Developers, 999 : Nailhouse, 1

 

Wanted: Someone with a strong sense of responsibility, tough, brave and physically strong. Ability to oppose and deal with forces of evil.

That help-wanted ad was cited in a heart-warming story today from the New York Times:

Qin Rong, the owner of a restaurant facing imminent demolition, was looking for a foolhardy soul willing to save her from one of the most powerful forces in China today: the state-affiliated development company....

Chinese newspapers are filled with stories of battles involving so-called nail houses, the properties whose owners and occupants are like deeply embedded spikes that refuse to give way to redevelopment juggernauts. As an unceasing real-estate boom has swept the nation, much of it orchestrated by the local governments that benefit from soaring land values, property owners and occupants often protest unfair compensation.

A standoff ensues. Shady men are dispatched. Goliath rarely loses.

From rural farmland to ancient hutongs in Beijing, this is a story that's being repeated across the country. The featured resister in this article opened a restaurant in Beijing right before the Olympics, into which she and her boyfriend funneled their life savings:

Ms. Qin, a fiery 28-year-old raised in the rough-and-tumble western region of Xinjiang, said she would never have signed the lease — with an agency affiliated with the developer that owns the property — had she known the building was about to be demolished. “We have no problem moving out,” she said last week, in front of her darkened restaurant. “We just want back the money we invested for renovations.”

She demanded exactly that amount: $74,000. The agency’s final offer was just over $5,000. This month, the electricity and water were shut off and a herd of orange excavator machines began tearing away at adjacent buildings, where the occupants had folded with less of a fight.

In most cases, those who resist are squashed by the developers. But Qiu gained assistance from a former 拆遷辦 named Lu Daren. He was shaken after witnessing the death of one of the people he helped evict, and finally quit his job. “I decided one day I would atone for my wrongdoing and do something good for the world,” he said.

Lu helped guard the house against the intimidation and violence of hired thugs vigorous and enthusiastic persuasion of company employees. And for once, there was actually a happy ending: the company eventually capitulated and paid the owners the full compensation (apparently trying to finish off the issue before the new year).

Now it's cool that this happened. I am glad these restaurant entrepreneurs won against the unethical behavior of the land-grabbing development company.

But somehow ... I kind of wish the pensioners or the elderly citizens, the 老公公 and 老婆婆, are the ones who can be saved, too, not just a young unmarried couple with an investment.

These people are okay with leaving the place anyway, just as long as they get their money back.But what about the people who love their homes and don't want to leave? What about the intangible sense of community that is lost? How do we value those things? How do we treat those people?

In stories such as this one, in the cases of land grabs that are repeated again and again in this country ... are homes and neighborhoods ever saved? Do buildings stay standing, do establishments stay open, do homes stay occupied? Can life go on as it was? Or in the end, can it only be about securing compensation and then exiting the scene? Does success ever come in the form of preservation, renovation, and continuation?

As for Mr. Lu, he said he hoped to continue fighting on behalf of other nail houses. “Sometimes righteousness wins,” Mr. Lu said.

新年快樂！Happy New Year, everybody! It's a brand new 2010.

P.S. 爲了世界上最優美、歷史最悠久的文字.

An article with this headline was in the Straits Times:

Fight for Chinese characters

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_471017.html

I interpret it as a call to action: 為中國文字而戰! Fight for Chinese characters!

If the editor wanted portray the story by Agence France-Presse as a "battle between two equal claimants," it could have called the piece "Fight over Chinese characters." Instead, we can see this as an admonishment to do your part! 

(Okay, so I don't actually know which way the Straits Times actually leans, and this may not be what the editor really intended, lol. But this is how I personally react. ^  ^ )

Taiwan to seek World Heritage status for Traditional Chinese characters

Taiwan plans to apply for World Heritage status for traditional Chinese characters, which have existed in this form since at least the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), when the kai shu 楷書 script was most fully developed -- nearly 1,500 years ago. It remains the "standard script" used today and serves as the model for printed type.

"In order to preserve the world's oldest and most beautiful language [為了保存世界上最優美、歷史最悠久的文字], I have entrusted [Taiwanese cabinet minister] Ovid Tzeng to prepare to make an application," President Ma Ying-jeou said December 26, at an international seminar on teaching Chinese.

Though Communist China abandoned Traditional characters in the 1950s, opting for a pared-down, simplified version, they continue to be used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and by Overseas Chinese communities around the world. (Ma cited estimates of some 40 million users of the standard script.)

Original source here and additional coverage from AFP "Taiwan's Ma fights for traditional Chinese characters". More info about kaishu at Brittanica and Wikipedia.

Also some Chinese language coverage (just grabbed some of the first links on Google News in order to see Ma's comments in Chinese):

台灣總統馬英九星表示，台灣將積極推動申請“正體漢字”列為聯合國世界遺產。馬英九上週六（12月26日）出席第9屆世界華語文教學研討會開幕典禮時說，語文決定文化，文化決定民族，為了保存世界上最優美、歷史最悠久的文字，他已責成行政院政務委員曾志朗將正體漢字申遺。

http://www.cna.com.tw/SearchNews/doDetail.aspx?id=200912260201
http://www.sinchew.com.my/node/143756?tid=2
http://news.sina.com.hk/cgi-bin/nw/show.cgi/9/1/1/1374703/1.html

You know, I think I might start using the terminology "正體" i.e. standard characters instead of "繁體" or complex characters. =D

So this is the tale of Harry Potter

I just just finished reading "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

Wow.

I bought the book when it first came out 18 months ago in 2007, while I was in Beijing. Luo Yi, Andrew and I rushed to an English-language bookstore that very night in Wangfujing 王府井. But though I had purchased it, I decided not to open the cover, because I knew that once I started reading, I wouldn't be able to do anything else -- and I really needed to work. So I steeled myself, set the book aside, and refrained from beginning.

Then later on, in the succeeding months, through the next year, I couldn't bring myself to read it.

I had loved the early books, from the first book (The Sorcerer's Stone, here in America) through the fourth (The Goblet of Fire, which we had also waited for in anxious and excited expectation that summer after eight grade. It was the first time in our lives, I think, that a book was released to waiting crowds). But the fifth book was detestable (a long litany of why it was problematic -- ask another time), and the sixth only relatively better in comparison (improved, because it returned in some ways to the style of the previous books, but with little new or novel).

Hence my hesitance to begin the seventh. Did I really want the series to end on an unsatisfying note? Or could I simply keep the image of Harry Potter, and Hogwarts, and all the friends in the wizarding world, alive with an old interpretation -- unfinished, not yet settled -- and thus still preserve that sense of possibility? Because how would I react if I read this seventh book and the story turned out to be in sharp contrast to what we hoped? A dud like Book 5, instead of as delightful as our first glimpse of the world of Harry Potter, or as gripping as the epic tale of Book 4?

So my expectations and interest in Harry Potter dimmed ... I was not moved to find out what happened next, because it might simply be a disappointment, or worse, "out of character" -- at least out of the characters that we had come to know and imagine in our own minds.

This is the prequel/sequel syndrome ... when an author produces a different imagining than the world or galaxy we've interpreted and created in our own minds. Sometimes, the imagined world takes on a life of its own, and it no longer rests solely in the hands of the author, but also in the hearts of all the fans who have adopted it as their own -- who have bought into the same stories, agonized and sympathized with the characters, and established emotional ties to such a place. And it becomes more pronounced when there is a period of waiting between books, as we spin our own tales before the arrival of the next volume.

But all I can say now is, that after having read it ... this ending, this tale ... there was indeed something wonderful there, that overrode those worries, that melded and combined with our own interpretations in a way that worked; that brought back memories of those early books. I think that was the best thing: it inspired some of the same emotions and feelings we had in those earlier books, while boldly advancing the story, and bringing in the new. That combination, plus the revelations and tying together of threads, really did make it a conclusion worth reading, and keeps alive the flame for all who have ever read and loved this series.