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(source: Paulblank via Wikimedia Commons ) When it comes to China , the phrase 'words matter' is definitely true, as ex-footballer David Beckham discovered a few days ago. On March 23, the former captain of the English national team visited Shanghai to take part in events organized by a life insurance company, which had appointed David Beckham as its global ambassador. On Friday he travelled to Hong Kong to promote the company. At the end of his trip, Beckham published a Facebook post: 'Great 48 hours in China' Beckham's apparently harmless post, however, caused a backlash. Hong Kong netizens criticized the ex-footballer for implying that Hong Kong and China are one and the same thing. Hong Kong netizens wrote comments below the post to point out Beckham's error.

Years ago I wrote a post about the contrast between the clean MRT and dirty restaurants in Taiwan . Yesterday a Taiwanese user posted the following critical comment: Read through your paragraph, so you want to spend a little money but experience the luxury, you are telling the joke.  Actually, if you feel bad toward this kind of experience, you can go back to your own country, right ? No One Force you to come here, buddy~  If you think the restaurants in your country are much cleaner than ours, then.... you don't even have to torture yourself, just go back and do not waste your time to write down these shit.  Last but not the least, come to a new environment, you should learn how to get accustomed to their culture, including learn their language, not just complain all the day.  You can read my short reply to him here .  Now, does the logic of this Taiwanese netizen's comment sound familiar to anyone? Let's compare it with the following sentence:...

In a recent interview Wang Zaixi (王在希), a former vice-chairman of China's Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council , said that Beijing might resort to the use of force if "peaceful reunification" between China and Taiwan "takes too long". Wang's statements echo the increasingly assertive stance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) towards the island since Xi Jinping took office in 2012. In the interview Wang Zaixi stated that although the Taiwan question is a complex issue that must be resolved in the long term, there "must be a sense of urgency towards cross-strait reunification." Wang blamed Taiwan 's democratic process for slowing down the prospect of a peaceful solution of the cross-strait issue, arguing that because of the transfer of power from the pro-unification to the pro-independence coalition the possibility of peaceful unification "is gradually being lost." In 2014 and 2015 the Guomindang, Taiwan's ...

It's been a long time since I last wrote a blog post. I have been quite busy and, as most bloggers know, it is very hard to post regularly over a long period of time. That's probably why many blogs such as mine end up being discontinued. To be honest I have missed blogging, but I just had no time for it, for personal reasons I don't want to discuss here. I have also decided to put more effort into my website china-journal.org, where I write new posts about Chinese culture and history and republish old articles. As I explained earlier, I felt that this personal blog wasn't the right place to write serious articles. The solution was to start another website. This blog is and should be a platform for absolutely personal opinions, experiences, and from time to time also for weird news. When I write this blog, I just want to relax. I want to write short posts, rants, thoughts, episodes, and that's it. Although I left Taiwan a long time ago (and I would like ...

Celebrations in Tahrir Square after Omar Soliman's statement that concerns Mubarak's resignation. February 11, 2011 (By Jonathan Rashad - Flickr , [CC BY 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons) In October 2011 China's state-run newspaper China Daily published an op-ed by former Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema about the Arab Spring , a series of anti-government protests which erupted in 2010 across the Muslim world. D'Alema wrote: "The Arab upheavals are a by-product of the inexorable process of globalization in the twenty-first century ... Only by fully understanding the demands and grievances of these Arab revolutionaries will the West be able to give the region appropriate support – and this support is critical. The Arab revolts have not been directed against the West – on the contrary, they have been fed by Western democratic principles and values – but they could yet produce a reactionary backlash. "Western countries' support must be un...

Ever since Nationalist forces retreated to Taiwan in 1949, the island has been confronted with the permanent risk of Communist invasion . In the 1950s the People's Liberation Army (PLA) launched two attacks against the last bulwark of Chiang Kai-shek 's regime. The last major crisis in the Taiwan Strait dates back to the mid-1990s, when the People's Republic of China (PRC) conducted missile "tests" dangerously close to Taiwan's shores. This display of military strength was aimed at then-President of Taiwan Lee Teng-hui, who had publicly refuted Beijing's territorial claims on the island. 

Ever since Nationalist forces retreated to Taiwan in 1949, the island has been confronted with the permanent risk of Communist invasion . In the 1950s the People's Liberation Army (PLA) launched two attacks against the last bulwark of Chiang Kai-shek 's regime. The last major crisis in the Taiwan Strait dates back to the mid-1990s, when the People's Republic of China (PRC) conducted missile "tests" dangerously close to Taiwan's shores. This display of military strength was aimed at then-President of Taiwan Lee Teng-hui, who had publicly refuted Beijing's territorial claims on the island. 

Hainan Airlines aircraft (photo by Aero Icarus , licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0  via Wikimedia Commons On June 12 a Hainan Airlines flight from Taiyuan to Chongqing was delayed after two male passengers assaulted a flight attendant . Flight HU7041 was scheduled for departure at 1:30 from Taiyuan Wusu International Airport . After the completion of boarding and safety check procedures the plane reached the runway and was taxiing, but the pilot stopped the aircraft shortly before take-off. 

Senado Square On Friday I decided to go to Macau , a city which in my opinion - as I wrote in the past - is one of Asia's most charming travel destinations. I was planning on staying there for just one day, taking a walk in the afternoon and later meeting an old friend of mine, before returning to Hong Kong at around 11 p.m. The original idea was to take a ferry in the morning, but because I slept miserably the previous night I ended up leaving home at 3 p.m. The weather was hot and humid, the sky grey. Around one hour later I arrived at the Hong Kong China Ferry Terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui. After buying a ticket and going through the immigration control, I joined the unavoidable long queue largely consisting of mainland Chinese tourists: young and old, fancy and sporty, all invariably holding shopping bags with names of fashion or food brands written on them.  Riding a ferry from Hong Kong to Macau may seem like an enjoyable and relaxing experience - to those who ha...

In this post I would like to introduce my new website: china-journal.org , in which I will be writing about Chinese culture, history and society.  I had been thinking for quite some time about starting a new website, since I was very unhappy with how this blog has developed over the years. At the beginning "My New Life In Asia" was supposed to be a platform where I could write about my personal experiences and thoughts - which is what blogs have been invented for. Instead, I started to write about Confucianism, politics, culture etc. In the end I totally abandoned my original purpose.  This created two problems: first, many posts I published on this site are out of place; second, I have no space for a "public diary" as I had envisioned it. The only way to solve this issue was to separate blogging from more "serious" writing by creating an entirely new website. Let me now briefly explain the concept and structure of china-journal.org. First of ...

On May 15 Taiwanreporter published a video (see below) showing people demonstrating against Taiwan independence and in favour of "peaceful unification" with Communist China. In Ximending one usually sees scores of supporters of Taiwan independence waving flags and banners, but apparently pro-Communist forces are now trying to counterbalance those demonstrations by staging their own.  The video shows a number of protesters waving flags of the People's Republic of China (PRC). They seem to belong to the so-called Chinese Patriotic Association (中華愛國同心會), a group that supports the incorporation of Taiwan into the PRC according to the "one country, two systems" (一國兩制) framework that Beijing already used for Hong Kong and Macau. This is not the first such demonstration organized by "Chinese patriotic" groups. Taipei 101 used to be one of the patriotic association's favourite spots, before an incident involving peaceful Falun Gong demonstrators led...

Killing the scholars and burning the books   (anonymous 18th century Chinese painting depicting the alleged burning of books and killing of scholars under China’s first emperor Qin Shihuang; source: Wikipedia )  The legal system of imperial  China  developed from two schools of thought:  Confucianism  and  Legalism . Although both of them exerted a deep influence on China’s state-building as well as on its moral and legal traditions, at the beginning these two philosophies were bitterly opposed to each other, as they were based on entirely different principles (see: Xin Ren:  Tradition of the Law and Law of the Tradition: Law, State, and Social Control in China , 1997, p. 19). Confucianism  (儒家) originated from the teachings of  Confucius  (551 – 479 BC), a Chinese scholar, politician and philosopher who lived in the  Spring and Autumn period . The main body of the Confucian canon comprises the Four Books and the Fi...

Emblem of the People's Court of the People's Republic of China (source: Wikipedia) On October 13, 2014, Yu Wensheng , a lawyer from Beijing, was arrested and detained by the police for 99 days . He was interrogated approximately 200 hundred times by 10 officers who worked in shifts night and day. Yu's wrists were fastened behind his back with handcuffs. "My hands were swollen and I felt so much pain that I didn’t want to live", he told Amnesty International. "The police officers repeatedly yanked the handcuffs and I would scream". Two days before his arrest, Yu had submitted a request to Beijing Fengtai Detention Centre for meeting one of his clients. The authorities had rejected Yu's request without reason. As an act of protest, he stayed in front of the detention centre and later published a post online describing the incident. At around midnight the police forced him to leave, and on October 13 the Beijing Daxing District Public Secur...

Sexuality in Taiwan is a controversial topic which highlights the contrast between publicly sanctioned virtue (德道) and actual individual behaviour. As far as women are concerned, Taiwanese society tends to value female characteristics such as faithfulness, filial piety , innocence and submissiveness to men. Many women create a public persona that conforms to such standards, as it is assumed that following the accepted social norms will advance one's prospects of a good marriage and career. However, the reality often contradicts abstract ideals, as the phenomenon of Taiwan 's yuepao shows. Yuepao is a neologism that describes a sexual relationship between two people who typically have met through social media or dating apps (徵友). The term yuepao   (約炮; often also spelled 約砲), is the contraction of the words 約 會 (meeting) and 放鞭 炮 (to set off firecrackers). It can be roughly translated as "sex meeting". 

In any major city grabbing a seat on the metro can be a stressful experience. But in China  disputes between passengers may lead to violent clashes, like the one which happened a few days ago in Wuhan city, capital of China's Hubei Province. According to local media, on April 20 at around noon a middle-aged couple got on a train of Wuhan metro . The wife put a bag on the seat next to hers. Shortly afterwards, an older couple, about 60 years of age, asked the woman to free the seat. However, the woman refused. The old man insisted that she ought to yield her seat to elderly people, but she would not back down. At that moment, the woman's husband intervened and started cursing the old man, who instead of turning away yelled back. In a fit of rage, the younger man pushed the other away, thus giving rise to a fight  between the two couples.

Mao Zedong once said that Communist cadres "must be models in applying the Party's democratic centralism, must master the method of leadership based on the principle of 'from the masses, to the masses', and must cultivate a democratic style and be good at listening to the masses".  "Listening to the masses" - whatever this may mean - has become a common catchphrase of Xi Jinping 's new vision for China's Communism . In perfect Maoist rhetorical style, Xi coats his ideology in vague high-sounding phrases, a vagueness that suits a Party leader who doesn't have to engage in debates with opponents and who needs ideological ambiguity in order to rule. Xi's last attempt at reviving the old Maoist principle of "listening to the masses" is the strengthening of Communist China's system of popular petitions , the so-called xinfang (信访).  The xinfang system dates back to 1951, when the Government Administration Council is...

The World Health Assembly (by Tom Page - licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0) In 2009 Taiwan received a historic invitation to participate in the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an observer. That was the second year of President Ma Ying-jeou 's administration, a time in which relations between Beijing and Taipei were improving on the basis of the " 1992 consensus ", an unofficial agreement between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Guomindang . Since the World Health Organization (WHO) recognises the one-China principle, Taiwan could not participate with its official name "Republic of China". Taiwan was therefore represented with the name " Chinese Taipei " (中華台北).  The Republic of China (ROC) was a founding member of the WHO, but after the United Nations shifted recognition from the ROC to the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Executive Board of the United Nations passed resolution EB49.R37 recommending to the WHA to adopt a sim...

Yesterday I was walking with a friend in Causeway Bay, when she suddenly pointed at one of the countless colourful billboards that decorate the shopping district's building facades and said, "That's the bookstore of the missing booksellers !". The bookstore is called " Causeway Bay Books " (銅鑼灣書店) and it's located on the second floor of a building on Lockhart Road. I and my friend went upstairs and, of course, the bookstore was closed. Next to the entrance door there were messages written on the wall by sympathetic citizens.

Hong Kong 's Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying (梁振英) and his wife Regina Tong Ching Yee (唐青儀) allegedly used their political influence to violate airport's security regulations.  According to Apple Daily , on March 28 Leung Zung-jan, daughter of the Chief Executive , was waiting at an airport lounge for a Cathay Pacific flight bound to San Francisco. She then realised that she had forgotten her hand luggage outside of the security area.  Her mother, who had accompanied her to the airport, asked the airline's staff to bring the hand luggage to her daughter. Her request was turned down because, according to existing security regulations, passengers need to exit the security area and claim their luggage personally. Mrs Leung reacted angrily. "Do you know who I am?", she allegedly said. "There are no drugs or forbidden items inside [the luggage]". 

(source: Wikipedia ) On March 22 J. Michael Cole published an interesting piece about Taiwan independence vs Republic of China independence . I usually disagree with Cole's opinions, but not this time. Cole is a great investigative journalist and political analyst, however his point of view is often biased and more similar to that of a political activist than to that of a journalist.  In his article about the independence issue Cole explained something that I have been arguing for quite some time. In a nutshell, it is not true that the Guomindang is pro-Beijing (in the sense that it supports unification with the People's Republic of China) while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is in favour of Taiwan's independence. Both the Guomindang and the DPP oppose unification with Communist China. But while for the Guomindang independence means that the Republic of China is an independent sovereign state, the DPP holds that Taiwan is an independent nation. Cole rightly...

(photo by James Yuanxin Li via Wikimedia Commons ) According to the latest survey of the Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong (HKU POP), Chris Patten, the last British Governor of Hong Kong, enjoyed the highest ratings among political leaders of the city in the past 24 years.  Chris Patten was a member of the British Parliament with the Conservative Party from 1979 until 1992, when he lost his Bath seat at the general election ( Chris Patten: East and West. Pan McMillan 2012 , p. 13). British Prime Minister John Major offered him the post of Governor of Hong Kong . Patten's term of office as Governor lasted until 30 June 1997, when Hong Kong was handed over to the People's Republic of China.  The POP survey, released on March 29, shows that upon assuming office Chris Patten's rating was approximately 55% and at the end of his term in June 1997 it was 60%.  After the handover and the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Admi...

The transformations Hong Kong has undergone since the end of the Second World War are simply astounding. 

Despite Beijing's pledge that Hong Kong's system would remain unchanged after 1997 , the institutions of Hong Kong are little by little aligning themselves with the national ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  According to local reports ,  the theatrical troupe  The Nonsensemakers  (糊塗戲班) was invited by  Hong Kong's Leisure and Cultural Services Department  to take part in an event in late March . However, the department asked that the name of the alma mater of one of the troupe's members, National Taipei University of the Arts, had to be changed and the word "National" had to be removed.  In a statement  published on their Facebook page, The Nonsensemakers explained: The Nonsensemakers were invited by the Leisure and Cultural Department to perform the piece " Three Novels: The Third Lie " from 18 to 20 March at the Tsuen Wan Town Hall . Because the Department was the organiser of the event, it was its responsibility to pr...

Tong Zhenyuan (credit: Wikipedia ) On 18 March Tong Zhenyuan (童振源), professor at National Zhengzhi University , visiting professor at Berkeley University and ex vice committee chairperson of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council , was invited by the Chinese website The Paper  (澎湃新闻网) to answer netizens' questions . However, about one hour after the beginning of the question-and-answer session, the broadcast was interrupted and taken down because Tong had used "sensitive words" which belong to the forbidden vocabulary of the People's Republic of China (PRC).  The Paper has a section called "Ask Questions" ( 問吧 ). Tong Zhenyuan had been invited to answer netizens' questions regarding the future of Cross-Strait relations and the possibility of peaceful reunification . Some netizens asked why young Taiwanese people endorse independence and why Taiwan does not recognise China.   Tong received over 200 questions and replied to 50 of ...