A while back I was wondering why people in classical Chinese texts seemed to cry so much. Was being able to shed tears on demand something that people were supposed to be able to do? It turns out that Qian Zhongshu had already written about tears and their role in partings, which were an important ritual in elite society. Qian at least seem to support the idea of a gradual transition towards a more “”masculineist” view that tears are just for women…

Via @freddint.

• “China, like the United States, produces 400 million tons of grain a year.”
• “Last year, there were 12 million new car sales in China… In this country, the rule of thumb is that for every five cars you have to pave one acre — roughly a football field.”
• “…all the leaders in Beijing at that time and indeed today are survivors of the great famine of 1959 to 1961, when according to official numbers, 30 million people starved to death.”
• “In 1996, China produced almost 15 million tons of soybeans. They consumed 15 million tons of soybeans. In 2010, they will again produce 15 million tons of soybeans, and they will consume 61 million tons — which means they’re importing like 46 million tons of soybeans.”

Via @pdenlinger.

As well as from historic San Francisco.

See his fine art site (via startdrawing.org).

The WSJ reports on Hung Huang’s latest venture, a new store at the upscale Sanlituan “Village” (outdoor mall) in Bejing. The store’s called BNC (Brand New China) in English and 薄荷糯米葱 (Mint, glutinous rice, onion) in Chinese. It will only feature items made by Chinese designers.

I find the store interesting because it will help pave out a path to success for Chinese designers by creating a commercial space between small store and global fashion brand. Plus it’s in the new hot, upscale mall complex, which are usually filled with foreign brands (they even have Coldstone Creamery).

Unfortunately, as Hung Huang points out, it’s only the non-Chinese developers who are interested in having a store dedicated to local Chinese talent, where most local property developers will only use Chinese designers for one-time PR events.

Via @rpeckham & @niubi.

P.S. The WSJ article starts off with yet another introduction about Hung Huang as the Oprah of China. It’s true that she’s multi-talented and successful, but I’m not exactly sure why WSJ and Fortune are so bent on finding a Chinese Oprah.

Joomla is an open-source content management system: Anyone can download it and install it on their server to build robust, complex websites. (Think Wordpress with more data manipulation options.)

In 2005, two Dutch entrepreneurs took Joomla with them to a small town in the Tibetan Plateau. There they founded a non-profit, Global Nomad, teaching local people how to build websites with it. By 2008, they had enough business to go from non-profit status to for-profit (foreigner owned), and started servicing local clients.

In this way, Global Nomad was able to stem the brain drain/urban flight… at least a little.

More details here. (Via Micah’s twitter.)

The accompanying text is: “On July 28 at the Yingxiong Shanrenfang Shopping Plaza in Jinan city, an old man wanted to jump down from the roof of the 6-meter tall glass house. The police tried to persuade him not to. Meanwhile the reporters from Jinan TV sat right underneath and ate KFC and drank Pepsi.”

Originally from a Netease forum, found and translated by ESWN.

Jan Chipchase, a well-known design researcher who moved to Shanghai recently, posts about his 6 Rules for Night-riding in Shanghai. I’ve excerpted my favorite parts below:

The first vehicle into a space has right of way: in the event of a tie – the biggest, most phucked-up vehicle wins. If one vehicle obviously belongs to a party official then the same rules apply, but the emphasis falls on the second vehicle to avoid contact. This makes taking junctions at speed pretty hairy.

Stay clear of the bicycle/motorbike/e bike lanes, and instead slipstream the larger traffic. You’ll be the only pedal power playing with the big boys and as long as they can see you they tend to show respect. The major exception to this are some of the bus lanes – they are a license to speed, can quickly become single lane channels with no escape route. Know your route kids.

22:00 is a good start time, the traffic has died down to something approaching lite.

Read the full post, or check out the rest of his blog for more entries (and some beautiful fieldwork photographs) about his move to Shanghai.

(The photo is actually from another post of his here.)

But, of course, the US is still king when it comes to consumption per capita.

Article and graphs from a Wall Street Journal article entitled “China Tops US in Energy Use.”

Via Paul Denlinger.

Almost a decade ago, Boroditsky, then a young assistant professor at MIT, conducted a study of Mandarin speakers that thrust her into the spotlight. English speakers, she explains, tend to see time on a horizontal plane: The best years are ahead; he put his past behind him. Speakers of Mandarin, however, tend to see time both horizontally and vertically, with new events emerging from the ground like a spring of water, the past above and the future below.

Full article in Stanford Magazine (via Bobulate).

Update: Reader Julie Farrell has an answer:

The language this author uses is a little confusing.

There are two “planes” used for space and time in English and Mandarin: vertical and horizontal.

The horizontal plane is commonly used in both languages for space and time:

• Spacial: qian/hou, forward/behind (e.g. “qian/houbian” in M, or “behind the couch” in E)
• Temporal: (e.g. “houtian” in M, or “move the meeting forward”in E)

The vertical plane is common as a temporal (time) measure in Mandarin, but not nearly as common in English:

• Spacial: shang/xia, above/below (e.g. “zai zhuozi shang” in M, or “below the belt” in E)
• Temporal: (e.g. “shang/xia ge xingqi” in M, or “the meeting is coming up” in E)

In experiments, Boroditsky’s participants would be asked to identify whether certain temporal statements, like “January comes after February” were true or false. But immediately before they were asked these questions, they were given spacial “primes” illustrating vertical and horizontal relations (these came in the form of pictures with captions like “the red circle is above the blue circle” or “the green snail is behind the purple snail”). Then the participants’ reaction times from the temporal true/false questions were measured. The reaction times of English speakers were much faster after they had been given “horizontal” spacial primes. For Mandarin speakers, the vertical primes yielded quicker reaction times. Therefore, speakers of the two languages could be said to “see” time differently. This study was a major breakthrough for linguists and psychologists, as many have spent years trying to determine whether or not different languages affect the way we see and think about the world.

I hope that explanation is clear enough… Studies like this are hard to boil down, but (I think) worth the effort! I can remember my very first Chinese professor lying down on top of a table at the front of the class to describe to us how the Mandarin time-system worked. It was a novel concept to me then, and Boroditsky’s work makes it even more interesting!

The experience as a participant is quite interesting: You gather in a park, am ordered and sung to by the organizers, then walk along stretches of closed-off roads alongside various groups with banners and slogans, and pass various stations who proffer you their ideals… or merch.

For example, I picked up (bought) a T-shirt in support of raising the minimum-wage to $33 HKD ($4.23 USD):

T-shirt reads: To work better not be a slave (puns the words “be a slave” with “McDonalds”)

I also picked up (free) a giant broadsheet (though it was printed on both sides) called “Our Ten Thousand Words.” I’ve placed my wallet next to the sheet as a reference for size.

The essays on this broadsheet are a collective whine about the current state of affairs from a younger generation. The connecting thread between all of them is a connection with farming (they work in it, their family are farmers, etc.).

Oh, and I also picked up a tan from walking under the sun.