Roland Boer's Blog, page 56

Coincidence or privileged access?

During the ‘two sessions‘ in Beijing in early March, security is tight. Extra guards and police have fanned out through the city, even in my local communal dining hall, where I can get a freshly cooked meal for less than AUD $2.oo. Cyber security has also been tightened up. Many people have commented to me that they are having trouble with their internet access, that VPNs have been blocked, and so on. For some reason, I have had no trouble. I don’t use a VPN, since I prefer to use Chinese sit...

The pitfalls and triumphs of learning Chinese

Like any language, Chinese has its myriad subtleties that affect the whole meaning of what you might be saying. Let me give a simple example. The question, ‘can you speak Chinese?’, might be said in at least two ways:

Ni hui shuo hanyu ma?

你会说汉语吗？

Ni hui bu hui shuo hanyu?

你会不会说汉语？

Now, if you would like to give the question some emphasis, you may add jiujing (究竟)。With this small addition, much changes.

The first sentence becomes:

Ni jiujing hui bu hui shuo hanyu?

你究竟会不会说汉语？

That is, it would...

China Road conference: panel and paper proposals due 1 May

The full website for the China Road conference is now up, with the deadline for panel and paper proposals on 1 May, 2016. See the website for registration, travel and accommodation suggestions.

The China Road conference is sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the University of Newcastle, Australia.

When 13 to 15 August 2016

Where Noah’s on the Beach Hotel, Cnr Shortland Esplanade & Zaara Street, Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Contact chinaroad2016@newcastle.edu.au

CALL FOR PAPE...

Discarding ten biases against China

I rather like this article, even though it uses the problematic term ‘West’. The original article can be found at thew CPC’s flagship newspaper, The People’s Daily. I would also mention the Taiping Revolution, in terms of religiously inspired revolutions, in relation to point 7, although this was in many respects the precursor to the communist revolution of the twentieth century.

BEIJING, March 5 (Xinhua) — China’s ongoing annual political high season has provided a key window through which o...

Chart of issues dealt with at the ‘two sessions’

Following on from my last post, a chart of the major issues dealt with at the National People’s Congress (NPC) and theNational Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC):

Chinese democracy at work

Socialist democracy, that is. Each year, soon after I arrive in Beijing and the National People’s Congress (NPC), the top legislative body, and the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) meet for their annual sessions. The shorthand is simply ‘the two sessions’. If you would to find out a little bit more about how this part of the Chinese political system works, you can watch the four-minute video here: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-03/0...

The unexpected difficulties of learning Chinese

I have spent the last 1 year and 8 months diligently learning Chinese, for about 2-3 hours day. The script – reading and writing – I find relatively easy. And I can speak bad Chinese all day if you ask me. In fact, I try to do so each day, thinking of everything in Chinese from dawn to dusk. However, it is the listening and understanding (tingdong) that is the most difficult for me. Others seem to have a knack of hearing, remembering and understanding. But they have a devilishly difficult tim...

Now this makes me homesick

in the midst of the thrill of travel, I am also drawn back to home. Many things make me homesick, including this:

Blue skies in Beijing – again

I am becoming a little bemused by the way people simply do not believe me when I say the air is clear and the sky is blue in Beijing. It has been this way for the whole week I have been here. I have been out running every day. To be sure, we will get a bad day or two in the coming weeks, but these stretches of clear air are becoming increasingly frequent. For those who have been brainwashed by the corporate press, a few more photos – and yes, they are from Beijing, looking out of my apartment...

Armies, coins and enforcement

While working on Time of Troubles, we’ve found it necessary to return to the issue of coinage. For example, a common argument made concerning Hasmonean coinage in Galilee in the century or so immediately before the turn of the era is that such coinage indicates ‘integration’ with the Hasmonean project of an independent Israel, indeed that the people willingly threw themselves into a vibrant ‘trade’ with larger centres.

Not so fast, since coinage itself was invented in three parts of the world...