Cometh the Storm

O wayward flower of wanton seed
Bold are thy hands and zeal for life
How generous our trough that spawneth thee
To drink thy fill from us with fist and knife
And yet we toil and sweat for the ten-forty
And still we bear the torment of your wicked strife.

Though none shall see our designs as yet
When the Nine decree our chains unbound
The Taxed now armed shall bringeth Death
What spine we lost, we now have found
Evil thoughts shall the evil regret,
At the moment of impact of the JHP round.

What bedlam, O Storm, shall visit this land?
What lightning and wind, shall strike and toss?
By a thousand swords in a thousand hands,
A thousand paths they won't dare cross.
All torn asunder, their murderous plans
Their worthless lives were for nothing lost.

The Age of States has long since past.
The Faithful still cower and whimper song.
Into this jungle we have been cast
Only We the Living, can avenge these wrongs.
Though the Rule of Law has seen its last
The Will to Power, has been with us all along.

Kill all pedophiles

NBC's "To Catch a Predator" should get a Medal of Honor. If I were a billionaire, I'd operate these molester traps all over the world, luring these fuckers in and feeding them feet first into wood-chippers. And they'd run day and night, year round, on eight channels. Live HD channels.

I have been thinking about the design of massive "black site" concentration camps for pedophiles. I would chip them with listening devices so all their conversations can be recorded by a massive data center for analysis. When one brags about an abduction or assault that the authorities don't know about, he will be plucked out at night and processed to an interrorgation facility where polygraphs, pharmaceuticals, sensory deprivation, hippocamus brain scanning, etc. can be used to extract details and close missing persons cases.

Another concern is the possibility of the facility being compromised by natural disaster or outside attack by the families of the pedophiles. I would implant remote-kill switches in all the prisoners and that moment there is a chance of prison break or rescue attempt, pushing a red button would drop all of them. All this would be secret of course because it would make uncaptured molesters adapt their tactics to evade detection. I do not believe revealing such a program would be of much deterrence value against molesters anyway based on the assumption that they cannot be cured in the first place. All the tax-paying public needs to know is that their benevolent Leviathan is honoring the Social Contract.

NY Times: Avatar

There's probably about 10 bootleg copies of Avatar for every man, woman and child in China by now. Good luck trying to censor it. The Confucius movie will introduce a Western concept to Eastern theater owners: BOX OFFICE POISON. Chinese kids will pack the theaters to see Confucius like American kids will flock to see John Locke: His Life and Times...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/movies/20avatar.html

January 20, 2010
You Saw What in ‘Avatar’? Pass Those Glasses!
By DAVE ITZKOFF

If you thought that “Avatar” was just a high-tech movie about a big-hearted tough guy saving the beguiling natives of a distant moon, you might want to check the prescription on your 3-D glasses.

Since its release in December, James Cameron’s science-fiction epic has broken box office records and grabbed two Golden Globe awards for best director and best dramatic motion picture. But it has also found itself under fire from a growing list of interest groups, schools of thought and entire nations that have protested its message (as they see it), its morals (as they interpret them) and its philosophy (assuming it has one).

Over the last month, it has been criticized by social and political conservatives who bristle at its depictions of religion and the use of military force; feminists who feel that the male avatar bodies are stronger and more muscular than their female counterparts; antismoking advocates who object to a character who lights up cigarettes; not to mention fans of Soviet-era Russian science fiction; the Chinese; and the Vatican. This week the authorities in China announced that the 2-D version of the film would be pulled from most theaters there to make way for a biography of Confucius.

That so many groups have projected their issues onto “Avatar” suggests that it has burrowed into the cultural consciousness in a way that even its immodest director could not have anticipated. Its detractors agree that it is more than a humans-in-space odyssey — even if they do not agree on why that is so.

“Some of the ways people are reading it are significant of Cameron’s intent, and some are just by-products of what people are thinking about,” said Rebecca Keegan, the author of “The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron.” “It’s really become this Rorschach test for your personal interests and anxieties.”

The “Avatar” camp isn’t endorsing any particular interpretation, but is happy to let others read the ink blots. “Movies that work are movies that have themes that are bigger than their genre,” Jon Landau, a producer of the film, said in a telephone interview. “The theme is what you leave with and you leave the plot at the theater.”

Mr. Cameron might have opened the door to multiple readings with his declaration that “Avatar” was an environmental parable. In a news conference in London in December, he said he saw the movie “as a broader metaphor, not so intensely politicized as some would make it, but rather that’s how we treat the natural world as well.”

In a column for the Christian entertainment Web site movieguide.org, David Outten wrote that “Avatar” maligned capitalism, promoted animism over monotheism and overdramatized the possibility of environmental catastrophe on earth. At another site that offers a conservative critique of the entertainment industry, bighollywood.breitbart.com, John Nolte wrote that the film was “a thinly disguised, heavy-handed and simplistic sci-fi fantasy/allegory critical of America from our founding straight through to the Iraq War.”

Not surprisingly, the religious overtones of “Avatar” were of interest in Vatican City, where the film was reviewed by Gaetano Vallini, a cultural critic for L’Osservatore Romano, the daily newspaper of the Holy See.

In his review, Mr. Vallini wrote that for all of the “stupefying, enchanting technology” in the film, it “gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature.”

In a telephone interview, Mr. Vallini said his widely reported review might have been overemphasized because of the publication it appeared in. His assignment to write about “Avatar” was not an attempt to advance a particular agenda, he said, but rather “a compulsory choice” given the anticipation surrounding the film.

Ultimately, Mr. Vallini said, “the movie doesn’t provoke many emotions,” and its observations about militarism, imperialism and the environment “are just sketched out as themes.”

“It is Cameron’s narrative choice,” he continued, “as he is aware of the fact that the visual aspect widely compensates for this lack.”

Other viewers say that issues of imperialism are central to the film. In a post on the science-fiction Web site io9.com, Annalee Newitz, the site’s editor in chief, wrote that “Avatar” depicted “the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare,” a dimension she said it shared with movies from “The Last Samurai” to “District 9.” (Critics have also said that “Avatar” copied story elements from the movies “Dances With Wolves,” “Pocahontas” and “Ferngully: The Last Rainforest”; the Poul Anderson novella “Call Me Joe”; and the “Noon Universe” book series by the Russian authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.)

In movies like “Avatar,” Ms. Newitz wrote, “humans are the cause of alien oppression and distress,” until a white man “switches sides at the last minute, assimilating into the alien culture and becoming its savior.”

Ms. Newitz said in an interview that since publishing that post, she had heard from readers around the world who disagreed with her interpretation, which she appreciated. “Just the idea of whiteness is a local phenomenon,” she said. “It’s certainly not in parts of the world where white people are not dominant.”

In China, for example, the film’s imperialist themes have upset audiences who believe that the plight of the aliens, the Na’vi, who are forced from their home by human industrialists, is a parable for Chinese people whose dwellings have been forcibly razed by local governments to make way for new construction. As one pseudonymous commenter quoted on Chinasmack.com wrote: “China’s demolition crews must go sue Old Cameron, sue him for piracy/copyright infringement.”

There is, at least, consensus among “Avatar” critics that good science fiction operates on an allegorical level. In novels like “Dune,” films like “Star Wars” or television series like the recent “Battlestar Galactica,” Ms. Newitz said the fantastical elements of these works offer a place of “narrative safety” to contemplate real-life issues like environmental decay, totalitarianism and torture.

“There’s something very satisfying about being able to think through those issues without feeling you’re actually taking a political position,” she said. “Because you’re not – you’re just talking about stories.”

Over the breadth of Mr. Cameron’s career, he has been attracted to outsize themes. Ms. Keegan said that it was possible to read “The Terminator,” his breakthrough 1984 movie, as an anti-technology polemic, an anti-war film or a modern gloss on the birth of Jesus.

“Or,” she said, “ you could just watch it as a movie where Arnold Schwarzenegger stomps around like a robot.”

Paradoxically, the pileup of arguments surrounding “Avatar” might have made a sympathetic figure out of the outspoken Mr. Cameron, who now finds himself in the underdog position of having to account for every possible message in his ostensible popcorn film.

“Often to his detriment, he says exactly what he thinks,” Ms. Keegan said. “All of that makes him seem outside the Hollywood bubble, even though on paper he couldn’t be more of an insider.”

Ms. Newitz, however, was not sympathetic to Mr. Cameron, who wanted to make a singularly ambitious film, and may have gotten his wish. “It’s like, do you feel bad for Obama?” she said. “He’s the president — he kind of asked for it.”

China’s Changing Views on Race

The inherent racism of 99% of the mainland Chinese will be humbled when ROC's US-built weapons send half a million young men of the PLA, the flower of Han youth, to the bottom of the Taiwan Strait.

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/chinas-changing-views-on-race

December 13, 2009, 8:00 pm

China’s Changing Views on Race
By THE EDITORS

With trade and commerce drawing ever larger numbers of foreigners to China’s cities, tensions have become more common in a country of little racial diversity. This summer, African immigrants, mostly traders and merchants, who make up a growing enclave in the city of Guangzhou, protested police harassment. And in a well-publicized cultural moment, a 20-year-old Shanghainese contestant named Lou Jing, who appeared on the Chinese “Idol”-like talent show, caused a national debate (and drew racist attacks on the Internet) about what it means to be Chinese. Lou, the daughter of a Chinese woman and an African-American man, whom she has not met, considers herself completely Chinese.

As China expands economic ties with the rest of the world — including Africa, where it has considerable investments — how might increased immigration alter Chinese perceptions of race? How has the society historically dealt with ethnic differences?

Millennia of Multiethnic Contradictions
Yan Sun, a professor of political science at the City University of New York, is the author of “A Sichuan Family and Tibet’s Future” and “My Han Relatives’ Views from Xinjiang.” She is co-writing a book about ethnic relations in contemporary China.

When it comes to ethnic relations and perceptions, China is a paragon of contradictions: its majority ethnic group, the Hans, are non-racist in the sense that most are not aware of their own multiethnic background and care little about it.

The surname of the Chinese leader Hu Jingtao is multiethnic in origin, meaning “foreign, barbarian.”
But they hold prejudices, not only about China’s minorities and foreigners but also about members of their own group, in that those deemed more “developed” receive deference, while those deemed “backward” are looked down upon. If Western racism is about genetic dispositions, Chinese prejudices and racism are more about achievements and standing in the world as applied to individuals or groups.

Unlike Korea and Japan, China has long been a melting pot. The Han people, now the largest ethnic group on Earth, originated from the central plains of East Asia and was expanded by nomadic invaders from the steppes of inner, central and Western Asia. Driven by their hunger for the wealth of the settled villages and aided by mounted archery, the nomads periodically toppled the Chinese states and controlled them, becoming in the process fused and assimilated with the agrarian people.

Tibetan and Uighur diasporas may wonder nowadays if China could ever have an ethnic minority like Barack Obama as its top leader? The answer is simple: there have been many. Of China’s two dozen imperial dynasties, most founding rulers were non-Han or only partly Han.

The Shatuo Turks, related to the Uighurs, founded three post-Tang dynasties. The Xiongnu, Xianbei, Khitan, Jurchen, and Qiang groups founded major dynasties in the North and the West. And twice, under the Mongols and Manchus respectively, the nomads conquered and ruled the whole of China. The China we know today is a product of their conquests: to prevent nomadic rivals rising on their flank, the Mongols and Manchus ruthlessly brought all of China’s surrounding prairies and plateaus under their rule, including Tibet.

The Northern people of present-day China are tall and lighter-skinned, thanks to fusion with the steppe peoples. The southern Chinese are descended from people from the central plains (pushed south by nomadic invasions) and southern tribal groups. In an ironic twist, the coastal areas of the South and East –- once inhabited by the so-called Southern and Eastern “barbarians,” and the Northern cities around Beijing –- once the hub of Northern “barbarians” –- are now considered the most “advanced.” The central plains of China, the birthplace of the agrarian people, are among the least developed among Han regions.

Most Chinese would be surprised that Hu, the surname of the Chinese leader Hu Jingtao, is multiethnic in origin. Hu, meaning “foreign, barbarian,” used to designate the nomads east of the Xiongnus (Huns). Some assimilated groups came to adopt “Hu” as a surname, although this is one of its several origins.

My mother’s last name, Ma (meaning “horse”) is another multiethnic surname. “Of ten Mas,” so goes a Chinese saying, “nine are Muslims” (this Ma is derived from Muhammad). But most of my mother’s relatives think it silly to trace the exact origin of their Ma. While this ability to blend made China’s melting pot possible, it can also be a barrier to ethnic sensitivities.

As market and globalizing forces cause the Chinese to interact more with minorities at home and foreigners from abroad, conflict will be inevitable but so is progress. A Liberian singer won second place in the CCTV’s Star Walk (a variant of the American Idol) in 2006. A Sierra Leonese won fourth place in 2007. Both are beloved by the Chinese audience and recently, both appeared as judges on the show.

Chauvinism and Nationalism
Ho-fung Hung is a historical sociologist and a senior associate of the Research Center for Chinese Business and Politics at Indiana University. He is the editor of “China and the Transformation of Global Capitalism,” and the forthcoming “Protest with Chinese Characteristics.”

Today’s racialist self-perception of Han Chinese can be traced back to the rise of Chinese nationalism amidst the chaotic collapse of the Qing empire in 1911. The Qing empire was multi-ethnic and ruled by the Manchus.

Rising chauvinism is a menace to China’s internal stability and its cooperation with other countries.
Many Han Chinese revolutionaries, influenced by racial Darwinism from the West, advocated the expulsion of the “barbaric” Tartars (a vague racial category referring to the Manchus and other Central Eurasian peoples) and the restoration of “superior” Han rule as a path to China’s resurgence. Han nationalists justified the subordination of non-Han peoples in modern China by their “backwardness” and need to modernize under Han’s tutelage.

Persistent prejudice against ethnic minorities caused Mao repeatedly to warn of the danger “Han chauvinism” posed to the unity of the newborn People’s Republic in the 1950s. The Communists, however, failed to eradicate such prejudices, but hid them under the language of class struggle, conveniently denouncing all minorities’ quests for cultural autonomy as reactionary demands for resurrecting backward social systems (like Tibet’s “slavery”).

State propaganda glorified Chinese solidarity with dark-skinned foreigners as comrades in the struggle against Western imperialism, repressing whatever racial prejudices that ordinary Chinese might have against these peoples. These prejudices resurfaced in the post-Mao years, unleashing the protests and racial violence against African students in many universities on the eve of the 1989 student movement. They also contribute to the xenophobic interpretation of Tibetans’ and Uighurs’ resentments as pure fabrications by “hostile foreign forces.”

China’s economic success, the government’s promotion of nationalism, and large-scale internal and international migrations have increased Han interaction and frictions with other ethnic or racial groups and intensified Han chauvinism in recent years. This chauvinism, as a menace to China’s internal stability and its cooperation with other countries, is a twin of the century-old Han-centric Chinese nationalism. It needs to be transformed into a more cosmopolitan form based on values and cultures rather than ethnic identity.

Inclusion and Rapid Change
Zai Liang is a professor of sociology and director of the Urban China Research Network at the University at Albany, SUNY.

China’s encounter with foreigners is not new. This is especially true for Chinese who live in the coastal region. What distinguishes today’s Chinese experience is the unprecedented scale and diverse number of countries and regions involved.

The language barrier is a huge obstacle for understanding between Chinese people and new migrants, but that can change.
In today’s world, this encounter is a two-way street, with many Chinese migrating to other countries and citizens of other countries moving to China for economic or educational opportunities.

Race matters in China, as it does in the U.S., with foreigners and immigrants of darker skin often treated poorly. This is true despite the warm relationship between China and African countries during the Mao era.

Another factor for tension is the language barrier, which is complicated by the fact that many local people speak regional dialects rather than Mandarin. This has created a huge obstacle for understanding between Chinese people and those who don’t speak Chinese.

As a result some businesses transactions — and even some rental contracts — are done in English. A good command of Chinese language would go a long way in resolving issues such as disputes with neighbors or dealings with law enforcement agencies.

One of the challenges that China faces now is the rise in undocumented migrants or visa over-stayers. We have already seen this play out in the case of Africans in Guangzhou and this is likely to become a bigger issue as China’s growth attracts more people from abroad.

At a fundamental level, I do not expect overwhelming difficulties of integrating foreigners into the Chinese society. China is a huge country with a long history of interacting with other groups within its borders and beyond, and it includes over 50 minority groups with different languages and religions. The past 30-year history of opening up shows that Chinese culture can be inclusive.

Learning From the West
Dongyan Blachford, associate professor of Chinese studies, is associate dean in the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Regina, Canada.

Growing up in Beijing, as a member of the Han majority, I did not see China as a country which exhibited racial discrimination; after all, the mission of the Chinese revolution was to build a class-free and egalitarian society.

As a result of living abroad, many Chinese returnees have developed new perspectives on minority rights.
However, after having lived outside China for over 20 years, and having experienced and witnessed discrimination in various forms, I now realize that many in China are simply unaware of the racism and prejudice that exists.

Among the Han Chinese themselves a judgment is often made in a split second based on people’s looks, places of residence, types of employment, parents’ titles, or who their relatives are. As for foreigners, they may also be subject to hasty judgment; blacks are often associated with backwardness and poverty, whites with money, advanced technology and even beauty. The attitude towards China’s non-Han ethnic groups is more complex: they are often viewed as inferior, but they are still considered insiders.

There have been efforts to integrate and at times assimilate the 55 ethnic groups labeled as Chinese National Minorities — 104 million people (less than 10 percent of China’s population), mostly resident in autonomous regions, which cover 62 percent of the country’s total land areas, and over 90 percent of whom live along China’s border regions, where many of the country’s natural resources are located.

The prevailing Han perception is that these minorities have been treated generously, with numerous preferential policies, such as allowance for more than one child, lower scores to enter secondary education institutions, quotas for employment and promotion, millions of dollars in direct government support, plus the sacrifices made by Han migrants and government workers with superior brains and skilled hands. However, many minorities do not agree with this view; nor does an increasing number of Han Chinese who are returning to China from abroad.

Many of these Han Chinese have developed new perspectives as a result of living in places such as Canada, where minority rights, aboriginal issues, anti-racism, and multiculturalism are more prominent in public discourse. They begin to admit that prejudice widely exists in the Chinese society. Since most returnees are now occupying important positions in sectors such as education, government and business, the hope for change is realistic. After all, the United States has elected an African-American president.

Gobblelicious

Since last contact: Read "Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse" So-so writing but chock full of tips that will surprise even the most astute prepper; handling encounters, ditch medicine, local politics and even a "barter faire." These mountain boys have a lot to offer and a lot to learn. B+ for effort! This has spurred a binge in purchases including my first foray in precious metals, contradicting my position on deflationary stagnation, counterbalanced by compelling political indicators of hyperinflation.

This Thanksgiving Eve, let us pray for the families of the victims of the Mumbai massacre.

On an unrelated note, the Haj is in full swing, no doubt the faithful are packed real tight, giving each other brotherly hugs and kisses.

On an unrelated note, the H1N1 virus has mutated.

Frankfurt book fair

A $15 million propaganda campaign flushed down the fuckin' toilet! I LOVE IT! The world sees through your suits and smiles. It is not the image that projects reality but reality that rudely imposes on your image. The Tiannamen massacre writers and the Dalai Lama books and the Falun Gong stuff IS Chinese culture, the poetry of death and suffering painted with the blood that the Beijing clique have spilled over six decades! The scarred, torture victims is YOUR Guernica, Emperor Hu!

If the Chinese want to be culturally equal to the West here are some steps:

1. Admit our history of Mao's gross mismanagement that have lead to famine and tyranny. American academics across the political spectrum have long come to terms with Indian massacres and removals with bookshelves upon bookshelves of unrestricted research. Until the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution is deconstructed by "revisionist" Chinese academics without fear of intimidation or censorship, China will NEVER be seen as open-minded. Are you nationalists so insecure about modern China that you don't think our countrymen can't handle a little introspection?

2. Accept that socialist management theory has failed to develop original thinkers and inventors. You can buy the IBM building, the IBM labs, the IBM machines but a workforce of suck-ups and risk-averse conformists will always be inferior to the American-educated tinkerer and entrepreneur who will not hesitate to plunge into the unknown. Why is it that American born Chinese who work in China often get the fuck out because they can't stand the fear and regimentation? Why is it that Chinese who get educated in America return to China not to work in government agencies but open their own businesses?

3. Hands off the Internet cafes. Let the rebels rebel. Let the media fly as high or as low as it wants: Expose corruption, expose government officials, dueling editorials, reader's letters, sex columns, movie reviews, book reviews, music reviews from around the world.

And this official complains that the world is biased against China? Those who deny its people free expression deserve neither fairness nor an open microphone. You are not fair to your people, so I will not be fair to you. You have no expectation of being treated equally. The crimes of your state precede you with a deficit of credibility and goodwill. Go back to the occupied Middle Kingdom and report to your superior that you, your ministry and your nation have failed.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KJ27Ad02.html

China's culture offensive hits a wall
By Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING - This year's Frankfurt Book Fair may have been more of an embarrassment than prestige for its guest of honor - China - but the country's cultural mandarins still believe that the future of cultural ideas belongs to the Middle Kingdom and that the global financial crisis will play a role in helping them achieve that. Wu Wei - the woman behind Beijing's "going global" project for Chinese literature - told the Southern Weekend, a popular newspaper, last week that the economic downturn has focused global attention on China in just about every aspect. "

In the West in particular, it has made many people talk about China's model and what will happen when China 'rules the world'," she said. "But the West knows little about China's culture and ideas and ignorance breeds fear. It is the source of all kinds of 'threat' and 'collapse' theories. But this interest is also a chance for us to propagate our ideas." Beijing has exploited international attention to the full, raising its global profile in politics and economic affairs and even attempting to export its economic model. Leaving a mark in the world of cultural ideas, though, has presented a tougher challenge. For several years now, Beijing has battled to reverse its "cultural deficit", where it imports 10 times more books than it exports.

Now one of the world's largest economies and trading powers, China has spearheaded a cultural counteroffensive in a belief that cultural industry is the next step in its transformation from global upstart to superstar. As part of this attempt to raise the country's cultural profile abroad Beijing has invested in hundreds of Confucian institutes that are teaching Mandarin around the world and launching new foreign-language media outlets.

In publishing, Wu, as a senior official at the Information Department of the State Council, has led a team of experts tasked with selecting the most appealing titles to be translated and marketed around the world. They spent nearly five years and invested US$15 million preparing for China's debut at the Frankfurt Book Fair - referred to here as the "Olympics of the publishing world" - which was held on October 14-18. The country was featured as the guest of honor - a choice that pleased Beijing in a year marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the communist republic. But to the cultural officials' dismay, the event was marred with controversy and spats over human rights and press freedoms.

Two conflicting images of China squabbled for limelight at the fair - one, of the state-sponsored written word, put forward by Beijing, and the other of China on the fringe, presented by dissidents living abroad and fighting for their voices to be heard. Xi Jinping, Chinese vice president and seen by some people as a likely heir to party chief Hu Jintao, led the official delegation of 50 state-endorsed writers and 600 artists. They presented some 100 translated books - the first fruits of Beijing's "going out" project for Chinese literature.

These included two volumes by former party chief Jiang Zemin - one on China's foray into the information technology industry and another on the country's energy policies. Fiction titles included best-selling works such as Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem and Yu Hua's Brothers. Beijing, however, was clearly uncomfortable with allowing anyone outside of the state umbrella to speak for China. Despite an invitation extended by the fair organizers, Beijing banned author Liao Yiwu from attending the event. After serving a four-year prison sentence for writing poetry about the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, Liao has remained under surveillance by police, who refused to lift his travel ban.

Liao's book on China's underprivileged, The Corpse Walker, as well as his essays about the survivors and victims of last year's earthquake in Sichuan, have reportedly rankled censors at home. Still, there was a lot the official Chinese delegation could not control. Author-in-exile Bei Ling and writer Dai Qing, whose books about the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement and the Three Gorges Dam - the world's largest dam, which has generated much controversy at home and abroad - are banned on the mainland, represented dissident China.

Envoys of Tibetan exiled leader the Dalai Lama and Uyghur pro-independence advocate Rebiya Kadeer, condemned by Beijing as a terrorist, were also present. Beijing could not prevent the foreign media from zooming in on its intolerance of free speech and criticizing the communist party. When German magazine Der Spiegel ran a feature on the fair, headlined "China, the Unwelcome Guest", Chinese delegates protested that European media and political circles were biased. China's clout, though, was felt behind the scenes.

Bei Ling and Dai Qing were barred from making speeches at the closing ceremony. An outcry from the public and the media forced the fair organizers to fire the project manager for striking off the names of the dissident writers from the list of speakers at the last moment. Beijing put a positive spin on the outcome of the fair, despite the embarrassment caused by the tug-of-war between the official Chinese delegation and the dissident lobby. The country's sprawling pavilion at Frankfurt - featuring scrolls with different styles of calligraphy and an engraved "ink pool" - was described by the media here as the "place to be".

"This is an achievement of immense pride for us," Li Pengyi, a delegation member and vice president of the China Publishing Group, told reporters at the end of the fair. "One can say we are going home with two bumper harvests - one for the Chinese culture in general and one for China's copyright trade.” To continue raising the country's cultural profile abroad even in the middle of the current economic downturn, Chinese officials have decided to offer free books to about 100 libraries around the world, according to Wu Wei.

At a book fair at Ditan Park in Beijing, some of the crowd have heard about Beijing's reception in Frankfurt. "Foreigners always seek to embarrass China," said student Zhang Ziying. "With so much prejudice, how can they like any of our books?" But Lin Xuecong, who introduced himself only as a "book lover", says there is little worthy that is being written in China these days. "It is not about who are the authors of these books. It is about whether they can touch your heart and mind."

Punk-ass FOB

Comment # 49 @Brooklynite, your analogy of Cantonese with Kurds, Chechens, etc, is a false one. Han Chinese are one Race, with one Civilization, regardless of which dialect we speak. That issue was settled over 2000 years ago with the First Emperor's reunification of China. And with the return of Hong Kong and Macau and the inevitable reunification of those of our blood in Taiwan, Singapore, etc, China will soon be whole once again. That's the dream of all Chinese people. We are not like the Spanish or English or Arabic speakers, tolerating division.

Too bad the moderator turned off comments.

My problem is with the "etc." in his comment. Does this FOB shithead want to annex parts of Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Phillipines and Hawaii? The dream of all Chinese people? Speak for yourself, FOB-ass motherfucker! Your arrogance will be checked by the Uighur tac-nuke that brings down the Puxi towers!

Reunification of YOUR blood? My blood escaped the fuck out of China and Mao's clusterfuck of a Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. China has done NOTHING for my family and I owe NOTHING to China, except a bullet in the head for whoever attempts to impose Han rule over me and my homeland.

It's assholes like this that have no other identity than Chinese nationalism that makes me want to shove him on the next Shanghai-bound freighter at bayonet point. Your blood will the reunified with the Staten Island landfill, along with all the other fifth-column infiltrators who will have to watch their families harshly interrogated by people like me in their own language. After all, you nationalists wanted me to learn Mandarin right? How about a taste of the same regime you so admire, ah-chon?

Perhaps my first translation will be Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla, to be passed among the disenfranchised peasantry of your newborn cities; so much neon, not enough concertina or bollards.

When China breaks up into a hundred fiefdoms, it will be due the machinations of ABCs like me. I will unify China under the reign of chaos.