp and set up youth baseball teams in Shanghai and in Beijing.
When the dream finally seemed to be making progress, Chow had to abandon everything because he ran out of money.
This time, Chow decided to help his wife fulfill her dream. They moved to the mainland in 2002 with their two sons and started a new life devoted to ecological protection.
One or two people working alone is hardly enough to create an eco-protection platform in a country as large as China. In order to spread their message, the couple decided to use documentary.
After four years of preparations, Tong and Chow founded Saving Nature with Harmony in 2006 and began scouring the nation for good topics..
Unlike most environmental documentaries, which focus on how dangerous the environment can be when not cared for, “ours focus is on the little people who make an effort to save nature on their own,” Tong said.
“We hope their stories can tell Chinese people that they can really do something to make the environment better,” Tong said. “Saving nature is not as difficult as you might imagine.”
“We don’t have enough money and time to make big works like Discovery, but we can create short vignettes using real examples from real people,” Tong said.
Over the years, the couple has covered stories as varied as a lone peasant who set out to save the endangered swans at Swan Lake Nature Reserve in Rongcheng, Shandong, which has become heavily polluted in recent years, and a Taiwanese woman in suburban Beijing who runs an organic farm to set an example for her workers.
In place of commercial funding, many of the couple’s documentaries have been funded on the donations of those moved by their previous work.
“We may not be as rich, and we may have to budget carefully and save our money, but this job brings us an inner peace we never had before,” Tong said.
She said she hopes that if everyone who sees her documentaries does something small to improve the environment, then future generations in China can inherit a better world.
By Han Manman
Environmental protection and sustainability are pressing subjects for China, where the environment has suffered rapid and irreversible damage due to the development and industrialization.
Many international and domestic NGOs have frequently warned China of the worsening situation and have launched campaigns to educate the public about environmental protection.
One group of individuals, without the distinguished background or commercial support of their NGO peers, is making its own effort to save nature for the next generation. A Taiwanese couple is among them.
Grace Tong and Mantow Chow/Photos provided by Mantow Chow
Tong interviews a worker in Findhorn village, a role model for sustainable human settlements.
A model for an eco community
Grace Tong and Mantow Chow have lived on the mainland for 10 years.
In that short time they have seen China’s environment degenerate rapidly. Now they believe it is time to make common people realize how important the environment is and stimulate them to take action for the sake of the next generation.
To inspire people to be more ecologically minded, the couple founded the documentary group called Saving Nature with Harmony several years ago.
Their latest project is a documentary filmed in Findhorn, a small village in Scotland and a role model for sustainable human settlements.
As one of the first Chinese groups to visit the place, Tong and Chow hope their experience can inspire more urban planners and residents to learn about the community’s organic food chain, ecological constructions and energy systems, as well as the local residents’ sustainable lifestyle.
October 21, 2011 Filed under Feature
By Huang Daohen
Many people see weekend trips to the countryside as a relaxing and safe outing. But not every hiking and climbing adventure has a happy ending.
Amateur trekkers who begin their trips without proper preparations can easily end up injured or lost in the wilderness. Should the public be expected to bear the cost of their rescue?
Who will pay?
October 12 was a big day for the 14 trekkers who ventured into a forbidden area of the Siguniang Mountains in Sichuan Province. After spending 13 days lost, they were rescued by local authorities.
Their celebrations were silenced when they learned they would face punishment and be required to reimburse the city for their rescue.
“They chose a forbidden route that authorities purposely closed off in June,” Huang Jizhou, the head of tourism at the Siguniang Mountain Management Bureau, told the Chengdu Evening News.
Huang said the path had been seriously damaged by an earthquake and was in extremely dangerous condition.
On September 30, the team, including nine hikers from Guangdong, Zhejiang, Hubei provinces and Shanghai, as well as their local guide and four porters, entered the Siguniang Mountains using a route recommended on the Internet.
The group, consisting mainly of people between the ages of 21 and 35, chose the forbidden route in hopes of finding excitement, Huang said.
According to earlier report by Chengdu Evening News, the group camped at the Haizigou area of the mountain on October 1. Three days later, they hiked out as planned and were not heard from again.
On October 9, the Siguniang Mountains Management Bureau received a rescue request from the family of the guide, who was supposed to return on October 6.
Many hikers in the area have died or gone missing, so the bureau decided to contact the local government to begin a rescue search. More than 1,000 police and rescue workers were called to active duty.
On October 12, the group was located in a village on the mountain.
“They were in good health and uninjured when our rescuers found them,” Huang said.
The guide Tang Yanghua told local media that they didn’t lose their way, but were looking for a new way out because the landscape had shifted since the quake.
Tang’s statement was supported by team leader Xu Ning. Xu, a 35-year-old mountain climber from Hangzhou, who led another team into the area last year but turned back due to unfavorable weather.
The group is now being investigated, and authorities said they may face fines of 5,000 each, in addition to the 30,000 yuan owed for the rescue operation.
That 30,000 yuan includes 26,000 yuan owed to the Siguniang Mountain Management Bureau and 4,000 to the Sichuan Mountain Climbing Association, which also participated in the rescue, Huang said.
Authorities in the Siguniang Mountain area spend more than 300,000 yuan each year rescuing lost hikers.
Pursuit of excitement
The Siguniang hikers were one of many groups of adventure-seekers to disappear during the week-long National Day vacation.
On October 4, four hikers were reportedly lost on Taibai Mountain in Shaanxi Province. More than 20 local rescuers were dispatched to search for them, but only two were rescued, the Xi’an Evening News reported.
Statistics from the Beijing Emergency Rescue Center show the cost of rescuing stray and injured hikers grows every year.
Last year, as many as 130 rescue incidents resulted in the death of 40 people, most of whom adventured into mountainous areas that were off limits. Half of the rescue operations retrieved hikers who merely “got lost.”
Amateur trekkers are increasingly seeking out dangerous areas for their hobby, said Cai Wei, a former rescuer at Beijing Emergency Rescue.
“These well-off urbanites feel mobile and empowered once they own an automobile, so they decide to go off in search of ‘excitement,’” said Cai, a veteran hiker and climber.
But there are reasons that the more famous mountains have established hiking routes. “Sometimes, the signs pointing out the dangers are so clear that young hikers deliberately ignore them,” Cai said.
The center’s data indicates that three of the top nine places where incidents occurred were at the famous tourist mountains of Songshan in Henan Province, Taibai Mountain in Shaanxi Province and Laoshan in Shandong Province.
Be prepared
Even a simple hike should begin with proper preparations, Cai said. “Safety comes first. After that you can have as much fun as you want.”
Cai treks the mountains around the capital twice a month. Each time he sets out, he loads up a backpack with a compass, a GPS device, a map and a flashlight.
“Some young people don’t even know how to use a GPS device and yet they go deep into the mountains,” Cai said. Many mountains, even in suburban areas, are not developed for hiking and have no signs to follow.
Cai said preparation is crucial for amateur hikers. One has to study survival skills either from books or the Web and read the weather forecasts.
But Cai said online channels pose serious risks. “When people meet on the Internet, they don’t know each other well. Their teamwork is weak because most of them only care about the excitement,” he said.
People also need to choose routes that fit their capabilities and, if possible, Cai said they should go with an experienced guide.
As for who should bear the financial costs of rescue, Cai said the country does not have well developed laws for outdoor management.
In many countries, such as the UK, hikers are required to send detailed plans of their routes, members and equipment to relevant authorities before setting off.
This makes their rescue effort more efficient and less costly, Cai said.
Zhou Wei, a professor with the Law School of Sichuan University, agreed. Zhou told local media that the country should enact stricter laws to govern such increasingly popular outdoor activities.
In the Sichuan case, Zhou said that the hikers avoided paying for their mistake by making a public apology. They avoided punishment because they technically did not break any laws.
“People should be expected to pay for their mistakes when their ill-planned outings require a costly rescue operation,” Zhou said.
By Huang Daohen
Many people see weekend trips to the countryside as a relaxing and safe outing. But not every hiking and climbing adventure has a happy ending.
Amateur trekkers who begin their trips without proper preparations can easily end up injured or lost in the wilderness. Should the public be expected to bear the cost of their rescue?
Ill-prepared climbers cost Chinese cities hundreds of thousands of yuan each year. These climbers (above), stranded on the Siguniang Mountains, were taken to a Chengdu hotel after their rescue last Wednesday. CFP Photos
Who will pay?
October 12 was a big day for the 14 trekkers who ventured into a forbidden area of the Siguniang Mountains in Sichuan Province. After spending 13 days lost, they were rescued by local authorities.
Their celebrations were silenced when they learned they would face punishment and be required to reimburse the city for their rescue.
“They chose a forbidden route that authorities purposely closed off in June,” Huang Jizhou, the head of tourism at the Siguniang Mountain Management Bureau, told the Chengdu Evening News.
Huang said the path had been seriously damaged by an earthquake and was in extremely dangerous condition.
On September 30, the team, including nine hikers from Guangdong, Zhejiang, Hubei provinces and Shanghai, as well as their local guide and four porters, entered the Siguniang Mountains using a route recommended on the Internet.
The group, consisting mainly of people between the ages of 21 and 35, chose the forbidden route in hopes of finding excitement, Huang said.
According to earlier report by Chengdu Evening News, the group camped at the Haizigou area of the mountain on October 1. Three days later, they hiked out as planned and were not heard from again.
On October 9, the Siguniang Mountains Management Bureau received a rescue request from the family of the guide, who was supposed to return on October 6.
Many hikers in the area have died or gone missing, so the bureau decided to contact the local government to begin a rescue search. More than 1,000 police and rescue workers were called to active duty.
On October 12, the group was located in a village on the mountain.
“They were in good health and uninjured when our rescuers found them,” Huang said.
The guide Tang Yanghua told local media that they didn’t lose their way, but were looking for a new way out because the landscape had shifted since the quake.
Tang’s statement was supported by team leader Xu Ning. Xu, a 35-year-old mountain climber from Hangzhou, who led another team into the area last year but turned back due to unfavorable weather.
The group is now being investigated, and authorities said they may face fines of 5,000 each, in addition to the 30,000 yuan owed for the rescue operation.
That 30,000 yuan includes 26,000 yuan owed to the Siguniang Mountain Management Bureau and 4,000 to the Sichuan Mountain Climbing Association, which also participated in the rescue, Huang said.
Authorities in the Siguniang Mountain area spend more than 300,000 yuan each year rescuing lost hikers.
