Having said that, the pain had its pay-offs: We managed to produce 27 videos, more by far than any other US newspaper. And I now have a much clearer sense of what a strange dance these American titans of print are doing with multimedia. I’ll try to write more on that score after I’ve had a chance to recover…

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Another video done in cahoots with Loretta from the Wall Street Journal. This one covers a book, Civilized Etiquette (文明礼仪), supposedly distributed to all Beijing residents four years ago as part of an effort to keep the city from embarassing itself in front of foreign guests during the Olympics. The book got a lot of play, including on the WSJ website, in the pre-Olympics coverage.

One part of the book that didn’t get much coverage was the fashion chapter. We thought it was a bit dubious for a government led by men in ill-fitting suits and clunky gold wire-frame glasses to be telling others how to dress, so we decided to do a story on it. Enjoy.

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I helped Loretta Chao from the Wall Street Journal produce this video on a kid from Henan she saw filming a protest on Tian’anmen Square yesterday. A fantastic, fascinating character. High on China like he’d injected some sort of narcotized liquid patriotism. Wish I could have used more of him, but Internet attention span research tells us to keep everything to under four minutes. Alas.

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From the Beijing Bureau: A tale of two Olympic cities
Park Record, 2008.07.22

This was fortitude of historical proportions. On September 11, 2001, just as people in northern Utah had started decorating their cities in earnest for the Winter Olympics, a global party more than a decade in the making, two planes veered murderously off course 2000 miles to the east. The story from there hardly bears repeating: tens of thousands killed, a nation plunged into morning and, months later, an Olympics held despite it all. For years, it seemed the 2002 Winter Games would go down in history as the only Olympic gathering to take place so fast on the heels of a national disaster.

No longer.

On May 12th this year, with Beijing entering the feverish final stages of preparation for China’s first Olympics, a magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck roughly a thousand miles away, in rural Sichuan Province. Seventy thousand were killed, the nation was plunged into mourning. And next month, yes, the Beijing Games will go ahead despite it all.

On the surface, Beijing 2008 has so little in common with Salt Lake City 2002 it seems ludicrous to even begin to compare them. The 100-meter dash versus the downhill. The Forbidden City versus the Mormon Temple. Five hundred thousand volunteers for one versus 22,000 for the other. The two Olympics feel about as comparable as the foods for which each city is best known: Roast Duck, meet Jell-O Salad. But look a little harder and striking parallels begin to emerge——parallels that suggest Utahns are in better position than most to understand what may be going through the minds of people in Beijing as their big day approaches.

The background of catastrophic national misfortune is far and away the most obvious, and wrenching, of the similarities that tie Utah to Beijing. Parkites who remember the torn American flag recovered from Ground Zero being carried into the opening ceremonies in Salt Lake, and the string of solemn 9/11 tributes from American medal winners that followed, can expect something similar in Beijing.

Park City tennis fans who watched Wimbledon last month already saw a preview of this when Chinese player Zheng Jie, a native of Sichuan ranked No. 133, make an improbable run to the Wimbledon women’s semi-finals, then went on to donate her winnings to victims of the earthquake.

But there is more.

The fear of protests by “anti-China forces” and possible terrorist attacks by extremists amongst China’s marginalized Uighur Muslim community—a fear sharpened by two bus explosions in the southern city of Kunming this week—has led in recent months to a new slogan for the Games: “Olympics, Security First.”

They are not empty words. Yesterday while traveling around town, your correspondent was forced to put his bags through three baggage screening devices and saw a pair of visitors pulled over on the side of a major highway being guarded by a soldier carting an assault rifle. If that sounds familiar, it might be because several of the anti-terror experts brought into secure Salt Lake City for the Olympics in the wake of 9/11 have been hired by Beijing to do the same in China.

Perhaps more importantly, China shares with Utah the misfortune of being both a complex and a polarizing place. As a result, China, like Utah, is susceptible to being rendered by the lazy or the polemical in the broad strokes of stereotype and caricature.

Last October, a reporter for the UK’s Channel 4, in town to do a story on China’s illegal detention of petitioners, confounded residents of Beijing by describing their city as a “disaster zone,” full of “unhappy people” standing in “piles of faeces” and seething with discontent-this despite the fact that most piles of feces to be found on the Beijing streets come from the hordes of well-manicured mini-dogs kept as pets by the city’s generally content middle class.

Where Utahns had to endure endless comments about polygamy and questions about whether Salt Lake 2002 would end up being the “Mo-lympics,” residents of Beijing have been subject to a barrage of commentary about life in a police state and have had their games re-branded, with similar lack of imagination, the “Genocide Olympics.”

As with the Salt Lake Games, the cartoonish portrayals of Beijing have some basis in fact. But these pictures have been sketched with a prejudice against complicating details and exaggerated for effect. None of this is to suggest the Beijing’s Games are a mirror of Utah’s. Considered a coming out party by many Chinese and a judgment day of sort by outsiders, the Beijing 2008 Olympics have no precedent. But if anyone is in a position to understand-maybe even sympathize with-the hordes of average Beijing residents clutching their Olympic tickets to their chest as they bounce dizzily back and forth between anticipation and apprehension, it is the readers of this paper.

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Having said that, anyone with a genuine interest in the problem will sooner or later want to click over to Clearing the Air, launched by the Asia Society this week.

Full disclosure here: I am the recipient of Asia Society funds and consider some of the people who worked on this project my friends. And I am proud of those friends, because they have done what my brother the delightfully pithy ski coach/art teacher would describe as a “kick-ass job.”

Why such high praise? The site opens with a highly produced mini-documentary from the multi-media rock stars over at MediaStorm featuring photos from Natalie Behring (definitely one of the most kick-ass photographers working in China at the moment) and an interview with Orville Schell (whose kick-ass fund-raising skills have helped financed this and many other a valuable projects). Beyond that, it provides a nice little summary of the issue with definitions of mysterious terms like “blue sky day” and “API,” some links to resources, and——the feature that truly puts the boot to the government’s hindquarters——a monthly calendar of air pollution levels made with photographs taken from the window of a single Beijing apartment building [see screen shot above].

Minus a few days here and there, the calendar (called “Room With A View”) visually documents the air in Beijing every day from April of last year to the present. Click on a day in the calendar and a full-size image of that day’s pollution pops up in the main screen, making it convenient for anyone outside Beijing to check on government claims of blue skies. The calendar also has pop-down menus with links to the best and worst days, plus a list of the days on which pollution climbed or fell the most. (Interestingly, the greatest changes all appear to happen in May and December…)

For those people smart enough to live elsewhere, this is as close as you’ll get to experiencing the pollution that blankets Beijing without actually having to breathe it. For the rest of us, the combination of the photos with statistics on average pollution levels and official blue sky day counts confirms all too vividly the sacrifice our lungs make so that we make partake in the madness.

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As noted on ESWN a few days ago (h/t John Kennedy of Global Voices), Amnesty International’s official website is Amnesty.org while the website listed at the bottom of the ads is Amnesty.com, raising questions about who actually commissioned them. ESWN then dug up the following explanation, from France 24:

A campaign about the Beijing Olympics produced for Amnesty International France was considered so aggressive by its creators that they decided to call off its release.

Advertising agency TBWA\Paris did however seek permission from their client to present the project at the Cannes Lions advertising festival. And it even received a prize. Since then the images, which show Chinese prisoners tortured with the help of Olympics sports equipment, have been circulated on blogs and forums in China, causing outrage in the country.

Further down, France 24 published the following comment from Marie Holzman, a French China specialist and human rights activist:

I was there when they shot the photos for the campaign. The imagery was very provoking and direct. It was designed to blow your mind - if you’re French, not Chinese. But because of advertising, the French understanding has become very sophisticated; this was perhaps a little brutal.

Leaving aside the question of how such blunt images could be said to be aimed at a “sophisticated” audience, the interesting thing for me here is Amnesty’s decision to allow TBWA to enter the ads in the Cannes contest after rejecting them as too aggressive (which we presumably can read to mean counter-productive). Did they honestly think the images wouldn’t get out, wouldn’t end up on some Chinese message board or another, especially given the hyper-sensitivity of certain portions of the Chinese online population these past few months? Even if Amnesty asked TBWA to remove their name from the ads and TBWA simply ignored the request, somebody somewhere appears to have made either a very bad, or a very naive, decision.

This business also raises some interesting questions about the value of arguments for or against Internet content based on the notion of audience. Certainly, people who post audience-specific content to the Internet (or who produce audience-specific content that is then posted to the Internet by other people) are allowed to offer the audience-specific defense when that content is misinterpreted by people for whom it was not intended. But when does that defense fly, and when does it do a big, embarrassing face-plant? In the case of the Amnesty ads, saying they were intended for French people certainly sounds like a case of the later–a little like a pair of giggling Chinese teenagers excusing themselves for joking about the Mandarin-speaking French person’s gigantic nose because they had no idea he would understand.

[NOTE: None of this would appear to apply to the Amnesty Olympics ads produced by Slovakian ad agency WUW Saatchi and Saatchi, which display a legitimate website (www.amnesty.sk) and which, as far as I can tell, still have Amnesty International's stamp of approval.]

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It’s happened at last, I thought. Well, then, let it come.

I was relieved (and also, I will admit, a little disappointed) to discover I had nothing to fear. There were no new entries in the comments section. No jingoistic outbursts accusing me of hating China. No obscenities leveled at my family. No response whatsoever. Visiting the page that linked to my blog, I was surprised to discover all of the vitriol had instead been bestowed on TBWA, the group that had dreamed up the Adidas campaign.

What landed TBWA on Anti-CNN’s shit list is not the Adidas campaign, which appears to have thrilled most Chinese people, but its contributions to a separate 2008 Games PR blitz being undertaken by Amnesty International.

As one might expect, the Amnesty International ads aim to portray the Beijing Olympics as a travesty for human rights. The organization has taken a variety of approaches in service of this goal, including one ad that replaces the candle in its logo with an Olympic torch, but most of the series uses the Olympic events themselves to highlight the various ways in which Chinese authorities mistreat Chinese prisoners. There appear to be five of these—boxing, shooting, swimming, weight lifting and archery—with TBWA responsible for the last three (Slovakia’s WUW Saatchi and Saatchi did the others).

Like the Adidas ads, TBWA’s work for Amnesty International is striking, with tremendous attention to detail. In the swimming ad, a prisoner lies shirtless and prostrate between the starting blocks, grimacing as one of the two Chinese policeman straddling him lifts his head out of the pool. Likewise, in the archery ad (see above), a Chinese policeman is shown strolling away with a smile on his face, having strapped a prisoner to the front of a target——the poor man’s fate made clear by another blood-stained target lying on the ground opposite a previously dispatched victim, barely visible in the bottom corner of the frame. Each ad is rendered in gritty, washed-out blues and grays with a message proclaiming, “After the Olympic Games, the Fight for Human Rights Must Go On.” The series earned TBWA a 2008 Cannes Press Lions bronze medal.

The ads attracted the attention on the popular Chinese Internet forum Tianya not long after the Cannes Lions awards were announced, and from there to Anti-CNN, where it quickly amassed six pages’ worth of comments. Predictably, the response in these venues has been less than enthusiastic.

A significant part of the Anti-CNNers’ anger over the ads seems to stem from the fact they were produced out of New York-based TBWA’s French offices. Thanks to the disastrous Paris leg of the Olympic torch relay earlier this year, Chinese nationalists now seethe with hatred for anything having to do with France. Hence, Anti-CNN, Tianya and other Chinese discussion sites are now rife with “fuck TBWA, fuck France”-type commentary.

But not all of the criticism has been unhinged.

“One company, two completely different ways of acting,” one poster wrote on Anti-CNN’s discussion board. “If a company doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong, is willing to make money no matter where it comes from, then it shouldn’t be allowed to make a cent here.”

For all its ignominy as a symbol of frothing-at-the-mouth Chinese nationalism, Anti-CNN doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable. It’s basic position on CNN, after all, is one many people have taken at one point or another, regardless of nationality. And in the case of TBWA, at least a few users of the site make valid points, regardless of where one stands on the Olympics human rights issue.

As far as I can tell, no one at TBWA has been publicly forced to explain how the company justifies gorging itself on rah-rah Olympic sentiment one moment only to vomit it all back up the next. How does the company account for itself? Is the Amnesty campaign an effort to balance the corporate karma ledger? Was there some breakdown in communication between the French and Chinese offices?

With a slogan like “Disruptive Ideas Expressed Through Media Arts,” it seems more likely the company is simply trying to milk a controversial event for all its worth——in which case, they deserve whatever abuse they get, whether from within China or anywhere else.

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I’m not sure exactly how the Hong Kong transport authority determines which license plates will be auctioned at any given time, but the list for this next auction has some interesting entries. There’s plenty of local-sounding names (MRS CHUM) and animals (SHEEP, BUNNY) but then there’s a whole range of other options ranging from the ironic (EM1SS1ON) to the utterly baffling (TOMCRUZ).

The general portrait this particular list seems to paint is of a religious and, yes, materialistic city, but one with decent taste in secondary Hollywood action movie characters.

First round:

1) ALPHA
2) 1CEMAN
6) HUNG 678 (A reference to the 678 International Club massage parlor in Shenzhen? Or maybe it’s the Best Casinos Online Directory?)
30) 20061122 (The Playstation 3 launched in Japan on November 11, 2006, but that can’t be it. Please help.)
35) 1LUV2EAT, available in 2 rows: 1LUV 2EAT
43) BOBAFETT, available in 2 rows BOBA FETT
49) CASHMERE
62) ANALYST
68) PUKKA
83) CNOOC

Second round:

1) HO ONE
31) P1NG AN
32) FAM1LY
37) BMW M3
49) HEADFAME (For the ultimate administrative assistant)
53) TOMCRUZ
67) VU1TTON
74) DOGAROO (??????)
80) EM1SS1ON
92) W W J D
93) PSALM121
94) HA HA 88

For those who want to get their hands on one of these treasures, the auction takes place July 19th at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wanchai, with the first round starting at 9:25am.

According to the all-time top ten list, the top getter is “18″ (not “8″) auctioned off to some lucky bugger last year for HK$16.5 million. Anyone who knows why someone might pay two million bucks for that number, please explain.

[Image: A genuine Hong Kong license plate, courtesy of Mark Oh!]

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As some will recall, Berkeley announced earlier this year that it would have to cut its Chinese, Korean and Japanese language classes by a total of 1500 students. In real terms, that meant East Asian language classes would be off-limits to all non-majors. The reason had to do with state funding cuts in the range of $30-40 million. Students and staff launched a frantic campaign to keep the classes available, a campaign that now appears to have succeeded.

According to an email I received yesterday (subject line: “Victory!”), the Department of East Asian Languages and Culture will be funded at its 2007/08 level for at least the next academic year. I haven’t been able to suss many other details of the deal so far. There’s nothing about it on the university website’s press release page. The “Fighting EALC Budget Cuts at UCB” Facebook page and various student-run blogs set up to protest the cuts likewise have yet to mention the decision. But a “Budget Update Coming Soon!” notice printed in red on the EALC website at least suggests the decision is not just rumor.

Assuming it’s true, I imagine many hundreds of people in Berkeley have just heaved a big, sweaty sigh of relief. What the department really needs is an increase in funding. As I’ve noted before, Chinese classes at Berkeley are woefully oversubscribed, the instructors criminally overburdened. But this is public education we’re talking about, so a hearty congratulations to all the people who fought this battle.

The odds were not in their favor.

[Image: Graphic representation of UC Berkeley's new CV Staar East Asian Languages Library, from Save East Asian Languages and Korean Studies at UC Berkeley.]

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Western observers have been lamenting the demise of “Old Beijing” since at least the 1920s, when the Chinese capital started itself stumbling in the direction of modernization. Each time, the city’s ancient charms-it’s intimate lanes ( hutong) and enigmatic courtyard houses ( siheyuan)-are said to be not long for this world. Each time, they survive to seduce the next generation of would-be eulogizers. Now comes Michael Meyer’s “The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed,” due out from Walker and Company this month. How much is there to be gained in listening to yet another requiem for a place that never seems to die?

The answer, in Meyer’s case, is plenty.

An award-winning travel writer, Meyer has done what few other foreign residents in Beijing are willing to do: actually live in the hutong. It’s true, many Westerners rent courtyard houses, but theirs are the neo-imperial mini-palaces of New Beijing, cleared of riff-raff, retrofitted with radiators and equipped with sit-down toilets. Meyer’s perch in the neglected lanes south of Tian’anmen Square is not so luxurious. For heat in winter, he relies on cups of Nescafe and the bowls of dumplings foisted on him by the Widow, his busy-bodied old neighbor. The dumplings and instant coffee processed, he walks across the lane to the public latrine, where one of his students once bowed to him as he squatted, pants around ankles, over the open trough.

Read the full review here (proxy required for those in China).

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