Thursday 26 April 2012
Wednesday 25 April 2012
China- a small attempt to give you a kind of "feeling"
(received by email: author unknown)
A nice way
to describe the indescribable :
"There is a saying among long-time China residents: If you visit China
for a week, you can write a book. If you are here for a month, you can write an
article. If you are here for a year, you are so confused about what is
happening that you can barely write a few sentences.
What is remarkable about living in China is that the number of different
explanations and views for what is happening here. Given much of the opacity of
what exists here, rarely is anyone entirely right or wrong when they voice
their opinions. Do beware the self-proclaimed China Hand, though. Any true
China Hand would hesitate to say they understand everything that is going on
beneath the surface. Attend any conference, and you’ll hear the most respected
prognosticators hedge their bets in terms of explaining today’s China and what
will happen tomorrow.
However, there are some people who have done a wonderful job of describing
the China dynamic with a metaphor. Jim McGregor, a genuine China Hand who
authored One Billion Customers, offers one of the most poignant
explanations. “China is all about business,” he has said. “It’s simultaneously
the world’s largest start-up and the world’s largest turnaround. It’s a great
country coming out of a 200-year slump.”
In a speech I gave at a conference recently, I described China as a country
experiencing “societal gigantism.” Gigantism is the medical condition in which
people grow and age at hyperactive speed. It is like a baby that is born one
day and grows a beard shortly thereafter. And if you can think through the
stresses and strains of that growth, then you have an understanding of what is
happening in China in a nutshell.
Without some numbers or comparisons, though, it is difficult to picture
what is really going on.
For example, according to the World Bank, China is home to 20 of the world’s 30 most
polluted cities. Many people think the pollution in China is created
by cars or the coal-burning factories, but have you thought about the effect
that smokers have on the environment? The World Health Organization claims that
one in every three cigarettes consumed around the world is smoked in China. In
fact, China produces 2.29 trillion cigarettes each
year, according to a 2010 article in Caixin. Somebody figured out
that if you took all the cigarettes produced in China and lined them up
end-to-end, they could circle the world 60,000 times. That would be a difficult
run, even for a non-smoker.
Not interested in cigarettes? What about pigs? Well, according to a
wonderfully creative blogger who calls himself “China Mike,” China is the world’s largest pork consumer and
producer, with approximately one pig for every three people. Mike cites a Wall
Street Journal report that
China has more pigs than the next 43 largest pork-producing countries combined.
The US comes in a distant second with 65.9 million.
It’s also important to know that everything is not what it appears to be.
While Beijing has 19.6 million residents, they are not all above ground.
According to the Telegraph, nearly one million people live
in underground bunkers.
Help for these folks, however, is on the way. More than half of the 124 skyscrapers
now under construction around the world are being built in China.
If you are a time buff, then consider this: In China, 34 children are born every minutecompared
to 7.9 in the United States. According to other sources, every 60
seconds, there are 227,000 tweets being fired off on Sina Weibo vs. 98,000 on
Twitter.
Some facts can help you understand deeper trends that are emerging in
China. For example, according to the "China Sugar Manufacturing
Report," China produced10,738,000 tons of sugar in
2009. Other official statistics report that nearly 100 million Chinese people
are obese. Paul French,
the author of Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines Are Changing a
Nation, has summed it up like this: “People have more money to spend and
so food shortages are a thing of the past – famine to gluttony in two
generations – a massive achievement.” Take that a bit further and you can
understand why one in ten adults in China
have diabetes. That’s some 90 million diabetics. My thanks again to
China Mike for highlighting this
very important fact.
And if you are worried about sugar consumption in China, just think about
what is happening in the beer industry. According to a 2010 article in The Economist,
Europe is no longer the world’s biggest beer market; that title now belongs to
China. The growth – nearly 10% a year – is all the more impressive considering
that not so long ago, Chinese consumers barely drank beer at all.
Meanwhile, the lovestruck should beware: China’s divorce rate is on the
rise. According to the BBC, the reported divorce rate in
China is 20% at present; a total of 1.96 million couples broke up in 2010, a
14.5% increase from the year before.
And yet China is the largest producer of adult toys,
turning out some 50% of the world’s products in this category. It also serves
as the world’s largest consumer. And if these relationships blossom, ladies,
you need not worry, as the diamond market is flourishing. China has pushed
aside Japan to become the second largest diamond market in
the world; only the US sells more diamonds. And according to The
Economist, by 2050 there will be 60 million more men of marriageable
age than women in China.
Unfortunately, raising a child in China may be even more stressful than
finding a husband. By the midway point of first grade, students are expected to
recognize between 300-500 Chinese characters. It has even been reported on
several occasions that elementary students in China will sometimes seek help
from university math students to solve their homework problems. And every year,
some ten million high school graduates compete in the world's largest college
entrance examination – "the battle that determines your
fate," as one student referred to it.
And for those of you who really want to bust some myths, try these facts:
China Mike points us to
the statistic that there’s a higher percentage of
women in China’s parliament (21.3%) than in the US Congress
(16.8%). And, according to Guinness World Records, the world’s tallest woman is
Chinese. Yao Defen stands 2.33 meters (7 ft 8 in) tall. By the time she was 11
years old, she was already towering over her classmates at about 6 ft 2 in.
And yet she must still look up to the tallest man in China, Bao Xishun, who has been measured at 2.47
meters (8 ft 1 in) tall. He goes by the nickname of Xi Shun or “the Big Guy.”
Want to explain China in an easy way? You can forget the facts and
figures and interesting metaphors. Just say “China is gigantic. Gigantic
like Yao Defen and The Big Guy, Bao Xishun.” That will be enough."
Remark: there is a box of cigarettes (20 cigarettes) available for a
price of about 70 usd in China. The sales figures are impressive....
Tuesday 24 April 2012
Monday 23 April 2012
Alighiero e Boetti
Today you made me go to that beautiful place where I truly believe in art and its transforming capacities.
Thank You AB
Friday 20 April 2012
Nice
Best thing about being an independent professional:
- I can do my laundry and emails at the same time!!!
- I can do my laundry and emails at the same time!!!
Thursday 19 April 2012
Saturday 14 April 2012
L.'s Agenda March 2012
Exhibitions:
Hanne Darboven – Camden Arts
Centre, London
Spencer Finch. Ex-Nihilo – Lisson Gallery,
London
Dan Graham. Pavillions – Lisson Gallery,
London
Raphael Hefti: Launching Rockets Never Gets Old – Camden Arts Centre,
London
Thomas Struth – Gagosian, London
Rosemarie Trockel. Flagrant Delight – Wiels, Brussels
Daan van Golden. Apperception – Wiels, Brussels
Jorinde Voigt. Konnex – Lisson Gallery, London
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Extracts and Verses – Chisenhale,
London
Magritte Museum - Brussels
PAPER View – Artists’ Book Fair, Wiels, Brussels
Films:
Drive (2011) Nicolas Weinding Refn. With Ryan Gosling and
Carey Mulligan
Conviction (2010) Tony Goldwyn. With Hillary Swank, Minnie
Driver and Juliette Lewis
Hall Pass (2011). Bobby and Peter Farelly. With Owen Wilson
and Richard Jenkins.
Hot Tube Time Machine (2010). Steve
Pink. With John Cusack, Craig Robinson and Rob Corddry
A Little Bit of Heaven (2010). Nicole Kassell. With Kate
Hudson, Gael Garcia Bernal and Kathy Bates.
Love and other impossible pursuits (2009) Dan Roos. With Lisa
Kudrow and Natalie Portman.
The Machinist (2004). Brad Anderson. With Christian Bale and
Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Something Borrowed (2011) Luke Greenfield. With Kate Hudson
and Ginnifer Goodwin.
War Bride (2001). Lyndon Chubbuck. With Anna Friel and
Brenda Fricker.
Wuthering Heights (1992). Peter Kosminsky. With Ralph
Fiennes and Juliette Binoche.
Books:
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Series:
How I met your mother
New Girl
Wednesday 11 April 2012
Monday 2 April 2012
Sunday 1 April 2012
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