Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

There has a lot of attention on Japan holding Chinese fishermen and Japan selling Yen to devalue it against USD, but everyone thought the two news are completely unrelated to each other...until now. There has been new reports (more like rumors) saying that the Chinese are beginning to throw its massive 2.5 trillion USD foreign reserves into buying Japanese government bonds, in such a scale that the CCP is actually selling off many of its USD assets to make the purchases. If the rumors can be proved correct, its potentially a huge financial assault on Japan amid political confrontation. The economics is this: when the Chinese sell off USD-denoted assets, the demand of USD decreases, causing its value to decrease. At the same time, buying Japanese government bonds requires the Chinese to first buy huge amounts of cash in yen (using USD or RMB), causing the demand and value of yen to increase (USD and RMB to devalue as they are put in the market in place of Yen). Together, the two mov

Recently, a rich girl in Korea showing off her wealth and luxury goods on a local TV station got the whole country pissed off. When it turned out that the TV station told the (averaged middle class) girl to make up the whole thing to get higher rating for the show, criticism and financial punishment for the TV station was logically and swiftly called for. The fact that the TV station is capable of thinking up something like this and the success in attracting (mostly negative) attention to the said TV show goes to show the sensitivity normal people have regarding an outright display of social inequality. Of course, this kind of wealth display is not new or rare. Internet forums in China practically gets new pics of some rich boy or girls' personal "accessories" every single day, attracting fiery comments from netizens. The fact that these young boys and girls are from wealthy families and did not work for any of their wealth only increases the negative sentiments towar

So it seems I have believed for a long time. The manual labor job that probably has one of the highest date rates, the coal miner is the ultimate blue-collar job. In China, thousands of them die every year, only to be replaced by thousands more who come from the countryside for a quick buck (and a quick death). The lack of regulation in the mining industry (not just coal) means that laws cannot protect the workers and can't be used to improve their conditions. Popular belief (not just here but also everywhere) think that no matter how "safe" laws make the mines, mining is a dangerous, boring job without any prospects for brighter future. But the ongoing media coverage on rescuing 30-some Chilean coal workers trapped underneath a collapsed mine tunnel for a few months shows that maybe to simply consider coal miners are hapless and unfortunate pawns of gigantic mining companies is becoming a thing of the past, at least in certain parts of the world. There seem to be da

Living under the shadows of Internet censorship, here in China we are used to the fact that foreign websites are inaccessible and foreign Internet companies are treated as if they are all secretly working as cyber-spies for the American government. But when it comes to Microsoft and Google, two of the world's probably best known companies involved with the Internet, the attitude of the Chinese government have been quite different. While Google has been in a constant fight to get itself greater market share over Baidu, Microsoft's MSN has seen strong growth in instant messaging despite strong domestic competition. At the same time, while Bill Gates is quite an honored personality here in China, the higher ends of Google has not seen strong following in either the Chinese government or the public. As the Chinese Internet market heads to its destiny as the world's largest, Microsoft versus, one of the most peculiar yet influential rivalry in the human civilization increasin

To this day, the idea that I am in a foreign country while in China has not really sank into my mind. While I understand that (as I will rant on about in the following paragraphs) citizenship, more often than not, is a display of pure opportunism rather than some deep-hearted and sincerely nationalistic loyalty, a mental change, after all, does need to accompany a sudden change in national status. Recently in China, a fishing boat colliding with a Japanese patrol vessel in disputed territory has been subject of nationalistic outbursts. Especially considering the elections in Japan that marks another shit back toward pro-American stance and September 18th being the anniversary of start of Sino-Japanese War, tensions run high here. As much as I stay neutral on these issues, I wonder that, if similar situation were to occur in the States on July 4th, would there be as big of a reaction? Some priest threatening to burn Korans on September 11th and the popular support for such an act show

Even just going to a supermarket with your grandmother can be a learning experience in China. As a relatively new phenomenon that did not really take off in China until the early 90s, supermarkets are still a sort of middle class luxury rarely experienced by elders and people in the rural areas. In fact, for everyday shopping (especially for food), supermarkets of any kind are considered rather high end (and prices reflected this), with most Chinese preferring to buy their raw vegetables and sorts in open air markets with small stalls rather than get them all packaged from local supermarkets. Even the middle class thinks that those open air markets (sort of like "farmers' markets" in the States) have fresher local produce directly from the fields, whereas the goods in the supermarkets are commercially produced, meaning that they are made with high quantities of chemicals and are shipped from areas far far away. Of course, once you go to the open air markets, you know t