China proposes holiday changes
BEIJING, China (AP) -- Stuck in a crowd of about 200 other tourists, Zhong Jian and her friends waited for an hour to buy tickets for a boat cruise down the scenic Li River before giving up. Their problem: scheduling their trip during the May national holidays.
"Every place we went, we saw so many people," said Zhong, a 24-year-old travel agent. Finally, they got the ride by soliciting help from a local driver, who used his connections. "It was chaos."
As China becomes more prosperous, its people are traveling more on their vacations -- and overwhelming the facilities. The resulting public backlash is prompting the government to rethink its tightly regulated national holiday policy.
Most Chinese cannot take a break when they want. Rather, the government has set three weeks a year as national holidays. Factories and offices shut down -- giving many workers time off they might otherwise never get.
But putting so many of the country's 1.3 billion people on the move at one time is causing a huge national headache.
Under a proposal issued earlier this month, the government suggested paring the weeklong May break to one day and making three new one-day holidays out of traditional celebrations including grave-sweeping day, the dragon boat festival and the mid-autumn festival.
The plan has set off a lively debate in the state-run media. Some hail the changes as a boost for traditional culture, and others say the change isn't enough. They call for the system to be scrapped completely in favor of letting people choose their own holidays.
The holiday reform debate "indicates that China's becoming a more normal country. They don't have to micromanage everyone's vacations," said Arthur Kroeber, director of Dragonomics, a Beijing-based economics research firm.
Changes in holidays are another measure of how the country's economic modernization is remaking Chinese society. After coming to power, communist China's founders eliminated many traditional festivals in an attempt to engineer a break with what they considered the feudal past.
In 1999, with the economy limping and ordinary Chinese hoarding their earnings in banks, the government decided that longer vacations would encourage people to spend money. The Lunar New Year, Labor Day (May 1) and National Day (October 1) breaks were lengthened to full weeks called "Golden Weeks."
Travel spending hit 14 billion yuan ($1.9 billion) during that year's October break, according to government figures. In 2007, tourists spent 64.2 billion yuan ($8.6 billion) in the same period, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The surge translates into jammed planes, trains and buses, overbooked hotels and damage to historic and natural sites. Travelers overrun popular destinations such as the Great Wall, Beijing's Forbidden City and sacred Mount Tai in eastern China.
Fed up, many middle-class Chinese are traveling abroad over the three Golden Weeks to avoid the hordes at home.
Meanwhile, a growing number of companies are staggering breaks, even though the law requires them to pay employees three times their daily salaries to work during holidays to eliminate production shutdowns.
Economists have cheered the new government plan as a good first step toward alleviating congestion and pushing tourism companies to improve service.
"The Chinese people are beginning to respect Chinese traditions again," said Wang Qiyan, director of the Research Center of China's Leisure Economy at Beijing's Renmin University.
Ultimately, some experts argue, the government should stop ordering people when to take a break and instead mandate a paid-vacation system, as many other countries have.
"The current plan is not an ideal one yet," Wang said.
The changes could be put into place next year, state media has said. Authorities have said that they will incorporate suggestions from businesses and the public in the final plan.
One newspaper, the aggressive Southern Metropolis Daily, criticized the government for maintaining undue sway over how people spend their leisure time. It called for a paid-vacation system and blamed today's problems on policy-making "without discussion and communication."
"The Golden Weeks were the result of a decision of merely the government, instead of the agreement of the public," the paper said in an editorial.
But not everyone supports the proposed changes.
At least 21 media outlets have sent a letter to the State Council, China's cabinet, to protest the proposal, saying that employees need all three weeklong holidays to get proper rest from work.
Zhong, the travel agent, said staggered holidays would make traveling harder to coordinate with friends or family, because now everyone has the same days off. She predicted crowds would balloon further during the two remaining one-week holidays.
"All three holidays are already so crowded," she said. "If they remove one, it'll be even worse," she said.
"Harmony" the goal in China's Olympic Torch relay
Ever since Chinese President Hu Jintao floated the idea of "building a harmonious society" -- an attempt to tackle myriad domestic problems brought about by China's unrestrained growth -- "hexie," or harmony, has become one of the most beloved words in the Chinese communist vernacular, suggesting anything from social stability to world peace. With the Beijing 2008 Olympics, China is seeking to demonstrate to the world its penchant for harmony.
In March of next year, Beijing will launch the Olympic torch relay under the theme "the Journey of Harmony." The longest in Olympic history, the relay will see torch-bearers transport the Olympic flame across five continents.
The route is planned to traverse through an estimated 20 international cities and 113 more than 100 cities on mainland China, together with a side trip to the peak of Mount Everest from the Tibet side. Torch-bearers will carry a scroll-shaped torch adorned with the traditional Chinese xiangyun, or "lucky cloud" that symbolizes harmony.
But as genial as China appears to be, some critics are not impressed. They are determined to embarrass the Olympic host.
Before the relay begins, it has already courted controversy. The dispute centers on the plan to include Taiwan and Tibet in the domestic route of the torch relay. Critics have slammed the route as Beijing's cunning ploy to legitimize its claims over the two regions -- Taiwan is considered by Beijing to be a renegade province -- and some are threatening to boycott the relay.
Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, responsible for the self-ruled island's relations with mainland China, refuses the route and dismisses it as "a brazen attempt [of Beijing] to downgrade Taiwan to a part of China." In the case of Tibet, pro-independence activists outside China have mounted similar attacks on Beijing; last April the Chinese authorities briefly detained a small group of American activists after they staged a protest at Mount Everest against the torch relay route.
"China is embarrassed, and so it should be," says Lhadon Tethong of the U.S.-based Students For a Free Tibet, which organized the protest. "If they don't take any step toward resolving the issue, they will only see more protests as a platform to shame them."
But so far as the torch relay is concerned, it may not be just Tibet and Taiwan that are the areas of embarrassment for China. Recent surges of social unrests plaguing China may also disrupt the theme of harmony.
While its economy is growing at a remarkable rate, China has in recent years seen a sharp rise in large-scale -- and often violent -- protests, demonstrations and petitions across the country. Many of these incidents have been triggered by illegal land grabs, inadequate compensation for land requisition, official corruption or closure of state-owned factories. The majority of protesters are poor rural workers and peasants, who until a few years ago have been a relatively quiet lot.
According to official statistics from China's Public Security Bureau, the number of "mass incidents" -- an official euphemism for any social disturbance that involves 100 people or more -- totaled 87,000 in 2005, up 6.6 percent on 2004 and 50 percent in 2003. While the bureau recently said the figure had dropped by 16.5 percent in 2006, reports on violent protests and public clashes with the authorities continue to flood the media.
In Chongqing in western China, for example, three large-scale protests erupted in the space of merely four weeks between June and July. The first outbreak saw 10,000 locals clashed with police after city inspectors beat a flower seller to death. Three weeks later, 10,000 villagers protested outside a government office against the authorities' alleged failures in a school murder case. This was soon followed by a violent protest, in which more than 5,000 residents, dissatisfied with a land compensation arrangement, confronted 1,000 armed police. One man was reportedly killed.
In many other regions, public protests were just as bloody. One reported incident was a three-month standoff that began in July 2005, when residents from Taishi village in Guangzhou sought to oust a corrupt village chief. Later, about 1,500 villagers clashed with riot police. Reporters, lawyers and academics going to the village were reportedly beaten up.
According to Hong Kong-based China scholar Willy Lam Wo-lap, the sharp rise of protests across China points to an uneven justice system in the communist country.
"After nearly 30 years of reform, China is divided into various power blocs ... and classes. Some are preying on the weak and defenseless, such as peasants, rural workers or the urban unemployed. There is no level playing field and no resort to justice," he says.
Wu Zhong, China editor of Asia Times Online, claims the absence of fair play, coupled with China's insatiable appetite for economic growth, has helped fuel Chinese society with anger.
"The performance of local officials is judged by the GDP of their localities," says Wu, citing the country's environmental degradation. "This drives them to push for economic growth at the expense of people's interest. They don't care if people live or die. There is a lot of anger in society."
To restore social stability, Chinese President Hu Jintao proposed in 2004 the notion of "building a harmonious society," which covered such areas as democracy development and a better relationship between the people and the government. A series of measures then ensued, including the abolition of the 2,600-year-old agricultural tax and education subsidies for poor rural children.
"However, laudable these policies are, they cannot solve the basic problem: there is no level playing field. There are built-in, institutional injustices in the system," Lam says.
With less than one year to go before the torch relay begins, Lam believes Beijing will go to great lengths to stifle social unrest because the Hu leadership "can't afford to lose face."
"More than a year ago Beijing set up a system of security [featuring] electronic surveillance systems to snuff out seeds of dissent," Lam says. "The chances for large-scale outbreaks of disorder during the torch relay or the Games itself are small."
But Wu says the time has changed and "mass incidents" during the torch relay or the Games cannot be ruled out. "Ordinary people in China today are not as easy to manipulate as before. They may make some noise just to let outsiders know [their plight]."
As for the controversy over Taiwan and Tibet, Wu believes it will die down eventually.
"The pro-independence force doesn't have much impact on Tibet today... And I reckon Taiwan and Beijing would eventually reach some kind of agreement," he says. "After all, this is China's first Olympics. It is eager to do a good job."
China probe captures lunar image
BEIJING, China (AP) -- China displayed the first image of the moon captured by its Chang'e 1 lunar probe at a gala ceremony last month, marking the formal start of the satellite's mission to document the lunar landscape.
Unveiling the image at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, Premier Wen Jiabao hailed it as a major step in "the Chinese race's 1,000-year-old dream" of exploring the moon. The black and white image clearly showed craters on the moon's surface.
China hopes the probe, launched late last month, will have surveyed the entire surface of the moon at least once by early next year.
The probe's launch closely followed the start of a similar mission by Japan, prompting speculation over a new space race in Asia. India plans to launch a lunar probe in April.
Chinese officials, however, have played down talk of such competition, saying Beijing wanted to use its program to work with other countries and hoped to join in building the international space station.
"We have a very open program and we are willing to cooperate according to common international practices," said Sun Laiyan, head of the China National Space Administration.
In 2003, China became only the third country in the world after the United States and Russia to send a human into Earth's orbit, following that up with a two-man mission in 2005. But Sun said China had no plans to put a man on the moon -- yet.
"For the time being we have no plans to send any Chinese onto the moon," he said.
"So please do not put even more pressure on our shoulders. But having said that, I'm confident that one day China will send its taikonaut on the moon and I hope to see that day," Sun said at a news conference, using the Chinese term for astronaut.
The Chang'e 1 satellite, slung into space by a Long March 3A rocket, will survey the moon's surface using stereo radar and other tools as a precursor to a planned lunar landing in 2012 and a mission to gather lunar samples by 2020.
Chinese space officials have said they were being careful not to travel territory already covered by the space programs of Russia, the U.S., Japan and the European Space Agency.
China's space program is backed by the country's secretive military. While Beijing insists it is committed to a peaceful space program, analysts point to numerous potential applications for its technology.
China alarmed the international community in January when it blasted apart an old satellite in space, using a land-based missile.
Sun twice referred to the space program as fulfilling "national security" needs, but did not elaborate.
The queen of eastern art
"What is Chinese contemporary art?" muses Pearl Lam tousling her streaked hair, jangling industrial looking bangles.
She is sitting on a zebra print sofa in her Beijing home surrounded by an eccentric mish-mash of contemporary art and furniture, some of which is by Chinese artists she has helped to install on the scene. Antique Chinese chairs sit side-by-side with modern pieces by one of her protégés, contemporary artist Shao Fan.
"I like integration and I like mixture. I don't like a total look. I don't like the minimalist. I like the "Pearl" look," Lam explains.
Like her decorating tastes, Lam is a woman of contradictions. You could say she is the perfect embodiment of the many paradoxes of a newly emerging Chinese culture.
She steps out to the best parties in the latest fashions, but her socialite lifestyle belies a strong intellectual streak and commitment to Chinese art, which has placed her at the heart of the country's booming contemporary scene.
Which is why when she founded her first art gallery in 1992 she decided to call it "Contrasts."
"I am very eclectic and I like differences, and differences for me [are] very important," says Lam.
She extended her personal outlook into the gallery and its overarching themes are the relationship between art, architecture and design, and celebrating difference.
Since the mid-90s she has organized numerous exhibitions notable for shaking up people's perceptions.
She has hitched a ride on the tails of the zeitgeist and as Chinese art exploded internationally, Lam's empire expanded. She now has galleries in Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Hong Kong and London and plans for another in Los Angeles.
Lam has borne witness to the growing popularity of her country's art for the best part of 20 years: "Since the late 80s and early 90s western connoisseurs have been collecting [Chinese art]. The Swiss, the Germans and the French, and then the last three years it has just exploded. The market really exploded because of investment," she observes.
But back to the question of what Chinese contemporary art is.
Historically, there have always been two different but parallel kinds of Chinese art, according to Lam.
"Traditionally we have export art, export porcelain, export painting and then we have what we like, what the Chinese like. Today it's the same thing," she said.
"The western definition of Chinese contemporary art is really about political painting," Lam explains.
Andy Warhol's iconic screen prints of erstwhile leader Mao and media portrayals of China's Communist ideology set the scene for a politicized western view of Chinese contemporary art.
This view was further strengthened by a new branch of contemporary opposition art: "In the early 90s, end of the 80s, artists were creating art to challenge the government as a silent challenge. The might have a laughing face but the undercurrent of those paintings is about sneering at the government. I think the West is taking that and framing Chinese contemporary art as political painting," Lam continues.
Usually the Chinese approach art in terms of how it fits into the development of their 5,000-year-old tradition. Calligraphy, ink brush and realism are still highly prized. As a result there is a striking difference between the work in local Chinese art auctions and what is found in the international ones.
But the immense popularity of a certain kind of Chinese art in international markets is now affecting the purchases Chinese will make, and even the kind of art being made by young artists.
"A lot of Chinese are now buying from the western point of view because of investment," says Lam.
In fact, western values prevail across the globe when it comes to evaluating art.
In China's case, this is because there is not yet a good structure -- museums and other institutions that can act as opinion formers -- so standards currently come from outside.
The prevalence of western values means Chinese artists who want an international career need endorsement from the international markets and bend themselves to create the kind of art that will get it.
"They bend themselves to something like conceptualism when we have no conceptualism," she said.
Lam and a group of academics and artists want to change that. They have been discussing what contemporary Chinese art really is for some time.
"I hope the west would give some time to understanding what is our sensibility. Why we would not have conceptualism, why we are still appreciating realism," said Lam.
Contrasts Gallery's current exhibition, "Rewind," is all about establishing the evolution from Chinese traditions to contemporary art, and is a result of these debates.
The artists showcased in the exhibition are all creating Chinese landscape painting within the evolution of Chinese landscape painting using western media.
"It is about reinvention of tradition, creating a synthesis using western expression, western media but behind that is all about Chinese traditional art philosophy," said Lam.
Lam sees her role in this project as something of an ambassador, going to museums in Europe and the U.S. and explaining Chinese sensibilities and the project to create a strong, independent contemporary Chinese art scene.
On this subject, Lam is typically frank: "As long as they are willing to listen, we are willing to speak," she said.
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