Monthly Archives: 5 月 2014

William Worthy, a Reporter Drawn to Forbidden Datelines, Dies at 92

By MARGALIT FOXMAY 17, 2014

William Worthy, a foreign correspondent who in the thick of the Cold War ventured where the United States did not want him to go — including the Soviet Union, China, Cuba — and became the subject of both a landmark federal case concerning travel rights and a ballad by the protest singer Phil Ochs, died on May 4 in Brewster, Mass. He was 92.

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Tiananmen Square protest museum opens in Hong Kong

 

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The events in Tiananmen square remain a taboo in Chinese society

The world’s first museum dedicated to the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square has opened in Hong Kong.

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A Peculiar Phrase Finds a Home in China-Frustration at ‘Catch-22’s’ are a common part of life here.

BY HELEN GAO MAY 13, 2014

BEIJING — For those Chinese who have carried their tales of woe for hundreds of miles and suffered numerous bureaucratic setbacks, this seems like mockery. On April 23, China passed a new law banning petitioners from taking grievances to the central government without first trying to resolve them with local officials, even though the petitioning system, which dates back to imperial times, is supposed to allow individuals to appeal directly to higher authorities when they bump up against local bureaucracy. This latest restriction, with the ostensible goal of “streamlining the petitioning system,” all but extinguishes the last hope for many desperate for a sympathetic ear from above. In fact, the petitioning system is blinkered enough that Wang Lin, a law professor at Hainan University, called it a judicial “Catch-22” in a September 2011 essay published in popular newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily.

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How a Triad gangster saved Tiananmen Square demonstrators

“Brother Six” tells how he smuggled more than 100 protesters to safety after the Chinese government’s brutal crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989

5:30AM BST 18 May 2014

It is almost 25 years since the crackdown on a pro-democracy movement around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989 led to a bloody massacre.

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Chinese Video Websites Halt Buying of Japanese Anime

by Harrison Lee on Monday, May 12, 2014

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Japanese manga/anime covers, in a Sina Weibo post reporting that Chinese video site licensing of Japanese anime has come to a halt following recent Chinese government policy.

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Digital Activism: Blocked on Weibo, Encouraged at SIPA

While code language emerges online as a response to government-blocked words, censorship regulators are increasingly finding ways to decode that language. Future SIPA courses hope to explore digital media surveillance in today’s world

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Two More Rights Lawyers Criminally Detained, Another’s Home Searched

By China Change, published: May 18, 2014

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TANG JINGLING (唐荆陵)
In Guangzhou, renowned rights lawyer Tang Jingling (唐荆陵) was criminally detained on May 16, for “provoking disturbance,” according to weiquanwang, a primary website reporting on China’s rights defense events.

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“Sexual love as an antidote to totalitarian control”

JUNE 4, 2011 · 9:50 AM

In memoriam of those who perished on 4 June 1989 on Tiananmen Square. An accidental cross-examination with the Chinese exile author Ma Jian, who dares to remember China’s past in his novel Beijing Coma.
by Julie O’Yang © 2011

The first time when I met Ma Jian, it was two years ago on a wintry day in Brussels. We were both at Europalia, Festival biennal des Arts et de la Culture hosted by the European capital. It sounds better than it is. While a cold wind blew outside the large windows of Royal Museum of Fine Art, the vibes inside reminded me somewhat of Commissaire Maigret coloured haphazardly with a child’s felt pen set. Two days before my publisher had phoned to ask me if I could help a Chinese author named Ma Jian, who was on
the Continent to be interviewed by Dutch/Flemish media. “He needs an interpreter. You get paid for the job,” my publisher had said. Certainly, I had answered. The same afternoon I set out to do my research.

I knew Ma Jian from my high school years in China. His short story collection about Tibet, Stick Out Your Tongue, caused quite a stir at the time. “Stick out your tongue” is what a doctor says when you go to a hospital in China as part of forming a diagnosis. In his stories, the author portrayed a Tibet and Tibetan Culture in a harsh, unpretty but honest way, contrary to the popular, romantic version a la Heinrich Harrer. I don’t remember if I particularly liked the book, but back then I read China’s literary avant-gardists with gusto and devoured every letter that came my way. The fact that language became an enjoyable game, and the outcome excited me and brought me sensational shocks. Six months after the military crash on Tiananmen Square, I went abroad to study. Consequently, I lost track of the literary
scene from my motherland as I myself was left to the hand of fate. I needed to fill some serious gaps, that’s for sure.

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