The Dream Bash (0)

CultureFish Media will host a one-day trio of charity events
Here are five ways to help the event out:

Come to the tournament and shot for one million dollars (HKD)!!
Come to the digital workshop.
Come to the night event bash with Che’nelle.
designed to raise awareness and generate funds for the China Dreamblogue and its associated charities. The three events (YOU CAN COME TO ONE OR ALL!)include:

1. A One in a Million Charity Golf Tournament,

2. The China Digital Media Workshop,

3. The China Dreambash featuring international hit singer and Capitol records artist Che’nelle.

TICKETS HERE!

Golf, Digitize, and Bash for Charity and shoot for $1,000,000(HKD) in our One in a Million Charity Daytime Golf Tournament:

The China Dreamblogue is the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arm of CultureFish Media which seeks to create positive information about China and support educational opportunities for Chinese students.

At the fundraising tournament, which includes a one million dollar (HKD!) hole-in-one competition, the China Dreamblogue tournament will include:

Tournament moderator: PGA pro golfer and 6-time long drive champion Paul Surniak

A hole-in-one competition in which everyone can participate for one million dollars (HKD!)

A cool morning tee off time

Best ball tournament with a four-man team

Straggler pairing—if you come alone, we’ll place you with a team

A long drive competition

The tournament includes caddy, cart, balls, 18 holes, and a shot at one million dollars (HKD!)

PRIZES:

Grand Prize: 2-person trip to Hainan Island for a weekend golf tour package at famed Yaolong Bay and training from, and golfing with, PGA pro golfer Paul Surniak.

There wil be an awards Ceremony and Dinner banquet following tournament including sponsor give-aways .

There is also a 50% discount rate on all luxury rooms if attendees stay overnight or thru the weekend and daytime Discounted Events for non-golfers include spa treatment, saunas, kite flying, pool facilities and massage.

BUS SERVICE FROM GUANGZHOU WILL BE AVAILABLE!!

China Digital Media Workshop:

This half-day workshop will include information on digitization of press releases for professionals who work in SEO, SEM, online and traditional advertising, PR, new media, social networking, blogging, and other Internet-related businesses in China.

Topics and special features include: Myths, realities and benefits of online press releases and PR, trends in digital online ads, current trends in IWOM, reputation management: emerging trends and existing patterns

All speakers lined-up are experts in their respective fields. The awards ceremony and post-tournament banquet open to all conference participants

China Dreambash:

Capitol Records recording artist and international star Che’nelle will perform live.mYou can dance and party until you drop! 2 free drinks and discounts throughout the night with paid admission.
Discount room rates (1/2 PRICE!) will be available for workshop and tourney attendees and those who party hard.

The day of educationa and enjoyment is designed to raise awareness and generate funds for the China Dreamblogue and its associated charities. The three events (YOU CAN COME TO ONE OR ALL!)include:

1. A One in a Million Charity Golf Tournament,

2. The China Digital Media Workshop,

3. The China Dreambash featuring international hit singer and Capitol records artist Che’nelle.

TICKETS HERE!

Golf, Digitize, and Bash for Charity and shoot for $1,000,000(HKD) in our One in a Million Charity Daytime Golf Tournament:

At the fundraising tournament, which includes a one million dollar (HKD!) hole-in-one competition, the China Dreamblogue tournament will include:

Tournament moderator: PGA pro golfer and 6-time long drive champion Paul Surniak

A hole-in-one competition in which everyone can participate for one million dollars (HKD!)

A cool morning tee off time

Best ball tournament with a four-man team

Straggler pairing—if you come alone, we’ll place you with a team

A long drive competition

The tournament includes caddy, cart, balls, 18 holes, and a shot at one million dollars (HKD!)

PRIZES:

Grand Prize: 2-person trip to Hainan Island for a weekend golf tour package at famed Yaolong Bay and training from, and golfing with, PGA pro golfer Paul Surniak.

There wil be an awards Ceremony and Dinner banquet following tournament including sponsor give-aways .

There is also a 50% discount rate on all luxury rooms if attendees stay overnight or thru the weekend and daytime Discounted Events for non-golfers include spa treatment, saunas, kite flying, pool facilities and massage.

BUS SERVICE FROM GUANGZHOU WILL BE AVAILABLE!!

China Digital Media Workshop:

All speakers lined-up are experts in their respective fields. The awards ceremony and post-tournament banquet open to all conference participants

China Dreambash:

Offer support as a sponsor.

Can’t come? Still want to be involved? Donate 100 Yuan and someone will shoot for you for the million!!

Just sign up at CFM and we will send details on how to participate from afar…

PRICE LIST:

Tourney (Caddy, Cart, Party, Lunch, Dinner and Million Dollar Shot) 2,500 RMB

Digital Workshop: 1000 RMB (includes lunch) for those in tourney or with sponsor agency (2000 for non-sponsored)

PARTY: 300 RMB Includes two drinks

Million Dollar Hole In One Shot Only: 100 RMB

Dinner–All You Can Eat Gourmet Buffet: 330 RMB China Golf

TICKETS HERE!

Chenelle Poster

Posted 16 April, 2008 in Chinese Media, Guangzhou, Chinese Internet, American Professor in China, China Expat, Golf Tours, China Golf, Entertainment, 中国, China Sports, China Expats, The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women, China Photos, Top Blogs, Photos, Top China Blogs List

Things to do in China when you are dying…. (0)

Don Quixote

I am a believer in synchronicity. I am convinced that external events happen in concert with internal “business” that begs attention. And, I believe, that these seemingly random, unplanned instructional happenings occur with an intuitive precision that defies the laws of chance.

I had been struggling with the writing of this this post for weeks; and then, two nights ago I watched Elizabeth Edwards on 60 Minutes, talk about terminal illness and I knew it was time, ready or not, to type you this confession. First, I will digress a bit (imagine that)….

In high school I remember reading Carlos Castenada’s tales of enlightenment via teachings imparted by a Mexican Socerer named Don Juan. Castenda learned from his teacher, among other things, to live with death over his left shoulder and then passed on the message to us to “live life to its fullest” from one moment to the next. This thinking has helped drive me through enchanted landscapes on an amazing dialectical journey.

Anais Nin said, “People living deeply have no fear of death.” and Issac Asimov made it delightfully simple with: “If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” Ms Edwards, like the Unsinkable Ms Yue, has made a similar decision: she will get on with life. The choice for any of us is the same as hers as we don’t know what will befall us. We celebrate life or accede to dying. She has made the only reasonable decision there is to make. Ms Yue has done the same: Fund raising efforts for her have failed and business associates have stolen money and merchandise that were meant to aid her, but she remains un-embittered. She has days of doubt, but seems well equipped to cast a cold eye on death. She still laughs with perfect abandon.

I have to be honest: It hasn’t always been as easy for me. Last week one of Ms Yue’s relatives, a successful web designer in Hong Kong, died of cancer. He was in his thirties. In the days before his passing the stomach cancer made him so thin that his spirit was kept earthbound only by the weight of his family’s love. This event and contact with five of my students, all in their twenties, diagnosed with various cancers, Ms Yue’s ongoing battle and I often find myself in need of emotional waders. And that is why I have not posted about my battle, until now.

My body’s immune system is too vigilant. My natural defenses have enlisted in a war against healthy tissue and I am an uninvited host of the conflict. Treatments to date have not been effective and it is likely that I will die, and much sooner than I had hoped, from autoimmune disease. It has already claimed a gall bladder, nearly killing me in the process, and is now in the late phases of damage to my liver.

Some of you who know me well are aware that I taught Mind-Body Medicine long before it was fashionable. So, yes, I have been doing those things I should be doing to bring back health and homeostasis. But, sometimes a vessel is just flawed. Jim Fixx a celebrated runner/author died in mid-life of a heart attack owing to his genetic make-up. Many people wrongly viewed his passing as a case against the benefits of jogging. The opposite was true. And I am sure that, like his, my life has, and will be, prolonged by exercise, prayer, meditation and other interventions. But, the inevitable it is just that….

Not long before his death John Steinbeck drove his camper, Rocinante (named for Don Quixote’s horse), across America with his poodle Charley as his companion and penned a wonderful journal during the trip. I have longed to for such a land voyage ever since…

So, rather than lament my fate I have decided to take on a new project: I will be traveling next year to all 22 provinces in mainland China. I will end my trip in Beijing in time for a climb up the Great Wall before the Olympics. I have a fellow writer (he looks nothing like Charley or Sancho…) who will be joining me and we look to do some pretty ambitious things (videos, photo logs, the completion of Confucius Slept Here….) during our travels.

So, there will be soon another blog that will chronicle the adventure and it will be structured it so it can raise funds, via ads, for various causes while raising global awareness about a China not often presented to you by Western media. Andrew Young said, “It’s a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing.” And while I am not so grandiose that I think I am creating a noble exit for myself, I do want this time to count for something more than a grand tour of the Middle Kingdom. Like Elizabeth and John Edwards I hope to be of service in the process of fulfilling a dream.

Today I was reminded of Somerset Maugham who thought death to be a dull and dreary affair and I advise you, as Maugham did, to have little to do with it. The new blog will be about China life on life’s terms and about those who choose to live it well.

I will tell you more in weeks to come. Onemanbandwidth will still be here during the trip and I hope you will be as well. For the record: I am in China for the duration and in the interim: I am typing as fast as I can…

Posted 28 July, 2007 in Personal Notes, The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women, cartoons, 中国, Travel in China, The Great Wall, American Poet in China, Cancer Journal, Asia, Asian Women, China Expats, China Editorials, China Olympics, China Cartoons, Videos

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

Posted 14 June, 2007 in SEO, SEM, Seach engine Optimization, Blogroll Diving, Guangzhou, Chinese Internet, Seo China, Internet marketing China, Search Engine Marketing, Travel in China, Chinese Education, American Professor in China, China Expat, 中文, Heartsongs, Chinese Media, Charity in China, China-US Medical Foundation, Tibet Climb, Expats, Teaching in China, China Editorials, Intercultural Issues, China Expats, Asian Women, Hong Kong Blogs, China Business, American Poet in China, Top Blogs, 中国, Guangzhou China, In the news, Tibet, The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women, Confucius Slept Here, Hong Kong

Blog of Dreams (5)

The Dream:

One member of the original group has survived, and a newer, younger member has been added recently—a 22-year-old student who lost her leg to bone cancer. Both of the survivors lack the financial wherewithal to apply standard medical treatment to their illness. We devoted time and energy from our blogs and lives to raise money for members of the league. As a result of our initial efforts, we were able to extend the life of some members, and we enabled the student to purchase a prosthetic leg.

During this first effort, 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, educationally and economically left behind, by giving them access to life-changing education. Our meetings sparked Yanzhi Liu’s interest, as he was (and still is) a board member for the US-based group The Reading Tub. 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 now hold dear.

We decided to experiment, via the Blog of Dreams, by asking students in our global internet marketing class to take a hands-on approach to global marketing by contributing to a positive world awareness of China while aiding worthy causes. Students immediately drove a brand new blog to the number 23 position (out of 75 million) in the Favorites section of Technorati, the premiere blog aggregator in the world. Students ensured that one of our blogs was nominated for and eventually won Best Asian Blog in the Annual Weblog Awards. This blog already held dozens of top ten slots in search engine slots for keywords related to China business. So, with this kind of early momentum, student commitment and huge volunteer support, we knew we could create a project that would make a difference in other people’s lives via the Internet.

The Dreamblogue is a simple concept. We will contact people through PR Web, Blogger News Network (BNN, for whom we write), Google News, Social Networks like Facebook and our volunteer network. We will also promote an Internet MEME that asks people be to share real dreams for themselves or someone else. 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 for study abroad, 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. We also plan a book about China for expat and business newcomers.

The blog will use Feedburner and Blogads as its primary advertising revenue resources. The number of ads that we allow will be limited: no more than 1 ad in our feed, 1 ad in our posts, and 1 ad in our blog ads. All of the money generated from these sources will go directly from Feedburner and Blogads to the charities we support—we will never directly handle the money.

The other advertising that we will be present on the site will be for other corporations and institutions that sponsor our adventure, and those ads will be top listed display ads in the sidebar of the blog of dreams.

Any educational concerns that join us as sponsors for the trip will have direct links on our site to translated pages or individual websites that will advertise to Chinese students and more importantly, their parents. We will do all of the search engine optimization and translation and ongoing support for these.

Click on the stamp above and head for the Dreamblogue. The first thing you can do to help is favorite them in Technorati and then link to them if you have a blog.

ABOUT US:
Who we are:

Lonnie Hodge is a writer, educator and SEO consultant with over 20 years of experience working and living in Asia. He is a past recipient of America’s highest honor given to a poet: A National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Writing. Because of the Unsinkable Ms Yue’s constant inspiration via, her courage in battling cancer, Lonnie, along with David, were compelled to create The China Dreamblogue.
Lonnie has done SEO for corporations and bloggers large or small. His work for non-profit groups is done without charge. To date his clients hold over 30,000 keywords indexed in #1 positions on major search engines worldwide.
Lonnie has been a lecturer worldwide on topics related to Humor and Wellness, psychoneuroimmunology, Psychopharmacology, Personal Communication, Asian Culture, International Trade, Search Engine Optimization, Marketing, ESL and Personal Growth and Development for Universities, small and large businesses, The Kellogg Leadership Program, The Fetzer Institute and more…
He is a Professor with over thirty years of teaching experience at Universities worldwide including: Baylor University, The University of North Carolina, The U.S. Army Academy of Health Sciences (while he was a soldier during a few of the Vietnam years), The University of Maryland and Business/Technical Colleges in Asia.
He is currently one of China’s leading Trade Specialists and Consultants. He is one of only two peer- reviewed and accepted SEO specialists in China.
David DeGeest is a teacher, blogger, and educator in China who regularly assists in the editing and writing of OneManBandWidth. He holds a degree in mathematics and English from Grinnell College. He came to China as the recipient of a prestigious fellowship from Grinnell’s Office of Social Commitment. In the past year, he has edited a motivational memoir and an international Bonsai book. He has devoted his time to learning Chinese, language and literature, Martial Arts and SEO while promoting the Dreamblogue.

More information will follow tomorrow.

Posted 9 June, 2007 in SEO, SEM, Search Engine Marketing, Blogroll Diving, Internet marketing China, Chinese Internet, Seo China, Travel in China, Chinese Media, China Photo Contest, China Business Consultant, China Expat, 中文, Heartsongs, Human Rights, Charity in China, The Internet, China Cool Gadgets, China Editorials, China Business, Cancer Journal, Teaching in China, Expats, China Expats, Intercultural Issues, The Unsinkable Ms Yue, The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women, Top Blogs, Chinglish, 中国, In the news, Personal Notes, China Photos, Confucius Slept Here, China web 2.0

Intermediate Yueyinglish…. (0)

A few months ago I posted about The Unsinkable Ms Yue’s uncanny ability to render herself understood in any circumstance. I have often used her as an example in my classes to encourage students to forget perfection and work toward progress. instead.

ms yue

I long ago set out to catalog the elements of style in Yueyinglish a rare and unusual sub-dialect of Chinglish unique to the only surving member of the League of Extraordinary Chinese Women. But, I had not seen Ms Yue for some time and heard her and David using an expanded vocabulary that the aspiring Yueyinglish speaker should know.

Some new vocabulary:

curse=of course

turnf the off=turn it on

turnf the on=turn it off

QQ=cute

newshin=new

long time ago=it was intolerably long

cookie the rice=prepare a meal

waidter=weather

rainling=raining

have the small?=do you have change?

you the one people go?=you are going alone?

only the talking, talking!=don’t get upset I am just discussing this with you

craysheen=insane

Seeulateragulator=later gator

OK, now for some practice sentences actually overheard in Guangzhou:

So, how was Spiderman?

Long time ago!

How about the actors?

The movie one people QQ. The girl no beautiful. Bad the man craysheen da.

I am sorry we got out so late

Only talking talking ma. I go one people home and cookie the rice.

The movie house was crowded

Yesu! The man no tunf the on the cellphone.

So you want to go with David to see another movie?

Newsheen the movie, curse! You the one people want to go?

No, David would love your company. See you later

The waidther no way! Rainling! Take a taxi. You have the small? Seeulateragulator.

For those of you anticipating your YYSL certificates: You wait me, OK?

Posted 8 June, 2007 in Chinglish, Personal Notes, 中国, Guangzhou China, 中文, Guangzhou, Confucius Slept Here, The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women, Asian Humor, China Humor, Asian Women, Intercultural Issues, The Unsinkable Ms Yue, Humor

The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women: And Then There Was One… (1)

league of extraordinary women

The original League lost one more extraordinary woman this week. Ms. 珍 (Zhen) , first from the right, succumbed to breast cancer that spread to her liver for want of appropriate treatment. (There is a still a way to help and it doesn’t cost you anything*)

The unsinkable Ms. Yue is the remaining survivor of her chemotherapy group. None of the women to date have been able to raise the funds needed to acquire the very expensive drug Herceptin needed for a chance of staving off the disease. It is the only available agent that can treat HER2 breast cancer in early and late stage development, butverg wholesale runs $45,000 for a course of therapy–more than ten years worth of an average teacher’s salry in China. This blog has raised only a fraction of the monies needed for these brave ladies.

I was given great life lessons by Ms Zhen, woman who remained ever positive about her chances for recovery. I have no doubt that she survived long past expectations because of her zeal for life, the friendship of the other League members and Chinese traditional medicine combined with what western medicine she could afford.

Ms Zhen, a victim of cancer and an ailing health system in China, leaves behind a loving husband, a boy 14 years old and a girl now 19 year of age.

In memoriam Onemanbandwidth and The Dreamblogue will not post new entries for the next three days.

China Chinese Women Cancer Cancer Treatment Roche Breast Cancer Women Lonnie Hodge Cancer Treatment Hercpetin

*Head over to http://blogofdreams.com and favorite the blog in Technorati and also lin to the trip. It takes five minutes and the right people benefit.

Posted 25 May, 2007 in 中国, Chinese Medicine, Human Rights, Charity in China, Personal Notes, China Photos, Cancer Journal, The Unsinkable Ms Yue, The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women, Asian Women

China Photo Contest (4)

Have picture of the Middle Kingdom you like and want to share with the world?

OMBW will sponsor a contest that will run all year and culminate in a coffee table book that will raise funds for China charities and the Literacy Group The Reading Tub.

It is simple:

Send your best shot of people, places or events in China to: dreamblogue@gmail.com with the information required below. We will post several shots, once a week, on OMBW and on http://blogof dreams.com where you and your friends can vote for your favorites. The top 250 will make it into the book. There is NO entry fee.

There will be prizes, yet to be decided, for the winners, links back to blogs or sites if requested, contributor copies of the coffee table book. All rights are returned to the creator upon publication and you are free to multiple submit your work to other sites, magazines or contests. First prize in each division will be an expense paid week on the road with Yanzhi and Dawei and the Dreanblogue Team during their charity and friendship tour of China

Ideally there will be three divisions:

Hobby Photographer: You take pictures for personal enjoyment and you have a shot that you would like to share with the world

yangshuo

Amateur: You aspire to be professional and have a bit more experience or training than do most of us in the amateur ranks

heart on

Professional: You get paid for your work, but are willing to share it with us at OMBW and the Dreablogue so we can raise a few dollars for charity

We will try to post new pictures once a week on Friday. The rules:

Make the photos as Web-friendly as possible: No more than 450 Pixels wide please. If you win we will ask for the high resolution file.

Include the following information with your email:

Real name
Division
Province where picture was taken
Name of Photo as you want it in the ALT tag
Your location and email (not to be published)
Your desired screen name for voting and picture tags
A short statement giving us permission to place the picture on OMBW and The China Dreamblogue during 2006-7
Your blog or website URL, if there is one, to which we should link the photos

There is no limit to the number of photos you can submit….
Look for the first photos next week!

Posted 22 May, 2007 in SEO, SEM, Seo China, Chinese Internet, New Blogs, The Internet, Search Engine Marketing, Travel in China, China Photo Contest, Photo Contest, 中文, Heartsongs, Chinese Media, Charity in China, The Great Wall, Yangshuo China, Intercultural Issues, Expats, China Expats, Greater Asia Blogs, Top China Blogs List, Hong Kong Blogs, Teaching in China, The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women, Top Blogs, 中国, Tibet, Photos, China Photos, China web 2.0

Wishes, Lies and Schemes of Social Commitment in China, Part I (2)

There is a school in America that maintains an “Office of Social Commitment.” Ostensibly, the office is charged with, in part, sending bright, globally aware scholars to regions that can develop and utilize their youthful enthusiasm. Ideally this fosters the “fellows” acquisition of information about local culture and accords them skill building opportunities that can be transferred back to America or generously subsumed into future professional choices.

Here is the rub: The four fellows who come from that particular school are sent to work in two institutions: One is in Macau and the and other is in Nanjing. The former is a third-tier private, for-profit school with most students coming from well-heeled families, and the latter is an elite prep’ school. The fellows in Macau are simply handed a teaching schedule and sent off, without any preparation, to face the Great Wall of Student Silence that is built into most Chinese classrooms. Attempting to scale the Great Wall can repel veteran teachers and injure novices and journeyman alike if they are not well equipped. Chinese administrations will not help teachers to adjust as they have little time and patience for new and, well, expendible teachers. I watched two “fellows” suffer emotional melt-downs (they are somewhat fine now) because they received little or no responsible assistance to problems from their “commitment” office or their Chinese work-site. It seems that social commitment is only an external consideration and does not apply to working field staff.

Dostoevsky wrote: “As a general rule people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are too.” Sadly, that used to reflect my world view, but living in China among opportunistic and the ill-intentioned, posing as humanitarians, has altered my thinking. The head of the aforementioned social commitment office has in his website bio’ a telling metaphor: He ends his long list of organizational memberships and awards (Surely proof he is a good guy) with the announcement that he is adopting an Asian child. The child has no name, no history mentioned and upon close examination seems to be there only to add credence to the director’s bid for earthly sainthood–along with his being a “living kidney donor.”

In Nanjing the fellows are a bit better off, but are as essential to the fulfillment of ideologically meaningful goal as an i-Pod in the Gucci bag of an Orange County co-ed. This isn’t the community building your hippie dad knew in the Peace Corps of the seventies when he dug wells and irrigation ditches alongside poor farmers. The only holes that are dug in the examples mentioned are the emotional ones, like above, that once idealistic fellows will spend years extricating themselves from. The Chinese students at both of these schools, while lamenting environmental issues and social ills in the mainland, often come from families that work in government or head up companies that are part-and-parcel of troubling environmental issues and in financial charge of workers that increasingly need more attention than their designer clothed school children.

When I recommended possible educational agencies that might really benefit from the investment of a young foreign teacher, or schools where poor children may never have seen an outsider like those served by Volunteer English Teachers, I was told that it was just too much trouble to negotiate acceptable new contracts. Since when did social commitment get easy?

If you are headed here to help make sure you have the training and support you need to embark on your journey. And be sure you are not just part of your own or someone else’s need to uphold the appearance of humanitarian interests.

In the next installment I will be looking at NGOs, and Missionary Groups operating in Macau and the Mainland…

Coming:

Addicted to Mediocriy II and Dreams, Repression and Violence II….I lost many follow-ups in the server crash and am now reconstructing…

Posted 5 May, 2007 in China-US Medical Foundation, Yangshuo China, 中国, Top Blogs, Travel in China, Human Rights, Macau University of Science and Technology, Heartsongs, Charity in China, In the news, cartoons, Teaching in China, Expats, Intercultural Issues, China Editorials, China Cartoons, Personal Notes, Confucius Slept Here, The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women, Macau

The funniest man in China…. (1)

Who:

Attended Cathedral Chorister School, Durham with Tony Blair ?

Who was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Comedy Performance in 1982 for the 1981 season?

Who once crashed his MacLaren F1, a supercar valued at more than $1,000,000, into the back of a stationary Mini Metro, valued at around $600 USD (the damage was not severe)?

Who was one of the guests at Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles (you would have to have a sense of humor) wedding ?

You know you have been an expat too long when you can discuss, in detail, such trivia about the above referenced English comic, and revered Black Adder member, Rowan Atkinson.

And he has a new movie out:

Ms Yue, a child of the revolution, does not know who the Beatles were, my students would not know Winnie the Pooh from the Pope (he looks like a really old bear, but with a hat, ae?), but even teenage girls would trample Justin Tiberlake enroute to getting a look at Mr. Bean’s mole-like mug. I am headed to the movies tonight to see what all the new fuss is about despite being offered the DVD version by every Chinese person I know. I might even do a review.

I once wrote, in a now lost post, about the Chinese sense of humor. Yes, it has its subtleties in speech (They love and study word play), but good physical stunts are valued over a talented tongue (sinocidal: hands off!).

And it is not just because of language (or my not being real funny) that I have to exaggerate body language or vocal tone to get a class to smile. Here are some examples of some pictures from that lost post that have endured on the net because they still tickle the national funny-bone here in China:

computer addict china

china humor

chins cupid

Posted 22 April, 2007 in Photos, Just Plain Strange, Personal Notes, In the news, 中国, Chinese Media, Entertainment, Confucius Slept Here, Weird China, Asian Humor, China Humor, China Expats, Intercultural Issues, The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women, The Unsinkable Ms Yue, Humor

Things to do in China when you are dying…. (12)

Don Quixote

I am a believer in synchronicity. I am convinced that external events happen in concert with internal “business” that begs attention. And, I believe, that these seemingly random, unplanned instructional happenings occur with a intuitive precision that defies the laws of chance.

My body’s immune system is too vigilant. My natural defenses have enlisted in a war against healthy tissue and I am an uninvited host of the conflict. Treatments to date have not been effective and it is likely that I will die, and much sooner than I had hoped, from autoimmune disease. It has already claimed a gall bladder, nearly killing me in the process, and is now in the late phases of damage to my liver.

So, rather than lament my fate I have decided to take on a new project: I will be travelling next year to all 22 provinces in mainland China. I will end my trip in Beijing in time for a climb up the Great Wall before the Olympics. I have a fellow writer (he looks nothing like Charley or Sancho…) who will be joining me and we look to do some pretty ambitious things (videos, photo logs, the completeion of Confucius Slept Here….) during our travels.

Today I was reminded of Somerset Maugham who thought death to be a dull and dreary affair and I advise you, as Maugham did, to have little to do with it. The new blog will be about China life on life’s terms and about those who choose to live it well.

Posted 31 March, 2007 in Personal Notes, The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women, cartoons, 中国, Travel in China, The Great Wall, American Poet in China, Cancer Journal, Asia, Asian Women, China Expats, China Editorials, China Olympics, China Cartoons, Videos

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