Doing Business in China (4)
Doing Business in China Guide
Part 1
(whew!)
This is our latest series on doing business in China. In these posts, our advice will correspond to the thirty-six strategies designed by the ancient and great Song general and strategist Tan Daoji–that is, we predicate all this advice on never using the 36 strategies as a way to do business in China. We have bookshelves stacked full of expensive kindling labeled “how to do business in China” that we will later use to heat our house.
The first listed strategy is “Deceiving the Heavens to Cross the Sea,” or man tian guo hai(And no, it’s not a reference to a sea-going Dali clique). While the strategy typically involves deception and refers to an advisor who got the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty so drunk and engaged in feasting for three days that the ruler had no idea he was on a boat–akin to the Beijing guides who accompanied press on yesterday’s “Meet the Lamas” broadcast.
Instead of learning to deceive the heavens, your best bet to getting introduced to China is learning some Chinese. Among our billions of dollars of unread books, unopened CDs, and untouched lessons, here are some tools we actually used to learn the language and culture of China:
The Rosetta Stone: though sometimes maligned for its interface, we give props to the English-free interface of the program and its integration of reading of and listening to Chinese characters from the beginning.
FSI language courses: a full and free year’s worth of free Chinese language instruction. This is the stuff the diplomats used to use and despite that it is hands down a great free tool for helping people learn to pronounce and listen to standard Chinese.
Chinesepod: Have a random question about Chinese? Allergic to parsley? Unsure about a specific word for sports? Head for Chinesepod. With a vibrant community of online learners, free daily podcasts, and a great selection of different tools like flashcards and online lesson reviews, Chinesepod’s collective of learners deserves its rock-star status on the net.
Lost Laowai: As always, well crafted by Ryan; Canadian accent comes free of charge, aye.
Berlitz: The only “learn Chinese in 30 minutes!” that actually works.
The next step is to get some culture (God knows we could use a lot more):
Lost Laowai, offers up real-life experiences of expats in China. We are hoping for the reality show to displace “swin in China.”
The HaoHao Report, everyman’s aggregator with Digg-like China focused features.
Panda Passport: Everything about China cyberspace you wanted to know but were afraid you’d get busted for on an IP violation.
RConversation, the most harmonious blend of blogging and citizen journalism on the web.
CDT, all the news from China blocked in China.
ESWN, a blog that brings together news from the East and the West–not the best in its class, but rather a species by itself.
Global Voices: China. The World is Listening. Are you?
China Herald, all the news that fit for bandwidth.
Cal Poly MBA Trip, a blog from the MBA Program with no ballast to throw overboard.
Thomas Crampton, former correspondent for the International Hong Kong International Herald Tribune, Mr. Crampton shares on-the-ground and insider info about the latest web innovations and websphere happenings in Hong Kong and greater China.
Imagethief, named for his photography habits and not for any actual Interpol related activity, is the creator of such marvels as the Stupidvator. a blog to lightens the cargo of the China blogosphere.
China Rises: Journalist and great story teller Robert Johnson: The only chief corresponsdent in China with hand-written instructions and a GPS reporter locator given by Central Government for any coverage of Tibet the Olympics.
China Blog List: a comprehensive guide to the many blogs passing us in the night.
The Opposite End of China: Life’s a Riot, and this blog reports on it. Veteran journalist Manning is as good as it gets and still chooses to farm tomatoes along the silk road.
More to come…
Posted 28 March, 2008 in Charity in China, 中文, Podcasts China, Chinese Proverbs, Chinese Media, Search Engine Marketing, China Book Reviews, SEO China Expert, China Business Consultant, Book Review, 中国人口福利基金会, Cal Poly, 中原, China Law, China Expat, china books, Seach engine Optimization, SEM, Teaching in China, China Editorials, China Cartoons, Intercultural Issues, Top China Blogs List, China web 2.0, Book Reviews, China Business, Confucius Slept Here, Internet marketing China, SEO, Seo China, Chinese Internet, 中国, The Internet, China SEO
Project Happiness in Beijing (1)
The Chinese Apprentice-type TV show ‘Win in China” started with 150,000 candidates, and now only 11 are left. One of them is theonly foreigner to ever make the cut: Henry Winter’s final project for all the marbles involves supporting a wonderfully worthy cause: Project Happiness. The charity’s website: PROJECT HAPPINESS (in Chinese) indicates that it gives micro-loans to needy rural Chinese women starting businesses to supportthemselves. Henry’s task is to rally as many supporters as possible for the cause. He is going to need our help!!
Expats and local residents in Beijing are asked to come by and support Henry and a valuable humanitarian cause at the same time. To assist simply head for the third floor of ShiJi JinYuan Mall, West Third Ring Road (near Suzhou Bridge) in Beijing between 11 and 1 on Sunday the 23rd of March.
Let the games, and good works, begin!!
Posted 22 March, 2008 in Project Happiness, China Expat, 慈善, 慈善事业, 中国人口福利基金会, 幸福工程, 中文, Charity in China, China Business, China Editorials, 中国, Chinese Internet, Chinese Media, China Expats
When Bad Things Happen… (1)
Reflections on the 70th Anniversary of the Rape of Nanjing
“The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.”
Steinbeck, in his speech at the 1968 Nobel Banquet that honored him, expressed a belief in the perfectibility of man that he thought could come, in part, through the artist’s inherent mandate to speak honestly. I believe that historians too are charged with the same task; because man has “…taken Godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.”
Several years ago Rabbi Harold Kushner made popular a treatise on the Old Teatament Book of Job. When Good Things Happen to Bad People took on the daunting task of explaining why God, in the allegorcal text, might have subjected his dutiful servant Job to all manner of physical and emotional trauma while expecting him to be obedient and adoring. The book purportedly meant to give us comfort by explaining what laymen already had resigned themselves to knowing about Job: adversity just happens and we need to content ourselves with the knowledge that God has a greater plan to which we are not yet privy.
I never accepted Kushner’s easy out; so when tasked with teaching the Bible as Literature to Chinese students this year, I studied Job knowing the first question my young scholars would ask was identical to my own: why would man’s creator willingly torture a loving being, cast in his own image, for the sake of a cosmic bet with the devil? I found the answer in the actions of Job’s friends, not those of God as he was portrayed by the allegory’s author: Job’s friends willingly abandoned him. It was with that realization that Job became, for me, less of a lesson about obedience and worship and clearly a moral guide to my responsibilities to my fellow man.
When the Japanese invaded China in 1937 the world chose not to respond to reports of atrocities that were themselves biblical in magnitude. In one of the most perfect examples of repeated cosmic irony, John Rabe, a member of Germany’s Nazi party became the “Angel” or “Living Buddha of Nanjing” alongside its “goddess” an American Christian missionary by the name of Minnie Vautrin. After being rebuffed by their respective diplomatic liaisons they established a “safe zone” that saved more than 250,000 people from being tortured, burned alive, buried alive, decapitated, bayoneted raped or shot for sport. They acted for God, or in God’s stead, as a behavioral contagion of evil spread through the occupying Japanese Army.
The irony did not stop there: Vautrin, suffering from exhaustion, returned to America soon after the six-week ordeal and succumbed to the darkness of disillusionment by committing suicide. Rabe was arrested by his own party for his involvement in Nanjing, and then tried after the war for his earlier Nazi affiliation depleting his resources, devastating his health and forcing him to live in poverty.
After learning of Rabe’s plight the survivors of Nanjing took up collections to assist him in holding on to a life Vautrin could not bear to live out. Both Rabe and Vautrin now have monuments erected to their memory in the city of Nanjing where they are rightfully memorialized as icons of goodness and charity.
If it is the duty of the artist to expose the truth to the light, it is the job of the historian to frame and disseminate the events that can re-shape our souls whether we think them to be temporal or divine.
Rabe and Vautrin did not leave the Jobs of Nanjing to suffer the mysteries of fate: They were courageous against uncertainty, raised rational voices amidst the absurdity of war, and thankfully were more committed than the closest of personal friends during a time of horror and anguish.
Just yesterday I read where 46% of people answering a poll on the social networking site Facebook said they had no desire to see the recently released powerful documentary on the massacre at Nanking. It is likely the emotional cost, not the price of a ticket keeping them away from the film. Some, like Job’s fair weather friends, do not feel the need for humanitarian counsel. It seems some things are slow to change, but that should not stop anyone, artist advocate or historian, from authenticating the past by giving voice to those are not heard even in the terrible silence of indifference. Carolyn Forche, in her award winning book, The Country Between Us writes: “There is nothing one man will not do to another.” Steinbeck was right: we have usurped the authority and have supposed ourselves to carry the omniscience once ascribed to God.
while I agree with Steinbeck, Kushner and I diverge: I don’t think God, in any any of the earthly renditions we have supposed for his form or character, plays cosmic dice at our expense. And while I know first-hand the pain man is capable of inflicting, I choose to include charity among the many intentional acts that we might choose to commit.
Post Script:
True friends are hard to come by in any age. I am blessed with the unconditional love of long-time associates. within hours of writing this post one of my long-suffering allies lost his son. Bob, Sharon, Barb: My heartfelt condolences during an ordeal no family should ever have to experience.
–Lonnie
Other Nanjing readings and resources: Peking Duck
Asia Times and The Sunday Independent CND and ESNW
Posted 23 January, 2008 in Charity in China, Human Rights, Heartsongs, American Professor in China, Nanjing, Human Rights China, Violence, 中国, Intercultural Issues, War, Expats, China Editorials, Personal Notes, Japan
Zaijian…. (46)
Books have been virtually replaced by blogs. But, puns aside, many of them showcase the transformative elements Pablo Neruda* suggests as essential to written art in Ars Magnetica:
“From so much loving and journeying, books emerge.
And if they don’t contain kisses or landscapes,
if they don’t contain a woman in every drop,
hunger, desire, anger, roads,
there are no use as a shield or as a bell:
they have no eyes and won’t be able to open them….”
Here I have I have tried to smooth the stubble of memory, share poetry, attempt humor, journal my social conscience, and reconcile my longings while shoutng to you in some far-off room. I leave here absolutely bewildered that anyone, other than my long-suffering friends, ever returned to listen. I am grateful you did.
(more…)
Posted 2 August, 2007 in Entertainment, Guangzhou, Travel in China, New Blogs, The Great Firewall, Guangzhou China, The Sharpest Guy on the Planet, Censorship, China Book Reviews, Charity in China, Beijing Olympics, China Law, UK SEO EXPERT, China Business Consultant, American Professor in China, 中文, Chinese Education, Hainan Island, 中国, In the news, Expats, Teaching in China, China Editorials, Intercultural Issues, China Expats, Hong Kong, China Humor, Hong Kong Blogs, China Cartoons, China Business, Confucius Slept Here, Just Plain Strange, Photos, Weird China, China Photos, Cancer Journal, American Poet in China, The Unsinkable Ms Yue, China web 2.0
Interning the poor…. (0)
One online dictionary defines interning as:
- The act of training someone for a job or vocation
- Restriction to a locale, country or prison
Recently a group of girls in Guilin who were training to be dancers were sent by school officials to intern in their craft. They lived in Guilin, a part of the exceedingly poor Guanxi autonomous region often in the news lately for civil disturbances related to government enforced birth control and abortion.
I don’t know about Guanxi, but in areas of Guangdong, arts schools and their charges are not held in high regard. Dancing, painting, contemporary music and poetry are often thought to be frivolous activities meant for those not expected to succeed in life. Business, marketing, engineering, medicine, and law are more socially acceptable here.
But most students in China, regardless of their vocational choice, are hungry for life experience in their chosen fields. They believe that transferable skills are learned in the workplace rather than the classroom and they trust teachers and authorities to guide those experiences. And most of the teachers there, a dear friend of mine among them, make about $100 USD a month for their efforts, but take their responsibilities seriously.
Xinhua news euphemistically reported this week that “The law was broken” when one school lost its moral compass and arranged for its students to work as bar girls: Guilin Intermediate Vocational Dance School’s cadre arranged “internships” for 22 teenagers in Hangzhou, China nightclubs.
The school officials told parents that their children would perform at “well-regulated places” and would each be paid 750 yuan (US$94) a month, a very hefty salary for an ethnic minority student in Guanxi, but the dark reality was they earned 100 yuan ($12.50 USD) and paid 50 yuan to an “agent,” 25 yuan to the dance school, leaving 25 yuan (a little more than $3 USD) for their them.
The most bizarre part of this story is the spin some educators and officials have put on the event: Yuan Bentao, a professor at Tsinghua University, said, “It is even more important that private schools like this maintain a respectable image so that they can survive in China’s competitive education marketplace.” Ya, that was the first thing that came into my mind.
Internet chat-rooms have called for jail time for the school officials. The school’s Chairman Guo Guisheng claims he believed he was “doing a good deed” for the impoverished girls and their families.
In all of the reporting on this issue I have seen no indication that anyone has done anything to dress the wounds that were surely opened for the girls involved. My mother and her sister were abandoned on the steps of an orphanage during America’s Great Depression because my grandparents could not afford to feed them. They never got over it emotionally and they were not morally degraded like these girls were: The students were often forced to share toasts with middle-aged businessmen then sent to bed to cry themselves into a drunken sleep.
A law firm director, Qiu Baochang, of the Beijing-based Huijia Law Firm added, “These schools have to improve their teaching if they hope to have good reputations; otherwise, they will easily fall into a vicious circle.” Alleged professionals like these make a case for the re-thinking of industrialized education in China.
It’s too late, counselor: The vicious cycle involves the haves and have-nots in your new China. The internships given to those underprivileged children better fit the definition of imprisonment. They are now socially and psychologically locked in to a wheel of poverty and trauma. The only thing these girls learned is that a lack of self-esteem for a poor child is not a self-induced psychological condition, but part of a realistic self-assessment. A prospering economy has driven off and left these dancers on the steps of bankrupt orphanage.
With big thank you to Virtual China /China.org
Posted 23 July, 2007 in Charity in China, Human Rights, 中文, Human Rights China, China Law, Education in China, Violence, 中国, Intercultural Issues, Asia, Teaching in China, China Editorials, In the news, China Cartoons, Asian Women
Study in America: Study in US Guides (3)
Head over to BOD for recommendarions on where to study in the US, UK and Australia….
For anyone dreaming of university study in America: The China Dreamblogue has posted pdf guides on how to study in America, in both English and in Chinese…
This is a guide to undergraduate study and educational opportunities in the US. You can find Arabic, French, Spanish, and Russian versions of the text: Study in America: American undergraduate Study.
This guide explains the process of applying for and preparing for graduate study in the US. It includes information about admission, types of institutions, degrees, course loads, and grading systems. It will also discuss the different academic culture in the US and the US academic environment. It also covers specialized programs of study in the US: US nursing school, American law schools, US veterinary medicine, and American dentistry. You can find versions of the text in Arabic, French, Spanish, and Russian here: Study in the US: US Graduate Degree.
This guide provides thorough descriptions of short-term study options in the US, such as: high school exchange programs, work and professional exchange programs, vocational and technical programs, short-term university study, and professional study. You can find versions of the text in Arabic, French, Spanish, and Russian here: Study in America: Short-term US study.
This guide provides important details on preparing for study in the US, such as obtaining a visa, predeparture information, housing in the us, and travel to the us. You can find versions of the text in Arabic, Chinese, English, and Russian here: Study in the US: US Visas, arriving in US, and travel to the US.
Posted 18 July, 2007 in Travel in China, Charity in China, Chinese Medicine, Blogroll Diving, Guangzhou, 中文, Chinese Education, Education in China, china books, China Expat, China Business Consultant, Internet marketing China, Chinese Internet, Teaching in China, China Editorials, Expats, Intercultural Issues, Asia, China Cartoons, China Business, The Internet, Guangzhou China, 中国, Confucius Slept Here, Greater Asia Blogs
Rising Voices…. (0)
In preparing for the dreamblogue project David and I applied for a grant from Global Voices Online via their new Rising Voices initiative. Rising Voices is the outreach arm of Global Voices.
The recipients have already been chosen (no, I don’t know) and will be announced on Monday. Over 140 applications from 40 countries came in from what appears to be a true “Who’s Who in Global Citizen Journalism.”
According to their website, “Global Voices aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore. Global Voices Online is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.”
Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca McKinnon were the driving forces at Harvard behind the formation of Global Voices. It has become one of the most respected news and reporting endeavors on the net and recently won the Knight-Batten Grand Prize for Innovations in Journalism.
Soon after applying for the grant we were informed by David Sasaki, GVOL’s Outreach Director, that there would be a online group created for all applicants to share their wishes, resources and dreams. In combing the bio’s of the members thus far I am awed by the creativity, courage and commitment of everyone I have read about: Nasim Fekrat one of the winners of the Freedom of Expression Blog Awards from Reporters without Borders; Kathleen Gerahty who co-created Picure Us a photo exchange program for kids 8-12 aimed at increasing self esteem through photography, storytelling and art; Marnie Gustavson who now lives in Kabul, Afghanistan and is the executive director of PARSA, (Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Services for Afghanistan); Yuanzhou Qu with the imaginative and much needed China based 1 KG program that brings inspiration and supplies to rural villages; Our own China-sphere’s Tenement Palm with a Blogger Watch group proposal (I am all for this one!) and more….
The list of participants is long and inspiring. David and I are truly grateful to Global Voices for the chance to meet Internet Chance-takers and the Good Samaritans of many faiths and background. Only 4-6 of the projects will initially be funded and I do not envy Mr. Sasaki. I would like to see everyone able to further global connections via this group….We hope to bring you stories on the dreamblogue and here at OMBW about some of these programs. Caution: It could positively change your world-view….
Update on the China Dreamblogue: more than 100 people have visited one of the intended beneficiaries of our group, The Library Project, and have offered services and financing. California Polytechnic will be weighing in with scholarship/educational support for the students we meet along the way and we are firming up a few more such relationships we hope to announce to you by early next week.
I am still nearly bedridden with a fractured ankle, but in high spirits….Regular blogging resumes tomorrow….
Posted 30 June, 2007 in Chinese Media, Charity in China, Chinese Internet, Censorship, China Expats, China web 2.0
Compassion Fatigue (4)
One of the lines I repeatedly quote from Waiting for Godot is “Habit is a great deadener.” The more we see poverty, death, disability, illness, and systemic dysfunction, the more we become desensitized to it. The more we add charitable acts to the bottom of our to-do list, the more we deaden our reflexes to react to immediate human crises.
I’m a sap. I’m the guy who gets tears in his eyes in a pawn shop, and I wonder what set of circumstances could bring someone to surrender the symbol of their emotional commitment to each other for few dollars. And I ask myself “What egregious sin must a man have committed to compel his family to hawk an heirloom like a masonic ring for ten to twenty percent of its worth?” Part of it is that the shops bring back memories of my childhood, when my father and mother would pawn their savings bonds in the middle of every month so that they were able to pay a car payment or a grocery bill. I’m not sure we ever redeemed. perhaps an emotional element of the the dreamblogue is my attempt to metaphorically recover those bonds for someone else.
The Blog of Dreams, for me, is also about fighting ennui. It is also about standing up to the pain that I experienced when one of my 22-year-old students lost a leg to bone cancer and another 23-year-old student died last week of leukemia. I’m not trying to be maudlin, nor am I trying to paint myself as some kind of extraordinarily kind person. I am doing what I have to do in order maintain some kind of balance in an environment that constantly erodes and degrades my capacity to react to human suffering. I have no interest in being like the Pulitzer-prize-winning photojournalist who watched a vulture wait for an African child to die. He snapped his shot, won the prize, and was later denounced by colleagues with vicious criticism for not taking the child to an aid station . He later committed suicide. Watching people die around me this year has hushed my sef-preservational black, as I’ve watched friends and colleagues try to navigate hopeless situations. The Dreamblogue is a personally proposed imperative and my long trek to the aid station.
Onemandbandwidth has been short on content for the past three weeks: let me tell you why. David and I have written around 50,000 words during that time in support of the Dreamblogue in the form of: a grant proposal to Global Voices Online; sponsorship support proposals for colleges in the UK and the US; a PR Web release about our journey; hundreds of e-mails to potential supporters (not donors); project profiles on social networking sites; correspondence with intended recipients of our charity; the editing and revision of 22 articles about the mainland provinces we will visit; and more. David and I transformed my apartment into a two-man hermitage because we have literally spent 19 to 20 hours a day for the past six days, carpals to the keyboard, in preparation for this trip. The only breaks we took were to watch reruns of House, M.D. (while we kept editing) and to play an occasional round of Scrabble online.
Years ago, there was talk of a self-perpetuating machine…now if only we could figure out a way to not take our once a day eat break we could make engineering history. Lately our work is generating more work, which generates more work…we need to MoBlog!
The universe has us on hold right now, and the muzak, though promising, has a dreadfully slow rhythm. Proposals are making their way through the digestive tracks of various commercial and organizational enterprises–we DO understand, but it ain’t any easier….
I’ve read several stories on the Internet this week bemoaning the lack of medical care in China, the widening gap between rich and poor, and descriptions of the disasters in north and the south that have devastated China. Some are touching, some are appalling, but for me, each of them lacked the one element that seems outstanding in my emotional and mental gestalt of late. All but one member of The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women is dead, and I hold myself accountable at some level for possibly missing something. In these reams of paperwork and multitude of posts, what word or phrase, what measure of credibility is missing that can make people to resonate with what I feeel?
Onemanbandwidth will be doing a 301 redirect soon, and lend all of the power and cyber-momentum built by the site to the Dreamblogue project. I’ll write some articles-ambitious, critical, and ridiculous as always–from time to time on the Dreamblogue; however, the project has a life of its own and it is much more important than a personal online diary.
David and I only want one thing from you, and it’s not money nor pats on the back (we haven’t done anything yet). The only thing we want is for you to social network our requests for people’s dreams. Tell your friends to send us their dreams. Link to us, favorite us on Technorati, and tell others to do the same. Give us a few minutes of your time and a little space on your blog (which we know are valuable), and we’ll do our best to reflect credit on your generosity. Yhank you to those of you who have already acted.
And before we sound a little too altruistic for our own good, you need to know what is in this for us: David and I hope to write a book or two about their adventures, and I long to see historical China. The people that will be helped most immediately are those people we have personal contact with. I selfishly want them alive and in my life for as long as possible. By doing so, maybe I can assuage some of the guilt I feel for not being able to do more this year for the people I love. These are our dreams, and we want to achieve them. In exchange, we want to help a few realize their dreams, too–especially the fantastic work of the Library Project and the Reading Tub.
There is no good way to end this post except to begin our work. The Blog of Dreams is our newest answer to compassion fatigue: by sharing our dreams with each other and funnelling the power of those desires into helping others, we may be able to restore our capacity to witness and ease some human suffering.
Posted 19 June, 2007 in Chinese Internet, 中国, In the news, Human Rights, Charity in China, China Expat, 中文, Heartsongs, cartoons, Confucius Slept Here, Intercultural Issues, China Expats, Asia, Expats, Teaching in China, China Business, China Editorials, Greater Asia Blogs
Disaster is not on summer holiday… (2)
A must read article at Global Voices Online about the lack of reporting and blogger reponse to the horrific disasters in China of late that have left over a million people homeless:
Posted 17 June, 2007 in Human Rights, Chinese Media, Charity in China, Heartsongs, 中文, Chinese Internet, 中国, China Editorials, Greater Asia Blogs, China Photos, In the news, Top Blogs, Top China Blogs List
A Meme You Can Sink Your Dreams Into (1)
Here’s the scoop on what has been keeping Onemanbandwidth light on posts for so long. And, most importantly, here is the meme for how you can help. Even if you hate Meme’s please take the message below and spread it to five people you know will follow through and send it to others:
If you could save lives and provide needed educational opportunities to rural and orphaned children for a few minutes of your free time (and for free), would you do it?
This is the logo for The China Dreamblogue.
Our dream is to travel in 2007 to every mainland province in China. During this journey, it is our intention to chronicle the everyday lives of ordinary Chinese citizens. Our motivation for the trip came from a group of women known as the League of Extraordinary Chinese Women. The LOECW was comprised of 5 women from various walks of Chinese life—wives, semi-professional women, a bookkeeper, and a student. The one thing they had in common was advanced-stage HER2 breast cancer. These women, with little access to formal education and less information from outside sources about the disease they had contracted, naturally and courageously combated their disease with friendship, enthusiasm, meditation, and what medical care they could afford.
As we worked to help these women, we began to think about other Chinese people left behind in the wake of this huge industrial growth. Around this time, we also met Thomas Stader and Laurie Mackenzie, two expats who have devoted their time, talents, and treasures to Chinese people educationally and economically left behind by giving them access to life-changing education. Because we are educators and bloggers actively involved in search engine marketing optimization and education, we sought to find a way to organize the entrepreneurial energy of the people we met and turn it into a force that would help us, and other people, realize the dreams we hold dear.
The Dreamblogue is a simple concept. After a specified period of time (maybe once a month or once a quarter), we’ll select a contributor who will win a prize donated by one of our charitable sponsors. We hope to give away vacations to China, scholarships to study abroad, technical equipment, software and cutting-edge gadgets that will appeal to our broad demographic. We want to attract a Postsecret-type http://postsecret.blogspot.com interest in our blog that will drive enough traffic that we can generate advertising revenue to give to educational and medical concerns. All of the money generated from these sources will go directly from Feedburner and Blogads to the 501(c)3 charities we support—we will never directly handle the money. Funds will go to our partners The Library Project, which builds libraries in orphanages and rural schools all over China and Asia, and to The Reading Tub, a charity that promotes children’s literacy in the United States.
The Blog of Dreams will have videocasts, podcasts, a China picture contest (to be turned into a coffee table book) , a weekly Chinese horoscope, weekly Chinese recipes (also to be a book), and most importantly, the daily dreams of people from around the world. In all, the Dreamblogue has been created to be a tool of understanding and a place where dreams can be spoken into reality.
To help:
1. Go to The Dreamblogue.
2. Click on the little green box that says “favorite this blog.”
3. Follow the instructions on Technorati. This will take you less than one minute. The Technorati favoriting website will bounce you back to the blog of dreams. Click the “favorite this blog” button one more time to finish.
4. Link to our blog, The China Dreamblogue
5. Send us your dream(s) in any format (mp3, video, text,YouTube, photo…any way we can put it on the blog), and send them to dreamblogue at gmail.com.
A major part of this journey is about creating a space where people can blog their dream—whether these are dreams for themselves, dreams for someone else, or educational dreams they want to fill. There is a Chinese superstition that if you talk about bad things, they will come true. We believe that if you share your dream with others, you are willing it into being. Send your dreams to us at the blog of dreams, anonymously or not. We will post them and do our best to help them come true through the give-aways we sponsor, the resources of the Dreamblogue community, and the corporate sponsors we have asked to fund a few of the dreams that come to our blog.
We will create a rolling blogroll to give credit to the people who pass on this meme, favorite our blog on Technorati, and link to us.
If you’ve never done a meme before, now’s the time to start. Send this to at least five people you trust to uphold the dream of blogging other peoples’ dreams.
6. Tag! Send this to five other people, or at least mention us on your blog