What's on in China?

Everybody knows that the Chinese are world champions in copying whatever you can think of. But in their urge to imitate western lifestyles and attitudes the situation seems to be running slightly out of hand recently. One hot item in the daily press is school shootings. Since the beginning of this year 21 people have died and 90 injured in various attacks across the country. In fact, the brutality of some of the killings is striking: from mass stabbings to usage of hammers and cleavers. Eleven years after the heavily mediatised Columbine shooting in the US, the wave of school attacks has reached China and it indeed raises some major questions on the role of the press once again. Violence in China is much less common than in western countries, which makes these killings rather odd and it is hard to ignore that copycats are at work, young students who may or may not be succumbing under the enormous pressure they are indeed sometimes put. Rather than go down anonymously, they ensure they will be remembered one way or another. Would there be as many attacks if the media didn't jump on every such event like a hungry animal and give some of these perpetrators a martyr's jacket in the eyes of some? In any case, what I find quite disturbing in this context is a second hot news items these days: employees from an electronics firm jumping to their deaths from the roof of their Shenzhen branch. Doesn't this very much sound like the French Telecom saga in France? This week the death toll at FoxConn, a Taiwan-owned firm producing components for o.a Apple and Nokia, has hit eleven. As in France, many of these suicides feature ordinary workers who previously showed little to no signs of distress. On the contrary there are of course also reports of verbally abusive managers and sweatshop-like labour conditions. In any case, FoxConn is under scrutiny and to relieve some of the workers' stress they have already hired a number of buddhist monks, singers and dancers to cheer them up...

Then there is the discussion on the re-evaluation of the yuan, which I hope won't happen for purely selfish reasons - but also for dozens of thousands of workers who are at risk of losing their jobs -, and the military stand-off in nearby Korea.

The World Expo in Shanghai has had a good start despite the wet weather in the area, and I have been told it is worth a visit. I envisage to go in September when the crowd is hopefully a little thinner. A student was at the Expo two weeks ago and managed to get in the Belgian VIP room with a.o. Flemish Minister of Health, Family & Well-being, Jo Vandeurzen. Claire, Emma and Yunis also travelled to Shanghai a few weeks ago and bumped into actress Zhang Ziyi without realising it ...

To conclude, I also read an article about a new health tonic in the Shanghai Global Times newspaper: little boy's pee-pee!
Available in several Chinese online shops, sellers claim boys' urine can treat various illnesses including cancer as it is melamine free. The babies used are breast-fed and live in the countryside where the air is fresh and unpolluted. You can buy bottles with prices ranging from 20 yuan (2 euro) to 2,000 yuan (200 euro) depending on the purity of the urine. The value of the urine namely declines as the boys get older. The idea is to put two drops into a cup of warm water or a bowl of soup. The majority of scientists and doctors question the validity of the arguments given ;-)