Court Orders Return of Chinese Girl
A Tennessee Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a 7-year-old Chinese girl adopted by American foster parents must be returned to her biological parents. In 1999, Anna Mae Baker (or now I suppose Anna Mae He) was born to Chinese immigrants Shaoqing and Qin Luo He. While not yet a year old, the Hes placed their daughter in the custody of Jerry Baker, the sleazy-looking dude to the left, and his wife Louise, wearing her pajamas next to Jerry. Just prior to Anna Mae’s birth, her birth father, Shaoqing He, then a student at the University of Memphis, was accused of sexual assault costing him his scholarship and stipend. These legal and financial troubles forced the Hes to place their daughter in what they believed was temporary foster care. Before a Memphis judge, the Hes claimed that back in 1999, they placed Anna Mae in the Bakers’ home so that the baby would have health insurance while they searched for jobs. The couple blames their lack of familiarity with the U.S. legal system for the confusion. The decision this week reversed a 2004 Tennessee court ruling that stripped the Hes of any parental rights. The Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C., which responded to the 2004 decision by accusing the court of cultural bias, played a major role in Tuesday’s victory for the Hes. Critics of the 2004 decision have said the judge took into account whether or not the child would have a better life in Tennessee or China. While to me, neither are ideal, after living 8 years in America with American parents, Anna Mae may be in for a shock when she goes back to China with her new Chinese family. And what about the poor Bakers, who did this Chinese couple a favor and took the little girl in? While my heart goes out to the Bakers, I look at this photo and think only one thing: Jerry, buddy, if you are going to court to fight for custody of your daughter, put a shirt and tie on man. Come on.
•AP: Court Orders Foster Parents to Return Chinese Girl
Chinese state media reported Wednesday that in east China’s Jiangsu province, a 4-year-old boy’s voice caused 443 chickens to trample each other to death. The boy’s father was delivering bottles of gas to a village in Jiangsu and brought his son with him. While his father took care of his business, the boy wandered over to a henhouse. When a dog scared the boy, the 4 year-old let out a long, loud, high-pitch shriek into the chicken coop. The chickens began to panic and run around the coop like…like…uh…they had no heads? And 443 chickens trampled each other to death. A Jiangsu court ruled earlier this week that the boy’s father pay the chicken farmer 1,800 yuan ($230) in compensation for the dead chickens. Several villagers testified at the trial that they witnessed the boy scream directly into the chicken coop and that the boy’s cry was “the only unexpected abnormal sound” that could have caused the chickens to trample each other to death. If I were a KFC marketing executive, I would donate 443 buckets to this Jiangsu village as soon as possible.
All week, the talk in Shanghai has been about spit bags. The Chinese media has reported that the Shanghai Patriotic Sanitation Committee, in an effort to curb public spitting, will issue new spit sacks to Shanghai’s 45,000 taxis. These spit sacks will be fastened on the metal grill separating driver and passenger so that both people can make use of it. I didn’t think it was possible to make these taxi cabs more disgusting. The institution of spit sacks, somehow, is part of a greater initiative to rid China of its spitting habit before the country opens the “foreigner floodgate” for the Olympics. And while anti-loogie legislation in China is a noble cause, after some long and hard contemplation, I have not been able to grasp how a filthy bag of mucus in every Shanghai taxi cab does anything to curtail spitting. In fact, it encourages it. I don’t think the Shanghai local authorities fully understand the issue foreigners have with the spitting. It’s not so much the act of spitting in public that foreigners dislike, as it is the loud and revolting sounds that accompany the spitting. And now with spit bags in between cabbies and their passengers, the cabby must turn toward the passenger, make the throat noise, open the bag and fire. I’ll go out on a limb and say that the moment the cabby turns and draws the phlegm up from his throat, most passengers will probably wish the driver had just spit out the window. And what if the spit bag becomes unfastened and spills inside the taxi? If the aim of city officials is to create a more civilized Shanghai before the Olympics and the 2010 World Expo, perhaps a spit bag in every taxi isn’t such a great idea.
A recent Vanderbilt University study has found that in America, immigrants earn more when they have lighter skin. The study dissected a survey given to 2,084 legal U.S. immigrants and tried to find correlations between earnings and darkness. John Hersch, a law and economics professor who led the study said, “On average, being one shade lighter has about the same effect as having an additional year of education.” So is that to say a dark immigrant who graduates from a four-year university could just bleach their skin and earn the same amount of money upon graduation? Hersch claims to have controlled all other factors such as education, English-proficiency, occupation and racial self-esteem, or the immigrants’ concept of their race based on the racial beliefs in their home country. For example, a dark-skinned rosy-cheeked rural Chinese woman who immigrates to the U.S. (sadly hypothetical) may be psychologically affected by China’s cultural bias toward dark skin. It seems in America, like China or India, darkness is thought to skew employers’ ideas about a jobseeker’s abilities. One doctor who studies how skin color affects earning ability said that dark-skinned and medium-skinned blacks suffer a 10 to 15 percent discriminatory penalty relative to whites. And while I don’t doubt this, it didn’t seem to hurt Wesley Snipes or Jay-Z, respectively.
A 3,000 year-old Chinese folk remedy has made a comeback of late in the Middle Kingdom. As Reuters reported Tuesday, bee sting therapy has become an increasingly popular treatment by Chinese alternative medicine practitioners to cure arthritis, back pain, rheumatism and even diabetes and cancer. There exists no scientific evidence affirming the healing properties of bee venom, however, in China, this does not stop doctors from using it in treating patients. While the Chinese government, in recent years, has restricted traditional Chinese medical practices in favor of Western medicine and foreign-trained doctors, what American doctors regard as “alternative medicine” represents an affordable medical option for China’s poor. Soaring healthcare prices in China have forced ailing patients to travel to places like the Xizhihe Traditional Medicine Hospital outside of Beijing offering bee treatment for 20 yuan ($2.50) a sting. Reuters reports that there are 3,000 traditional medicine clinics like Xizhihe in mainland China that, in 2005, treated 230 million people. These clinics generate close to USD$12 billion in annual revenue. Old habits die especially hard in China and as long as these ancient folk remedies provide cheap and quick relief to patients in need, practices like bee sting treatment will live on.
What was once a Portuguese colony turned Chinese-run shithole has now become the gambling capital of the world. USA Today reported Monday that the Macau Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, better known as Macau, has surpassed Las Vegas to become the worlds #1 gambling market. According to official statistics from both cities, from January to November 2006, Macau earned USD$6.485 billion in slots and tables games to Vegas’s $6.079 billion. For those of you who have never been to Macau, I will try to explain what it’s like. USA Today calls it “a seedy sideshow to nearby Hong Kong,” the other major Chinese Special Administrative Region. As one who has spent exactly one night (and no days) in Macau, I would describe it like this: Macau is to Hong Kong precisely what Danny DeVito is to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie “Twins.” While the two are closely related, one is impressive and the other is shitty and depressing. And if you’re still confused, it’s Macau that’s shitty and depressing. It’s the Asian equivalent of Atlantic City, only worse. However, with an enormous amount of foreign investment including the 2004 opening of the Sands Macau, the largest casino in world, and the Wynn Resorts in 2006, Macau is quickly, and quietly, transforming into a major Asian draw. As gambling is prohibited in China’s mainland, and the Chinese yuan continues to strengthen, Macau has become a popular destination for Chinese high-rollers. And there’s lots of them. The power of Macau, as pointed out by Sands Macau president Mark Brown, is that there are 3 billion people in a travel radius around Macau. In 2007 alone, the Venetian Macao, Four Seasons, MGM Grand Macau, and the Grand Hyatt are slated to open there. What used to be a haven for hookers and a playground for Triads is now a Monopoly board for casino tycoons. And like Vegas, which has the slogan, “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” and Atlantic City which calls itself “America’s Playground,” I think it’s time that Macau adopt a slogan of its own. I propose “Macau: Eat Shit Vegas.”
In Hong Kong, college-bound high school students are finding it a bit easier to buckle down and study for their rigorous college entrance exams. That’s because the elite Hong Kong tutoring agencies have begun to hire sexy models to help students prepare for the tests. In the hypercompetitive business of Hong Kong test prep, companies are making tutoring as much about sex appeal as about brains or teaching experience. According to an AP article Saturday, all over Hong Kong, English test prep companies are taking out ads in magazines, newspapers and even putting up billboards displaying young, busty, beautiful tutors in an effort to grab students’ attention and make tutoring sessions seem less like school and more like a cool thing for kids to do. Ken Ng, who runs Modern Education, said of his female tutoring staff, “Their long legs are the most beautiful ones in the tutorial industry. This is our selling point.” Long legs is your selling point? The old selling point of tutoring companies in Hong Kong, much like those in the U.S., was to help students predict test material and to strategize how to answer test questions correctly. Nowadays, in a city where a third of all high school students spend over USD$225 million on test prep, agencies are willing to do just about anything to grab a bigger piece of the pie. Ng told the AP, “When our rivals are equally good at predicting the exam questions, we need a new ground to outrun them. And that is the tutor’s appearance. These high-class hookertutors have personal stylists and photographers and Ng’s girls each have a website where potential students can look at photos and decide whether or not the tutor makes the grade. It remains to be seen whether sexy tutors improve students’ performance on the exams. But as long as students are motivated to study, who really cares if they are aroused intellectually or just plain-old aroused.
In the February issue of Glamour magazine– yeah whatever, so its Glamour– there is a feature story on the growing popularity of purity balls. I know you’re trying to picture what on earth these purity balls are. I did too. And a naked cherub flew into my brain. But it’s not balls like that, it’s balls as in a formal reception or prom or shindig. Except the point of a purity ball is the exact opposite of a high school prom, where you go with someone your own age and attempt to get laid. At a purity ball, teenage girls go with, eat with and dance with their dads and then at the end of the night, the girls pledge their virginity to their fathers. According to the report, a pastor “strides to the front of the room, takes the microphone” and asks these fathers a sick-sounding question: “Are you ready to war for your daughter’s purity?” Are these people living in medieval times? “War for your daughter’s purity?” Apparently, in America, these events are spreading about as fast as these girls’ sacrilegious classmates are spreading their legs. In the nine years since the inaugural purity ball, thousands of young girls have made the pledge to their daddies that they will remain virgins until marriage. Purity balls are an outgrowth of one of the major tenets of evangelical Christianity: no sex before marriage. It has not been confirmed whether or not the rise in purity balls in the South and Midwest has triggered a rise in “blue balls” in these areas, but with more girls closing their legs in the name of the Lord, my guess is yes.
On Saturday, at the Grand Stage in the Xujiahui district of Shanghai, Eric Clapton played his first ever show in mainland China. Shanghai, a city longing for authentic rock and roll and thirsting for more Western-style shows was acquainted with both Saturday evening. Shanghai got a chance to give a long, firm shake to “Slowhand.”