Jianjun's Blog

Award-winning Singaporean producer Siok Siok Tan‘s new Beijing 2008 Olympics documentary ‘Boomtown Beijing‘（北京沸腾）will be screening on April 20th, 2008 in Beijing. All proceeds from the screening will be donated to the Library Project.

‘Boomtown Beijing’ approaches Beijing Olympics from common people’s eyes. For event updates and movie trailer, visit Boomtown Beijing web site. To reserve tickets and for venue information, visit this link.

Sina, one of the largest and most notable Chinese portals, launched an ‘Online Signature Protest Against Slanted Western Media Report’ on April 4th. As of April 6th, there are already about 1.94 million signatures recorded on 98,068 pages with 3062 posts slashing against some of the western media and the number is still growing while I am writing this piece.

The protest is against reports by CNN, BBC and a number of other western media which published distorted/partial reports about recent ‘beating, smashing, looting and burning’ criminal activities carried out by some local people in Lhasa.

For more information, please visit the following pages (Chinese):

The signing page: http://tinyurl.com/5pyvnb
Comments: http://tinyurl.com/6crlcz

My parents for the first time showed me my birth certificate (1971). It’s interesting to see the following paragraph printed at the top of that document:

最新指示
The Latest Directive

要使全体干部和全体人民经常想到我国是一个社会主义的大国，但又是一个经济落后的穷国，这是一个很大的矛盾。要使我国富强起来，需要几十年艰苦奋斗的时间，其中包括执行厉行节约、反对浪费这样一个勤俭建国的方针。

All cadres and the whole people must be reminded frequently that our nation is at the same time a big socialist country and a poor country with a backward economy, which is a big contradiction. In order for our country to become prosperous and strong, we need to endure hardship and struggle for a few decades, which includes practicing the policy of constructing the nation adhering strictly to thriftiness and opposing wastefulness.

Ah, cultural revolution was still going on at the time.

Another interesting thing is the document was typeset in both Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters, indicating the work to simplify the writing system was still underway.

The last line of the Birth Certificate indicates the document was necessary when applying for the newborn baby’s Hukou（户口 – household registration record）and benefits.