Chinese New Year Noise
The Shanghai city government suspended 36 road-works projects for a week over Chinese New
Year in order to "create a quiet and peaceful environment for locals during the holiday". As firecrackers explode and fireworks roar throughout the nights of the holiday, it doesn't seem as though the "locals" are interested in creating a quiet and peaceful environment for themselves!
Labels: Chinese New Year
Staggering numbers
The mind reels with the massive numbers that characterize any statistic published in China. With one of the worst winter weather seasons on record, the Shanghai Daily has printed numbers to boggle the mind. Here's a sampling:
- Between January 25 and Thursday, a total of 5.8 million passengers were stranded throughout the railway system.
- Killer storms have battered 19 provinces over the last three weeks, forced 1.76 million people to relocate and knocked down 223,000 houses.
- Around 1.07 million militia and army reservists were participating in the fight against the extreme weather. The PLA [People's Liberation Army] currently has 2.3 million troops.
- The worst snowstorms in five decades have killed 60 people and caused a direct economic loss of 53.8 billion yuan (US$7.48 billion) as of 6pm yesterday [31 January 2008].
- By 6pm yesterday [31 January 2008], a total of 2,859 trains were delayed and 397 trains were canceled, trapping more than 5.8 million travelers.
- A record 178.6 million people are expected to ride the rails in coming weeks.
If you can't quite comprehend these numbers, let's put them another way. Over the Chinese New Year holiday, the equivalent of the entire population of Brazil, or more than half the population of the US will take the trains.
As of July 2003, the total size of the US armed services was 1.4 million. The PLA is nearly twice that size.
So when we read that 306,000 troops were sent out to deal with the snow situation in the south of China, we can only be thankful that China has the labor resources and strong leadership to deal with these staggering numbers.
Half the Sky
Mao proclaimed that "women hold up half the sky", setting the stage for women to serve in all critical functions in Communist China. Nearly half of a century later, we can find evidence that women continue to hold up half the sky or more in the homes, yet are not breaking through the smog to their half of the sky in much of business and politics.
As the first plenary session of the 13th Shanghai People's Congress closed two days ago, the newly elected Shanghai city government stood for photos flanking the reelected mayor, Han Zheng. His vice-mayors include 7 men and 1 woman,
Zhao Wen.
Zhao Wen has impressive qualifications. Quoting the 1 February 2008 Shanghai Daily,
She has worked in the financial education and research area at higher education institutes for years. She has worked as assistant president and dean of the Accounting Department at Tongji University. Zhao has also worked as vice governor at the city's suburban Nanhui District. She has been vice secretary-general at Shanghai People's Congress Standing Committee and vice director of the SPC's Economics and Finance Department, overseeing budget affairs.
With these credentials, we might suspect then that she's been given a substantial role in the city government. Instead, we find that her charter is sports, tourism (though not the World Expo 2010), intellectual property rights protection, family planning, literature and history.
I'm sure she wouldn't use the words "tokenism", yet it sure looks to me like a lot less than half the sky is being held up here.
Year in order to "create a quiet and peaceful environment for locals during the holiday". As firecrackers explode and fireworks roar throughout the nights of the holiday, it doesn't seem as though the "locals" are interested in creating a quiet and peaceful environment for themselves!
