#hong kong basic law

[panicinthestudio]

Hong Kong passes new security law, raising max. penalty for treason, insurrection to life in prison, March 19, 2024

Hong Kong’s opposition-free legislature has unanimously passed new homegrown security legislation, making treason, insurrection and sabotage punishable by up to life in prison, and rejecting Western criticism that the law would further restrict the city’s freedoms. Hong Kong Free Press

Hong Kong adopts contentious law giving government more power to quash dissent, March 19, 2024

Hong Kong's legislature unanimously passed a new national security law on Tuesday ( March 19), introducing penalties such as life imprisonment for crimes related to treason and insurrection, and up to 20 years' jail for the theft of state secrets. France 24

[sherryisinvesting]

Great intro video series about Hong Kong Basic Law. Entertaining and easy to digest.

[writingwithcolor]

My alternate universe fantasy colonial Hong Kong is more authoritarian and just as racist but less homophobic than in real life, should I change that?

@floatyhands asked:

I’m a Hongkonger working on a magical alternate universe dystopia set in what is basically British colonial Hong Kong in the late 1920s. My main character is a young upper middle-class Eurasian bisexual man.  I plan to keep the colony’s historical racial hierarchy in this universe, but I also want the fantasy quirks to mean that unlike in real life history, homosexuality was either recently decriminalized, or that the laws are barely enforced, because my boy deserves a break. Still, the institutions are quite homophobic, and this relative tolerance might not last. Meanwhile, due to other divergences (e.g. eldritch horrors, also the government’s even worse mishandling of the 1922 Seamen's Strike and the 1925 Canton-Hong Kong Strike), the colonial administration is a lot more authoritarian than it was in real history. This growing authoritarianism is not exclusive to the colony, and is part of a larger global trend in this universe.  I realize these worldbuilding decisions above may whitewash colonialism, or come off as choosing to ignore one colonial oppression in favor of exaggerating another. Is there any advice as to how I can address this issue? (Maybe I could have my character get away by bribing the cops, though institutional corruption is more associated with the 1960s?) Thank you!

Historical Precedent for Imperialistic Gay Rights

There is a recently-published book about this topic that might actually interest you: Racism And The Making of Gay Rights by Laurie Marhoefer (note: I have yet to read it, it’s on my list). It essentially describes how the modern gay rights movement was built from colonialism and imperialism. 

The book covers Magnus Hirschfeld, a German sexologist in the early 1900s, and (one of) his lover(s), Li Shiu Tong, who he met in British Shanghai. Magnus is generally considered to have laid the groundwork for a lot of gay rights, and his research via the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was a target of Nazi book-burnings, but he was working with imperial governments in an era where the British Empire was still everywhere. 

Considering they both ended up speaking to multiple world leaders about natural human sexual variation both in terms of intersex issues and sexual attraction, your time period really isn’t that far off for people beginning to be slightly more open-minded—while also being deeply imperialist in other ways.

The thing about this particular time period is homosexuality as we know it was recently coming into play, starting with the trial of Oscar Wilde and the rise of Nazism. But between those two is a pretty wildly fluctuating gap of attitudes.

Oscar Wilde’s trial is generally considered the period where gay people, specifically men who loved men, started becoming a group to be disliked for disrupting social order. It was very public, very scandalous, and his fall from grace is one of the things that drove so many gay and/or queer men underground. It also helped produce some of the extremely queercoded classical literature of the Victorian and Edwardian eras (ex: Dracula), because so many writers were exploring what it meant to be seen as such negative forces. A lot of people hated Oscar Wilde for bringing the concept to such a public discussion point, when being discreet had been so important.

But come the 1920s, people were beginning to wonder if being gay was that bad, and Mangus Hirschfeld managed to do a world tour of speaking come the 1930s, before all of that was derailed by wwii. He (and/or Li Shiu Tong) were writing papers that were getting published and sent to various health departments about how being gay wasn’t an illness, and more just an “alternative” way of loving others. 

This was also the era of Boston Marriages where wealthy single women lived together as partners (I’m sure there’s an mlm-equivalent but I cannot remember or find it). People were a lot less likely to care if you kept things discreet, so there might be less day to day homophobia than one would expect. Romantic friendships were everywhere, and were considered the ideal—the amount of affection you could express to your same-sex best friend was far above what is socially tolerable now.

Kaz Rowe has a lot of videos with cited bibliographies about various queer disasters [affectionate] of the late 1800s/early 1900s, not to mention a lot of other cultural oddities of the Victorian era (and how many of those attitudes have carried into modern day) so you can start to get the proper terms to look it up for yourself.

I know there’s a certain… mistrust of specifically queer media analysts on YouTube in the current. Well. Plagiarism/fact-creation scandal (if you don’t know about the fact-creation, check out Todd in the Shadows). I recommend Kaz because they have citations on screen and in the description that aren’t whole-cloth ripped off from wikipedia’s citation list (they’ve also been published via Getty Publications, a museum press). 

For audio-preferring people (hi), a video is more accessible than text, and sometimes the exposure to stuff that’s able to pull exact terms can finally get you the resources you need. If text is more accessible, just jump to the description box/transcript and have fun. Consider them and their work a starting place, not a professor. 

There is always a vulnerability in learning things, because we can never outrun our own confirmation bias and we always have limited time to chase down facts and sources—we can only do our best and be open to finding facts that disprove what we researched prior.

Colonialism’s Popularity Problem

Something about colonialism that I’ve rarely discussed is how some colonial empires actually “allow” certain types of “deviance” if that deviance will temporarily serve its ends. Namely, when colonialism needs to expand its territory, either from landing in a new area or having recently messed up and needing to re-charm the population.

By that I mean: if a fascist group is struggling to maintain popularity, it will often conditionally open its doors to all walks of life in order to capture a greater market. It will also pay its spokespeople for the privilege of serving their ends, often very well. Authoritarians know the power of having the token supporter from a marginalized group on payroll: it both opens you up directly to that person’s identity, and sways the moderates towards going “well they allow [person/group] so they can’t be that bad, and I prefer them.”

Like it or not, any marginalized group can have its fascist members, sometimes even masquerading as the progressives. Being marginalized does not automatically equate to not wanting fascism, because people tend to want fascist leaders they agree with instead of democracy and coalition building. People can also think that certain people are exaggerating the horrors of colonialism, because it doesn’t happen to good people, and look, they accept their friends who are good people, so they’re fine. 

A dominant fascist group can absolutely use this to their advantage in order to gain more foot soldiers, which then increases their raw numbers, which puts them in enough power they can stop caring about opening their ranks, and only then do they turn on their “deviant” members. By the time they turn, it’s usually too late, and there’s often a lot of feelings of betrayal because the spokesperson (and those who liked them) thought they were accepted, instead of just used.

You said it yourself that this colonial government is even stricter than the historical equivalent—which could mean it needs some sort of leverage to maintain its popularity. “Allowing” gay people to be some variation of themselves would be an ideal solution to this, but it would come with a bunch of conditions. What those conditions are I couldn’t tell you—that’s for your own imagination, based off what this group’s ideal is, but some suggestions are “follow the traditional dating/friendship norms”, “have their own gender identity slightly to the left of the cis ideal”, and/or “pretend to never actually be dating but everyone knows and pretends to not care so long as they don’t out themselves”—that would signal to the reader that this is deeply conditional and about to all come apart. 

It would, however, mean your poor boy is less likely to get a break, because he would be policed to be the “acceptable kind of gay” that the colonial government is currently tolerating (not unlike the way the States claims to support white cis same-sex couples in the suburbs but not bipoc queer-trans people in polycules). It also provides a more salient angle for this colonial government to come crashing down, if that’s the way this narrative goes.

Colonial governments are often looking for scapegoats; if gay people aren’t the current one, then they’d be offered a lot more freedom just to improve the public image of those in power. You have the opportunity to have the strikers be the current scapegoats, which would take the heat off many other groups—including those hit by homophobia.

In Conclusion

Personally, I’d take a more “gays for Trump” attitude about the colonialism and their apparent “lack” of homophobia—they’re just trying to regain popularity after mishandling a major scandal, and the gay people will be on the outs soon enough.

You could also take the more nuanced approach and see how imperialism shaped modern gay rights and just fast-track that in your time period, to give it the right flavour of imperialism. A lot of BIPOC lgbtqa+ people will tell you the modern gay rights movement is assimilationalist, colonialist, and other flavours of ick, so that angle is viable.

You can also make something that looks more accepting to the modern eye by leaning heavily on romantic friendships that encouraged people waxing poetic for their “best friends”, keeping the “lovers” part deeply on the down low, but is still restrictive and people just don’t talk about it in public unless it’s in euphemisms or among other same-sex-attracted people because there’s nothing wrong with loving your best friend, you just can’t go off and claim you’re a couple like a heterosexual couple is.

Either way, you’re not sanitizing colonialism inherently by having there be less modern-recognized homophobia in this deeply authoritarian setting. You just need to add some guard rails on it so that, sure, your character might be fine if he behaves, but there are still “deviants” that the government will not accept. 

Because that’s, in the end, one of the core tenants that makes a government colonial: its acceptance of groups is frequently based on how closely you follow the rules and police others for not following them, and anyone who isn’t their ideal person will be on the outs eventually. But that doesn’t mean they can’t have a facade of pretending those rules are totally going to include people who are to the left of those ideals, if those people fit in every other ideal, or you’re safe only if you keep it quiet.

~ Leigh

[girlactionfigure]

THURSDAY HERO: Ernst Leitz II

German businessman Ernst Leitz II, owner of the Leica camera company, saved hundreds of Jews from the Nazis by “transferring” them to Leica offices around the world. Ernst inherited the Leica camera company from his father in 1920. It was founded as Leitz Camera in 1869 and later took on the name Leica: Lei for Leitz + ca for camera. From the beginning the company stood out for the compassionate way they treated their employees, many of whom were Jewish. Leica provided health insurance, sick leave and retirement pensions.

After Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, the Nuremberg laws were enacted, depriving German Jews of the rights of citizenship. They were banned from schools professions, and lost many of their most basic freedoms. Ernst Leitz began receiving desperate calls from his Jewish employees, begging him to help them escape.

Leitz hatched a brilliant plan. He began “transferring” his Jewish employees, along with their extended families, to Leica sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong and the United States. After Kristallnacht, when hundreds of Jewish businesses and synagogues were destroyed throughout Germany, Leitz’ rescue efforts kicked into high gear. At this point, all of the refugees were being sent to America by ocean liner. Once they arrived in New York they were instructed to go to Leica’s office in Manhattan, where they received a Leica camera and a weekly stipend until they were employed. The Jewish refugees went on to careers in photography, camera repair, sales and marketing.

To save Jews, Ernst Leitz risked the company he and his father had lovingly built over 70 year. Indeed, he risked his entire life.

The Leica Freedom Train operated until September 1, 1939, when Germany closed its borders. The Nazis suspected that the Leica company had been illegally helping Jews escape, but they were unable to pin anything on Ernst Leitz, and instead arrested his top executive, Alfred Turk, who was imprisoned until his boss paid a huge bribe for his safe release.

Even after the borders were closed, Leitz’s daughter Elsie Kuehn-Leitz continued helping Jews escape from Germany. Elsie was captured by the Gestapo while smuggling Jewish women into Switzerland, and thrown into prison, where she endured harsh interrogation and frequent beatings before being released in the early 1940’s. By that point, the Nazis had forced the Leica plant to hire 800 Ukrainian women as slave laborers. Elsie spent the rest of the war advocating for these women and working to ensure they had acceptable working and living conditions, and were treated humanely.

Later to be known as the “Leica Freedom Train”, Ernst Leitz’ bold plan saved the lives of 200-300 Jews.

A rare light in a sea of darkness, the Leitz family never wanted publicity for their heroism. The story of the Leica Freedom Train only came out after the last immediate Ernst Leitz family member was dead.

For their courage and sacrifice, we honor Ernst Leitz and his daughter Elsie as this week’s Thursday Heroes.

[triysn]

No but rex ft. social situations

Rex that just tends to talk about downright horrifying shit because he’s doesn’t have a clue how abnormal it is

Some stuff is about his screwed up past like he’ll say oh yeah my parents used experimental tech on me as a child and gave me powers but don’t worry they did it to save my life OR yeah providence/holiday has 24/7 access to all my biometrics and can tell whenever I so much as sneeze

And people are just outraged (rightfully) and be like… sweetie, that’s- that’s a violation of basic privacy?? They’re not allowed to do that to a minor, much less someone who has no idea what the full ramifications of such an invasion is and has not been informed nor asked for consent to such a thing.

And rex is just like, what :)

And lord forbid rex casually drop his pre-Providence backstory like: yeah, my parents died when i was 10 and i just wandered around alone with amnesia, doing crime and being exploited by mafia bosses. Also whenever i got reaally stressed i exploded and lost all my memories again so

Noah: >8O

Rex: is that okay

Holiday takes the greatest joy in bullying white knight/providence into paying for rex’s weekly therapy sessions, because if anything’s owed, it’s monetary compensation for all the shit rex had to put up with

On a lighter note, there’s probably a lot of stuff rex just doesn’t know about because of his funky memory and noah not being able to fully socialise rex in every possible way

Like he doesn’t know about Disney or has never been to an amusement park (outside of work) and reintroducing him to everything could be a whole fic in itself.

Also let us remember that rex isn’t actually good with teenagers his own age??? The only person we’ve seen him spend time around is noah but when faced with multiple teenagers in a social setting without noah he’s a hot mess??

re: “Awkward teen situation” in hong Kong,

the asshole group based off of the men of action.

I don’t know. He’s so eager to please which is usually what makes the situation so hilarious. he’s like an adorable puppy who has no idea what he’s doing but he’s trying so hard?? The fact that he could probably wreck everyone he’s trying to make friends with makes it that much more surreal. Like. He just killed a guy yesterday, but then he's trying to play video games with you.

the code switch between trying-to-make-friends him and providence-agent him in Grounded is insane.

Every interaction between him and a normal person about life is just

Noah: it’s not normal for your parental figures to try and microchip you Rex, who is long accustomed to holiday trying to stick bits of metal into his bloodstream: wHAt

Rex: hey guys sorry I can’t hang out today white knight says I have to work Noah: it’s Sunday Rex: Yea Noah: you were working Monday thru Saturday for like more than 12 hours Rex: …yea Noah: that’s illegal. That’s a violation of labour laws. Rex: i’m 17

Noah: don’t you get vacation days? Paid leave? Sick days? Health insurance??? Rex: I don’t even get paid

throw in the celebrity trio and their parents are ready to adopt this traumatized child-soldier.

[princess-of-the-corner]

Apparently Astruc went out of his way to make Lila unlovable. Comparison to characters we're meant to sympathize with:

Gabriel started the entire mess because he couldn't try and just ask for help to the guy he knew could help (and this is before using a Miraculous selfishly for months fried his morals and basic decency). He later manipulated two teenage girls, one of which he knew since she was a child, into terrorism, destroyed Hong Kong by accident, and pulled a stunt that brainwashed the President of the United States into firing the nukes (and once the order is given it cannot be countermandered) AND the world's strongest woman into shattering the Moon (and while it's vaguely possible humanity could survive a nuclear exchange, the loss of the Moon would spell the end of all life on Earth).

Tomoe was infertile... So rather than adopt a heir (a rather common occurrence in Japanese society) she borrowed a magical jewel that manipulates one of the concepts that make the universe work to clone herself.

Emilie was also infertile, so she used the above jewel to make a gender-inverted clone of herself, and somehow BROKE said jewel in the process, sentencing herself to a slow death. She then proceeded to be an abusive parent and used her husband as scapegoat, and let her brother in law borrow the jewel to make himself a son (though this could count as a good deed given the jackass).

Colt Phatom had an infertile wife, so rather than adopt he borrowed his sister-in-law magic brooch and made a gender-inverted clone OF HIS WIFE, and was an abusive parent to said clone. I'm feeling ill...

Felix discovered his uncle is a terrorist wielding two jewels that manipulates two concepts that make the universe work... And rather than tell the squadron of superheroes about it, he robbed said superheroes of their magic jewels and traded them for the one that made him and could unmake him (and I'm still surprised Gabriel didn't just Thanos Snap him and steal everything. He then tried to wipe out humanity to protect beings like himself. Though he get something of a justification in that he's a teenager AND raised by Colt Phatom (for all their flaws, Gabriel, Emilie and Tomoe didn't mess their magic children nearly as bad).

Audrey is just plain mean, and so petty she got Akumatized from getting a spot in the second row (I'm willing to forgive Gabriel this one for the sheer hilarity. Plus he had been obviously waiting for years to get avenge all the victims of that bitch).

But the one meant to be unlovable is Lila. Ok.

So like.

This is honestly a point I brought up before, though it was more on a 'why are people more willing to give other characters redemption arcs instead of Lila?'

But yeah for as absolutely fucking awful as these other characters can be, they do have some very basic good traits and someone they care about! Chloé has the toxic af family and genuinely cares about Adrien and Sabrina and her parents. Gabe may be all kinds of fuck, but there was a point in Season 1-3 where we believed he cared about Adrien and he's doing all this because he loves his wife(even if that love is also toxic af). Felix is also a 'he was abused which explains his mindset' and he's shown genuine love for his mother. Tomoe has been shown to care about Kagami, despite everything. Emilie is up in the air but she's presented as loving.

Lila..... has absolutely nothing. Nothing that can be pointed at as some explanation for why she's like this, or proof that there's any hope for her to be 'good'. We don't know her real backstory or what she wants. Every character she's interacted with is just a mark for her cons that she doesn't have any care about, even her 'mothers'.

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

Do you have any ideas on how to world build a massive overpopulated city but it isn't dirty or in shambles. Basically, everything is neat, clean and works well. Just a massive population density. I'm thinking 30k people per km2 with a total area of 1200km2. When I find images or descriptions of such high density populations I often see buildings that kind of look all rundown and slummy (not to mention high crime rates and poor if not in poverty) Or is that like.. impossible if you have such a massive crowd in one spot?

Tex: “Overpopulated” implies “more residents than the infrastructure can accommodate”. What’s considered dirty or in shambles is the result of a garbage disposal system that isn’t structured to the amount of residents + guests (tourists, relatives, holiday-goers, etc). To have a city or other area properly equipped with the amount of employees to maintain sanitation and employees to repair buildings degrading over time, it must have properly-allocated funds, and enough of it. This is at its core a governance and taxation issue, not a morality issue of “just don’t make it dirty”. Crime and poverty are the natural result of neglect by one’s government, both at a local and larger level, which requires a lot of forethought in the amount of space an individual needs to live in private and public spaces.

Utuabzu: I’m going to assume you want a prosperous city with very high density. Happily for you, there are many examples of this in the real world. Density occurs when the demand for living/working space in an area is greater than the physical space available, meaning it is worthwhile to create more space by building upwards. This naturally occurs in the centres of all cities, because proximity to one another is a big draw for both people and organisations. In the absence of any limiting factors, this is usually counterbalanced by cost making it cheaper to build outwards and simply accept longer travel times, resulting in a relatively gradual gradient of density from rural periphery to urban core.

You get greater density when there are limiting factors on outward expansion. These can be geographic, like in the case of Singapore, Hong Kong and Manhattan (all islands), legal, like in the case of Vancouver, London and many other cities (laws and policies preserving green belts or valuable farmland), or political, such as was the case for Hong Kong and still is for Singapore (an international border acting as a constraint). Often it’s more than one of these. While places like Kowloon Walled City can exist - and it in particular is a very interesting case study in urban form - for the most part very high density occurs when people want to live and work somewhere, which usually means it’s a pretty nice place to be (at least in comparison to the other options anyway). Tokyō is the world’s largest city, with 36 million people (11 million more than the entire continent of Australia), but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone accuse it of being dirty or in a shambles.

It is also worth noting that density doesn’t necessarily look like skyscrapers towering overhead. Paris has a population density of almost 25k/km² when one excludes the outlying woodland park areas, and is predominantly mid-rise buildings. The 11th Arrondissement of Paris outdoes what you ask for, with a population density just under 40k/km², and is mostly historic midrise buildings. Other European cities like Barcelona, Naples and Thessaloniki have a similar development pattern, largely due to having been built mostly before elevators existed or were commonplace, which naturally limited building heights to around 5 to 6 floors (any higher becoming increasingly impractical for the sheer number of stairs).

Feral: The International Residential Code has the minimum size required for a house to be 120 sq ft/11.1 sq m. That’s a pretty standard secondary bedroom size in suburban USA. Your population density would have one person per 33.3 sq meters, which sounds great except that doesn’t account for any non-residential use space. Given your desire for the entire city to be exceptionally well-maintained, free of crime, and presumably a wonderful place to live, that means you need great air quality, multiple green spaces, art, food, entertainment. And your city’s overall size is massive. It’s 20.5 times the size of Manhattan, 11.3x the size of Paris, and 1.6x the size of Singapore - to name a few of the cities brought up in previous answers. This kind of sprawl does not make for good urbanization - just ask the city of Los Angeles, which is almost exactly the same overall size as what you’re aiming for but has a tenth of the density.

A few articles to get you started on density, urbanization, and sprawl:

Cities Really Can Be Both Denser and Greener by Emma Marris

Is There a Perfect Density? By Michael Lewyn

When is density good, and when is it harmful to cities? By Philip Langdon

Making cities more dense always sparks resistance. Here’s how to overcome it. By David Roberts

[mariacallous]

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s elevation to the national stage as running mate for Vice President Kamala Harris has suddenly put him in the spotlight. Walz had a low national profile until a successful behind-the-scenes strategy led him to be considered for Democrats’ suddenly vacant second spot.

One of the striking elements of Walz’s biography is his unusually deep connections to China. Walz first visited the country in 1989, just months after the Tiananmen Square protests, and returned to the country some 30 times afterward. As an educator and then a small business owner, he facilitated student groups’ trips to China. As a legislator, he served on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which monitors human rights and the rule of law in the country, and co-sponsored resolutions urging the release of democratic activist Liu Xiaobo and remembering the Tiananmen Square victims.

Not all the attention to Walz’s China record has been positive. Republican and conservative figures have sought to portray Walz’s China ties as dangerous. On X, for example, Sen. Marco Rubio accused Walz of being a Chinese asset—“an example of how Beijing patiently grooms future American leaders”—who would “allow China to steal our jobs & factories & flood America with drugs.”

But Rubio’s attack has it precisely backward. Walz’s record is that of a measured critic of the Chinese Communist Party—prone neither to exaggeration nor accommodation. Nor is this a pose cooked up by spin doctors in the past few weeks. Small-town Nebraska newspaper articles—published well before Walz had any political ambitions—demonstrate that his professed affection for the Chinese people and culture has been matched by a longstanding criticism of the country’s rulers.

Back in the 1980s and ’90s, it didn’t take a lot to make the local papers. Walz, for instance, was once photographed for the Alliance Times-Herald—“Box Butte County’s Only Family-Owned Newspaper”—for a National Guard project: painting and repairing trash cans in the town center. (The photograph is about as exciting as the description suggests.)

The regular stuff of small-town news reporting—council meetings, 4-H club events, church announcements—was occasionally enlivened by stories about exceptional events. One such, it turned out, was Walz’s decision to teach in China as part of a program run by WorldTeach, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit. (Many news accounts, at the time and later, describe WorldTeach as a Harvard-run program, but it’s more accurate to say it was founded by Harvard students.)

“I’ve always had a real interest in travel, and feel this is a golden opportunity to see a culture that’s 3,000 years old,” Walz, then a senior at Chadron State College, told the Chadron Record in an article announcing his selection in 1989.

Walz would be going under less than glamorous conditions. It was the first year that WorldTeach would make placements in China, the Record reported, and that meant participants had to be resourceful: “They said we’ll basically have to solve our own problems,” Walz said. He said he had to raise $2,500 for his transportation, health insurance, and orientation costs—and, once in China, he would only earn $100 per month in salary (although that was, the Record noted, “about twice the amount generally paid [to] Chinese teachers”).

Although the crackdown on protesters in June 1989 led Walz to wonder whether the trip would go on, the program remained in place. After orientation in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China, he traveled to his teaching site: a senior middle school in Foshan, a then-rapidly growing city in central Guangdong Province in southern China. There, he taught U.S. history and culture and English to classes of 65 students each from December 1989 to December 1990, according to a 1990 article in the Chadron Record. (Walz’s Midwestern-accentuated U.S. English was a change for the students, whose previous instructor was British, according to a 1994 article in the Scottsbluff Star-Herald.)

His trip was big enough news that the Record printed excerpts from a letter Walz wrote to a Chadron State faculty member while he was abroad. Walz wrote that he was “being treated like a king.” He was, he wrote, “totally responsible for my curriculum. But I’m managing.”

After he returned, Walz was invited to speak about his time at his alma mater, Chadron State. At about the same time, an interview about his year in China ran in local papers. His enthusiasm was obvious: “No matter how long I live, I’ll never be treated that well again,” Walz told the Record in 1990. “They gave me more gifts than I could bring home. It was an excellent experience.” (In 2024, the New York Post twisted this line as evidence that Walz had “fawned over Communist China.”)

Yet in context, it’s clear that Walz was no dupe. During his teaching year, he visited Beijing (a 40-hour trip by rail) and saw Tiananmen Square, according to the Record. As much as Walz loved China and the Chinese people, his attitude toward the Chinese Communist Party was bluntly critical. Tiananmen Square, he told the Record, “will always have a lot of bitter memories for the people.” (Walz later chose June 6 as his wedding date so he could “have a date he’ll always remember,” according to his wife.)

The problem with China, Walz observed, wasn’t its people but the government. “If they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what [Chinese people] could accomplish,” he told the Record. “They are such kind, generous, capable people. They just gave and gave and gave to me. Going there was one of the best things I have ever done.”

Walz viewed China’s population as eager to leave its Communist-run society. “Many of the students want to come to America to study,” he told the Record. “They don’t feel there is much opportunity for them in China.” He mentioned that during one of his trips to nearby Macau, then still a Portuguese colony, the government granted amnesty to Chinese immigrants living in the colony illegally, triggering a stampede by tens of thousands of Chinese who wanted residency in the West.

The trip shaped Walz’s career as an educator. Within a few months of his return, Walz had found a job as a social studies teacher in Alliance, Nebraska, a town whose population was then just under 10,000 people. He created a pen-pal program linking his students to Chinese middle-school students at his old teaching placement, where a friend of his worked. The program was reported on the front page of the Alliance Times-Herald in 1991.

Walz, who must have been a dynamic teacher, used the exchange of letters to not only bridge cultural gaps but also demonstrate the stakes of then-acrimonious U.S.-China government relations to his students. Walz pointedly described the politics of the countries’ then-seemingly large trade imbalance (a fraction of what it is now) to the Times-Herald: “The Chinese government wants us to buy what they sell, but won’t buy what we sell.”

Soon, Walz was leading groups of students to China. The first visit was in July 1993, when he took 25 Alliance High School students on a trip partly funded by the Chinese government, although the students and sponsors, including Walz, had to cover costs of $1,580 each, according to an article in the Scottsbluff Star-Herald; Walz helped by raising funds from local businesses. (In a rare criticism of an aspect of Chinese culture, rather than the Chinese Communist Party, Walz responded to one student’s interest in hearing Chinese opera by saying he’d “rather eat glass” than see another Chinese opera.) Walz’s honeymoon with his wife, a fellow teacher, the next year involved two student trips to China, according to the Star-Herald. Later, he and his wife would start a business to promote similar exchanges.

For all his fondness toward China, Walz’s descriptions of its people at times reflected the prevailing stereotypes of the time. “The students are almost too well behaved,” he wrote in his letter from China that was excerpted in the Record in 1989. In a 1994 profile ahead of his honeymoon in China, Walz told the Star-Herald that it had been hard to memorize names and tell his students apart (although he also noted that Chinese students thought all Americans looked alike.) To the Times-Herald in 1993, he described his students as not overly creative but industrious: “[T]here was never even any unfinished homework,” he recalled. And, for Walz, mostly used to small-town life, the sheer scale of China was astonishing: “The people were the best part, and the worst part was the number of people.”

The contemporaneous (and surprisingly extensive) record of how Walz’s time in China influenced him clearly rejects the idea that Walz was groomed or otherwise misled by his time in the country. He was an earnest, young observer of a society and government radically unlike his own. After repeated exposure, however, China became increasingly familiar to him. His opinions about the Chinese people and their government derived from firsthand observations, filtered through his own background and reading.

Neither a hawk nor a dove, Walz approached China as a student and a teacher—an owl, to steal a metaphor. Throughout these early interviews, his insistence on the separation between a people and their government—and his repeated criticism of the Chinese government—was plain. So was his emphasis on the importance of democracy and recognizing where the United States fell short.

People change, and seeking clues to how a potential Vice President Walz would act based on how high school teacher Walz approached his lessons is clearly perilous. Still, it seems clear that Walz values facts, and in particular experience, rather than theory or ideology; that he has deeply held core beliefs about China’s people and government set in the era of Tiananmen; and that his commitment to promoting human rights—and U.S. economic interests in trade negotiations—is longstanding.

With that background, leavened by subsequent experience on China issues as a member of Congress, it seems more likely than not that Walz would be neither inflexibly hostile nor naïve about relations with Beijing.

[beardedmrbean]

China underwent rare scrutiny of its human rights record at the United Nations on Tuesday.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which all UN member states must undergo every five years, focused on Xinjiang, a remote region where China has incarcerated more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities and is accused of crimes against humanity.

The political situation in Hong Kong, where Beijing has imposed a strict set of "security" laws, was also taken into consideration. 

More than 160 countries addressed the hearing in Geneva, Switzerland, and each only had 45 seconds to speak.

China once again denied any allegations of human rights abuses.

"We embarked on a path of human rights development that is in keeping with the trend of the times and appropriate to China's national conditions and scored historic achievements in this process," China's UN Ambassador Chen Xu said through an interpreter at the meeting.

Uyghur and Tibetan groups each held small protests outside the UN offices in Geneva.

Western countries slam Beijing

Canada's representative to the UN, Leslie Norton, called on China to end "all forms of enforced disappearances targeting human rights defenders, ethnic minorities and Falun Gong practitioners" and to repeal the controversial security law in Hong Kong.

Danish UN ambassador Ib Petersen called on Beijing to implement UN recommendations in Xinjiang and to "release writers, bloggers, journalists, human rights defenders and others arbitrarily detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression, and guarantee this right, including in Hong Kong."

Meanwhile, Czech ambassador Vaclav Balek also urged China to "end the criminalization of religious and peaceful civil expression by ethnic and religious groups — including Muslim, Uyghurs and Buddhists, Tibetans and Mongolians — under the pretext of protecting state security" and "stop cross-border kidnappings and intimidating Chinese citizens living abroad."

Germany, Japan and Ireland also called for better protections of minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet.

Praise for China

Diplomats told Reuters news agency that China had pressured its supporters to fill up their allotted speaking time with praise.

First secretary Ilia Barmin of Russia's diplomatic mission advised China "to consistently improve the understanding and capacity of citizens to use standard spoken and written Chinese in Xinjiang."

South Africa's political affairs counselor Frankye Bronwen Levy called on China to strengthen laws against domestic violence that were introduced eight years ago.

The Indian representative, meanwhile, urged Beijing to "continue taking steps to ensure fullest enjoyment of basic human rights by its people, through inclusive and sustainable development."

Some African countries like Ethiopia and Cameroon lauded China's efforts on human rights.

Eritrea's representative for instance urged China to "to comprehensively promote ethnic unity and progress."

Iran also praised China's "national action plan for human rights," while Bolivia commended China's efforts against deforestation.

[sephirthoughts]

writer asks: 19 please!

thank you for the ask!!!

19. the most interesting topic you've researched for a fic:

Hoo boy. So, the most interesting topic I have researched for a work of fiction was the Soviet-Afghan War, which was a part of the whole Cold War tangle of thorns, and was far more complex and horrifying and insane than it seems on the surface. And it already seems totally insane on the surface. Political situation aside, I learned a shitload about the Middle-East, and the Pashtun people in particular, and their culture. Pashto is an awesome language btw. Anyway that was all researched for an original fiction piece about Cold War super soldiers and the main character was a female radical from Croatia. It's...a long story.

The most interesting thing i've researched for a fandom work…it's a toss-up. One was the entire deep-sea salvage industry, for a recent fic about a wreck-diver and his sea-dragon boyfriend. I had to learn all about industrial dredging and underwater excavation and all the different kinds of ships and boats and what they all do. Then I had to learn all about SCUBA diving and skin diving and controlled apnea (holding your breath for a long time) and also exactly how shark skin works (it's bonkers). Then I had to get superficially familiar with maritime law, because there's all this ridiculousness with international waters and conflicting rights to wrecks etc. The most interesting part? I had no idea archaeologists and salvagers had so much drama. It's basically mean girls on the open sea.

The other was traditional Chinese cooking. Not the kind people are used to in the US most of that was invented here anyway. Like, traditional Chinese beliefs regarding foods, and what goes with what and in what season you serve which thing, etc. It was a fandom fic modern AU about a guy who meets a chef, who is from Hong Kong and is developing a traditional-modern fusion menu for his father's Chinese restaurants (the guy is Hong Konger and speaks Cantonese but his father's restaurants are mandarin so it's about half mainland cuisine and half Cantonese cuisine). Basically he cooks for him and the guy falls head over heels because how could you not? Not as exciting as deep-sea salvage or the Cold War, but I had more fun with that one than anything. 😂

thanks again for the ask, i haven't thought about those stories in a while!

[panicinthestudio]

Further reading:

HKFP: Security law: Australia, UK, Taiwan urge travellers to exercise caution in Hong Kong, as gov’t blasts ‘scaremongering’, March 25, 2024

[argumate]

I have a song from the Hong Kong protests stuck in my head that I haven't managed to find. Your blog here is the only exposure vector I can think of. So, do you remember a couple minute long discordant-but-beautiful song made from samples of a disdained speech set to video of the protests and the speech? The only lyrics I can remember were (translated) "Hong Kong Basic Law" and the song was in Cantonese I'm pretty sure. Thank you! YouTube search is not helping.

oof I think I remember that one but I should probably wait until I'm back home before trying to track it down, might not be the ideal track to blast in a Mainland hotel room

[jurakan]

This week, the international legal team for Jimmy Lai — the jailed newspaper publisher, pro-democracy campaigner, and devout Catholic — filed an urgent appeal with the UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture.  For those who need a refresher on the man and what he has been through, he was one of seven pro-democracy advocates arrested, convicted, and then cleared of organizing a demonstration following the 2019 bid by the Hong Kong government to pass legislation that would have allowed political detainees to be deported to mainland China to face trial. When his conviction was voided last year, he stayed in jail though.  Now he’s on trial for alleged national security crimes — “conspiracy to produce seditious publications and to collude with foreign powers.” Basically, he’s accused of publishing a newspaper which rightly called out the crackdown on basic civil liberties in Hong Kong for what it is — “the death knell” of the rule of law. Lai has been in jail since December of 2020, and the 76-year old is losing weight and visibly deteriorating.  For all of that time he has been in solitary confinement, often in his cell for 23 hours and 10 minutes a day.  He does not see the sun on a regular basis. He is diabetic, but denied access to specialist medical care. The place where he is being held has a long and established track record of subjecting prisoners in solitary confinement to bright 24-hour lighting, and extreme temperatures. If he is convicted following his current trial (just the most recent of several vexatious prosecutions against him over recent years) he faces life in prison. Lai’s UK based lawyers argue his conditions amount to torture, and they seem to me to have a self-evident case.  I would add to the list that the reason he has an international legal team at all is because the Hong Kong government has blocked him from appointing his own preferred (and very qualified) lawyer to act in his defense there. I would further add that he has repeatedly cited his Catholic faith as the force sustaining him during his imprisonment — which he has called the “pinnacle of his life” — and has been living his solitary confinement as a kind of monasticism.  Yet, I’ve been told by people close to his situation, as part of his jailing, while he has been allowed to receive occasional visits from priests, they have been banned from bringing him Communion — an act of pure vindictiveness by his jailers. Indeed, from what I have been told, he has been held without access to the sacrament at least since his most recent trial began last December. So, in Jimmy Lai, we have a journalist who has been jailed for advocating for democratic freedoms (enshrined in Hong Kong’s own law), denied legal due process, access to needed medical care, and even to the sacraments of his Catholic faith. His is, at this point, a one-man human rights abuse bingo card.  We will, of course, continue to report on his trial as it progresses, though I’m under no illusions that international pressure or appeals to the UN are likely to secure his release, or even his transition to a more humane regime of imprisonment, any time soon.  But it is important that his witness is marked, his suffering recorded, and his name remembered. Both for his own sake, and for the sake of all those being slowly ground under the wheel in Hong Kong, we cannot forget Jimmy Lai.

-Ed Condon, The Pillar, "Goldenmouth, remember his name, and no winning"

[fashionbooksmilano]

Chinese Design

Daab, Cologne 2006, paperback, 400 pages, 19x24cm, ISBN 9783937718347

euro 18,00

email if you want to buy booksinprogressmilano@yahoo.it

In this book Chinese Design, we are pleased to introduce a wide array of different architectural projects, and the various designers, architectural ateliers and developers that have made these works come to light. The distribution of the book has been done in three chapters according to the three main geographical areas - Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong - where most of these projects are located. A fourth chapter covers the architectural projects located in other parts of the Chinese mainland. 

Like the Great Wall, which with its 2.400 km is the only built structure on earth visible from outer space, China is so huge and profound, that to make an attempt to analyse its design is practically impossible. The basic principle, however, that seemed to influence space design in China was related to a number of different philosophies like Confucianism, Taoism or Fengshui. Although nowadays, in general, people do not really like being bound by ancient tradition, still most of them follow, or at least cannot ignore, that Fengshui laws of space direction or some other philosophies. China's complex, harsh and hazardous history partly explains one of the reasons why many residential houses and buildings look often like solid fortresses, with its inner space clearly separated and differentiated from the outer part of the house. Inside the house compound, the patio serves not only as a source of visual delight, but it is used also for outdoor inner living throughout the various seasons of the year.

Finally we would like to introduce a few distinctisyve examples of iconography in China, symbologie that plays a very important role within Chinese design. Colours like red, aside form being the colour of the Chinese national flag, have signified fortune and luck, since ancient times. Visually, sometimes it seems as if every single city of the country lies under the overriding spell of the Chinese character script.

China's extraordinary appetite for the new was certainly a powerful driving force for its rapid change. The end product is as somewhat general retrofuristic urban landscape spreading all over its cities.

26/04/24

[p5x-theories]

While I assume you will not start a new account after the global relase, will you still check out any gameplay to see how the official translation works and if you missed anything?

Definitely not a new account, no! I'll probably have a dedicated tag for any news about the English release (like I do for the Japanese release), and I may make a post if it comes to my attention that any of my info posts were lacking something significant, that I then become more aware of due to the Japanese or English versions.

But, I'll be honest, a lot of my info posts are put together because there's no official English version yet, so a lot of this information is difficult to come by! It's also a little frustrating to me when wikis have incorrect names for characters, or lack information that's easily accessible in the game. They've gotten better about this over time, especially since the start of the open beta, but my info posts were essentially made because no one else was posting this information anywhere in English, and I really wanted it to be more accesible for especially English-speaking fans.

For that reason, I probably won't change summary posts that I've already written once the English release reaches those points! At that point, my old summary posts aren't really necessary anymore- any English-speaking fan should be able to find gameplay and streams of it, in English, online. I'll still make new summary posts for new content that hasn't reached the English release yet, of course! But the core concept behind those posts was to help bridge the gap for people who couldn't easily find and translate the information, and that gap won't exist once the English release has those parts of the story available in English.

I will update character posts with things like English VAs, and any new important information like that, including names for characters that I haven't been able to confirm! The whole point of confirming names is to make sure they'd match up with the official English name when an English release was announced, so, as this blog is primarily meant for English-speaking fans (though I genuinely really appreciate the Japanese and Chinese fans I've gotten to talk to as well!), any posts here will be taking the English release's word as law for character names.

I don't plan on playing the English release myself (as much as I'd love to), however, as I simply don't have the time to keep up with playing two versions of the game simultaneously, not to mention the storage space on my computer is already a bit strained since I keep both the mainland China files (to datamine) and Hong Kong/Taiwan/Macau files (to actually play) on my computer, and a third version of the game would be too much. I also, to be honest, hate combing through others' gameplay videos to verify things, so I likely won't be watching much English gameplay either, outside of necessity. But I will keep up with news and announcements, and share whatever I can here! And I have some friends who are interested in playing the game when it comes to the US, so I hopefully can at least get reports from them on anything I should know. ... If not from you guys? I know I tend to get asks when exciting new things are revealed even now, so I'm sure if anything crazy we didn't know about already comes up in the English release, someone will let me know, hehe.

Oh, that does make me realize, though, I should probably start using a new spoiler tag for story content once the English version releases! I want this blog to be friendly to people that are new to the English release but don't want spoilers from the mainland release, too. I might use "eng version spoilers"? Not sure exactly, but that's something I'll think about. My main spoilers tag will still be used for any datamined story spoilers, of course!

Sorry, that was maybe a longer answer than you expected, haha. Basically, in summary, this blog will still operate as it has been, and I'll start sharing Japanese and English release news as well (with separate tags)! Past story summaries will not be altered at all, but character posts and stuff like that will be updated as necessary. I won't be playing the English release myself, but I will keep an eye on it, and I hope anyone who does play it can help keep me updated, too!

[jabbage]

Ok hold on tight fellas, a few months ago I was basking in the glory of the Tom and Jerry meet Sherlock Holmes movie having surprisingly gorgeous animation and a Holmes and Watson with genuine chemistry.

I've got a new favourite "Why in the world does this try as hard as it does" animated Sherlock Holmes adaptation.

Sherlock Holmes and the Great Escape (or sometimes i've seen it translated as the Great Jail-break?), animated in Hong Kong, released in 2019.

What you need to know about this movie:

For some reason, Sherlock Holmes is cosplaying as Yellow Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist throughout. In fact, there are a number of shots that I think are direct references to Fullmetal Alchemist. I have no idea why this decision was made.

Watson is a rather effeminate pink cat who sports this delightful bow tie/bowler hat/cropped trousers ensemble. He is somehow still definitely John Watson, transmogrified into a femme anime cat person.

Despite being a world full of multicoloured anthropomorphic characters, characters can be murdered in this movie? There are actual guns that look like guns? Systemic causes of poverty are considered? The law is not always just? Prisons do not work? I mean I'm not saying any of these issues are addressed in an especially sophisticated way, but I wasn't expecting them to be addressed at all!

Actual Moments of Pathos?!!! !!!!!!!

These characters aren't actually called Mrs Hudson and Wiggins, but they are definitely Mrs Hudson and Wiggins.

There is an Arsene Lupin-esque gentleman thief character who I genuinely like.

As part of the mysteries there are animated illustrations of basic physics, like what happens to molecules when water is frozen or air pressure changes. Science education ++

Pink Femme Catson gets a Reichenbach moment where he gets to scream his Sherlock's first name dramatically. Of course.

This happens:

"It seemed to me that in that moment, my dear friend anthropomorphic anime Edward Elric ripoff Sherlock Holmes was more nearly moved by the softer emotions than I had ever seen him."

.....

So yeah that was an unexpectedly wild ride.

EDIT Also Pink Kitty Watson sets the bar punishingly high for Watsons not taking much nonsense from their Holmses