From Netease:

Elegance and vulgarity has always been sworn enemies of each other in popular culture over the years. Guo Degang once said, drinking coffee is elegant and eating garlic is vulgar; nude photography is elegant and couple telling dirty jokes is vulgar… Now, in a scenic spot of Xinmi, Henan Province, elegance and vulgarity crashes again.

Planed to dedicate herself to the art, the nude photography model never thought she was going to get shooed away by tree branches. On June 9, 2010, at the scenic area of Xinmi, a naked female model posing for nude photography was shooed away by the local villagers.

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From Tianya: by Li Nuoyan (李诺言)

Chinese people like to kneel, this was well-known in the 19^th century. After the 21^st century New Culture Movement, the dignity-trampling kneeling culture disappeared, however after last month thousands kneeling incident in Liaoning Zhuanghe, kneeling to the government phenomenon happened in Guangdong Huazhou again. It’s just it wasn’t as spectacular as last time’s thousands kneeling, only dozens of people this time. As if the repeat kneeling phenomenon became an alternative fashion, are these people’s knees so despicable? Must rely on kneeling to win the sympathy of the world in order to satisfy themselves? I really do not now, when I heard people continued to kneel, first I was shocked, and second I am still shocked. In a country where kneeling culture spread, couple of people kneel down is nothing, but continue to kneel down like this makes us worry, is it the kneeling culture rekindled, or are people falling in love with the kneeling culture from the Spring Festival Gala?

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From dbw:

留守妇女 [liúshǒufùnǚ]:  noun. wives who stay at home in rural areas while their husbands are away in urban areas for long periods of time

Not long ago, Dr. Zhang Hongyan encountered an embarrassing moment at the hospital emergency room: a woman dressed in rags was sent to the hospital with her lower body attached to her pet dog’s genital. When the medical staff pushed the bed into the operating room, the female patient’s face was colorless. No need to explain, Zhang Hongyan has already guessed what had happened. Zhang Hongyan picked up a suction syringe filled with anesthetic and injected into the panic pet dog.

Without much of struggle, a few minutes later, the sleeping dog was successfully taken out of the room. Drops of sweat rolled down from Dr, Zhang’s forehead. The patient gradually calmed down, however Dr, Zhang felt uneasy: in this imbalanced society, how many women are doing the same thing in order to relief their sufferings?

» » » » Continue reading ‘Sexual repression of the stay at home women in China’s rural areas’

This short article (from Tianya) was written by a student from the countryside. It has no statistics, nor is it necessarily anthropological, but it is an honest testimony from personal experience, which in my opinion, is sometimes more valuable than quasi-objective statistical conclusions.

It starts out:

I, myself, am a person from the countryside。 I’m not writing this to be discriminatory, I just hope it leads to reflection, and maybe to finding the source of the problem.

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From MOP:

Life is a process, a process from birth to death. Everyone has their own attitude towards life. While some people are enjoying their healthy bodies and taking them for granted, some other people are living a difficult life because of their physical disabilities. In Xiaoyangba community Yichang town, Hubei Province, there is a “teacher” with severe physical disabilities. A childhood medical malpractice injured his sciatic nerve, so he forever could not stand up.

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What is this picture about? Why is this poor woman being blocked out by hundreds of Chengguan (City Urban Administrative and Law Enforcements)? [Netease] On December 17, Wuhan City organized over 800 law enforcement officers to forcefully demolish nearly 40,000 square meters of illegal buildings that are near the Wuhan City to Huangshi City railway construction site. The phenomenon of local famers rushing to “grow houses” is very common.

What does “growing houses” mean?

It is yet another unique phenomenon in China, formed in the last couple of years of amazingly fast social and economic development. When the entire nation is being modernized, countless high raises are erected every year, cities are expending and county’s infrastructures are also expending in order to support the economic growth. Highways, railroads and airports; bridges, tunnels and subway systems… are being built in almost every corner in China. This means some of the existing residential and farmland in the rural areas might be in the blue-print of a governments’ huge project. The government pays for development compensations for every house they have to tear down in order to build the development project. This motivated the farmers to build houses everywhere in the rural area of China. When some of them are permitted by the government but most are illegally and cheaply built. They even start to build houses in the agricultural fields therefore people say the farmers are “growing houses” instead of growing food.

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(picture: A polluted eggplant)

[Southern Metropolis Daily] In July and August of this year, the Hunan Liuyang cadmium pollution incident caused nationwide concerns. It has been three to months since the incident, chemical plant was permanently closed, the relevant officials were suspended from their positions and affected farmers also received a certain amount of compensation. Recently the photographer went back to Liuyang, to some of the affected areas and shot a set of portraits for the crops. These terminally ill fruits and vegetables tell us the disaster has not yet ended.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Vegetables are sick – Hunan Liuyang cadmium pollution’

As Chinese youth are exposed to more and more sex via the Internet in China’s rapidly expanding economy, the education system still has to catch up to their newfound curiosity. Even many schools in Beijing have only recently started true sex education classes, and these only usually begin in high school. There is an inconsistency in the way that China is becoming increasingly liberalized in some ways, but not quickly enough in some important ways and the problem of sexual education illuminates this (you can see the progression of abortion rates here). A number of horrific incidents have occurred recently, including a young woman giving birth in a toilet. Here is a recent article in the Slate concerning the lack of sex education in China. The following story provides a detailed description of the reaction of a small town to the incident of a 14-year old girl giving birth with no one ever noticing she was pregnant.

» » » » Continue reading ‘The Blank Slate of Sexual Education in the Chinese Countryside’