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Following the earthquake in Sichuan on 12 May, China's major mobile phone service providers, China Mobile and China Unicom, set up special bonus plans for the affected areas.
China Mobile automatically added 100 yuan to the account of anyone on the Shenzhou plan in Chengdu, Mianyang, Deyang, Guangyuan, and Aba whose balance dropped below 50 yuan between 12 and 31 May. China Unicom users in those regions had 50 yuan added to their accounts when their balance dropped below 50 yuan.
Although the purpose of the bonuses was to insure that people affected by the quake would not have to worry about their accounts running out of money, SIM card vendors in other parts of the country quickly realized that there was money to be made. Cards that had an initial balance of 50 yuan could be taken to Sichuan, where they'd instantly be worth an additional 100 yuan after one short phone call.
Beijing Youth Daily reports that some phone card wholesalers made around 200,000 yuan overnight by buying up stacks of SIM cards and flying out to Chengdu. The paper quotes a China Mobile employee:
We'd realized that this special incentive had a certain amount of risk, but we never thought that so many people would try to make money off a national disaster! We're outraged!
The employee did not reveal how much had been charged to the company's Shenzhou plan in Sichuan, but said that the increase was astonishing.
The Beijing News notes that the opportunists were taking a risk, too: once activated, the phone cards must be sold within three months or China Mobile will reclaim them, leaving the vendors out their initial investment.
Both China Mobile and China Unicom told the newspapers that they would take steps to combat profiteering, most likely by adjusting the balance one the phone card exits Sichuan. But according to Beijing Youth Daily's contact, the complexity of such a system means that there's no fixed schedule for implementing it.
Meanwhile, the Central Committee of the Communist Party has set up a supervisory group to keep watch over the money and materials pouring into the quake region. Item #7 of its work plan stipulates that anyone found trying to profit off of the national disaster is to be exposed and punished.
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This article is from Danwei.org
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This article was contributed by Iacob Koch-Weser.
With over 500 million users and counting, the cell phone has become the sine qua non of social life in contemporary China. Unlike the car, the Internet, and the café, its influence extends beyond the bourgeois elements of major cities, suffusing the social fabric of center and periphery, urban and rural, and wealthy and poor alike. In a sense, the country is swimming with the tide of globalization - it comes as no surprise that the Chinese media has loudly applauded Raul Castro’s permission of cell phone use in Cuba, an “opening up” policy that provokes some nostalgic reflection on China’s recent past.
Yet what sets the cell phone medium apart on the Mainland is the prominence of the written over the spoken. The text message has taken on a Chinese life of its own, imbued with what Marcel Granet once called the “cosmo-magical effect” of the character. In recent weeks, the wildfire proliferation of “Boycott Carrefour!” messages has provided new evidence of this; people in the remotest hinterlands where mobilized to support the boycott, even though they had never shopped at Carrefour or come across a Frenchman. The speed and scale exceeded even the Japanophobe messages of spring 2005.
More intriguing, however, is the growing popularity of satirical text messages. These texts crystallize the power of the vox populi: the age-old craft of catchy verse, combined with the earthy humor of the disempowered cynic. Two messages circulated widely in recent weeks illustrate this point.
Circulated on May 1st, the first message sets out to prove that “nobody can mess with China”. It concludes with an appeal to boycott Carrefour over the May 1st holidays. Yet the bulk of the text reads more like a scathing satire of Chinese society (original Chinese at bottom of post):
Bin Laden says: “China is the only country in the world where you absolutely cannot cause trouble! That’s because al-Qaeda once sent seven terrorists to launch a surprise attack on China, and the result was this:
When the first terrorist went to blow up a grade splitting bridge for road traffic [where one road goes on top and the other below], he got dizzy and fell over;
When the second terrorist went to blow up a bus, he couldn’t get on because it was too crowded;
When the third terrorist went to blow up a supermarket, he found that his remote detonation device had been pick-pocketed;
When the fourth terrorist went to blow a government building, he was beaten madly to pieces by security guards, who exclaimed: “We’ll teach you to demand wages and appeal to the authorities for help!”;
The fifth terrorist successfully blew up a mine and killed and injured several hundred people, yet after his clandestine return to al-Qaeda, not a single news report about the incident appeared in the media for six months, so al-Qaeda punished him for the “crime of spreading lies”;
The sixth terrorist attempted to blow up Guangzhou, yet when he exited the train station, his explosive material was forcibly stolen by the “Galloping Band” (feiche dang) of motorcycle thieves, which left him traumatized for quite some time;
The seventh terrorist went to blow up Tieling - the base of China’s steel industry - yet the sad appeals of Zhao Benshan [famous actor and comedian from northeast China] discouraged him.
Recently, a female terrorist was sent to blow up Henan, but she was hoodwinked and made a prostitute!
On May 1st, don’t go to Carrefour! Let the world know that China can’t be messed with! Happy Holidays!
It is hard to tell whether the author is truly proud of China and in support of the boycott, or is in fact ridiculing patriotic fervor because it obscures domestic issues, such as poor infrastructure, rampant crime, and strong-armed governance. The satire genre leaves plenty of room for interpretation.
Sent around in early March, the second text message disparages the blatant discrepancy between words and deeds in China today. Many Chinese (by implication, mainly middle-aged men in cities) berate the “wicked” social habits that they themselves partake in:
People these days, man! None of them tell it like it is. They say the share markets are drugs but toy with them; they say money is the source of wickedness but dig for it; they say beautiful women are jailbait but covet them; they say it doesn’t pay to be on top but are all climbing; they say smoke and booze harm the body but can’t quit the habit; they say heaven is beautiful, yet none of them are destined to go!
In today’s society, the poor eat meat, the rich eat shrimp, and the leaders and cadres eat wangba [double meaning of “tortoise” and “***”]. The men want to be tall and the women skinny; lowly dogs dress up, while the becoming shed skin.
In the past, women saved their first time for their husbands; now they only leave the first child for their husbands. In the village, the *** cries at dawn to wake the people; in the city, the men call on chicks at night. In the Old Society, the female performers sold their art and not their bodies; in the New Society, the actresses sell their bodies and not their art.
If you really want to up your salary, then in your heart you must love the Party all the more. You can reward your children with gifts, but then you’ll incur the jealousy of your wife. You might dare to taste seafood and goose’s claw, spend your free time shopping at the mall, and court pretty ladies who make your heart skip a beat; but when consumer prices rise like fucking mad, there is nothing left of all that!
This message — albeit vulgar and crass in tone — conveys the anomie of urban life in 21st Century China. To most readers, the onslaught of parallel sentences simply provides a good laugh over dinner or during a long commute home. After all, the desire for mirthful catharsis is universal, and there is nothing like Seinfeld or Letterman on the Mainland to do the job (and what’s more, contemporary xiangsheng performers don’t nearly match the laugh factor of their predecessors, see this article on Danwei).
Beyond that, however, these messages can enrich our understanding of the Chinese zeitgeist. As postmodern literary studies focus increasingly on the production and consumption of low-brow materials, the text message deserves its rightful place in the field.
(Original Chinese messages below.) Text message 1
本拉登说：中国是全球唯一绝对不能惹的国家！
原因是这样的：基地组织曾派出七名恐怖分子袭击中国，结果：一人在炸立交桥时转晕桥上；一人在炸公交车时没挤上车；一人在炸超市时，炸弹遥控器被盗；一人在炸政府大楼时，被保安狂揍：“叫你讨薪，叫你上访”；一人成功炸矿，死伤数百人，潜回基地后，半年没见任何新闻报道，遂被基地组织以“撒谎罪”处决了；一人曾尝试炸广州，结果刚出火车站就把炸药包给飞车党抢了，半天没缓过神；一人去炸中国钢铁基地铁岭，被赵本山呼悠了；最近派一女恐怖分子去炸河南，被骗去做小姐了！五一别去家乐福！让世界知道中国不好惹！祝节快乐！
Text message 2
现在的人啊！都不讲实话：说股票是毒品，都在玩；说金钱是罪恶之源，都在捞；说美女是祸水，都想要；说高处不胜寒，都在爬；说烟酒伤身体，就不戒；说天堂最美好，都不去！当今社会，穷吃肉，富吃虾，领导干部吃王八；男想高，女想瘦，狗穿衣裳，人露肉；过去把第一次留给丈夫，现在把第一胎留给丈夫；乡下早晨鸡叫人，城里晚上人叫鸡；旧社会戏子卖艺不卖身，新社会演员卖身不卖艺；工资真的要涨了，心里更加爱党了，能给孩子奖赏了，见到老婆敢嚷了，敢尝海鲜鹅掌了，闲时能逛商场了，遇见美女心痒了，结果物价又他妈涨的全没影了！
This article is from Danwei.org
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From this week's Oriental Outlook magazine, a short anecdote about SMS spam offering fake certificates in spinal alignment:
Instant Doctor
by Li Aizhen / OO
This morning I received an SMS message: "Hello! On 8 August, our institute will hold a special training class for X Family Pelvic and Spinal Straightening for neck, upper- and lower-back, and leg pain! You are welcome to come study. Teacher X."
I called up with questions about the fee, and received the following answer: "Five days, 3,000 yuan tuition. We will issue a certificate that acknowledges you have a master-apprentice relationship. From then on you can claim that you are a disciple of this school."
What sort of talent can be fashioned in five days?
In comparision, our studies followed a much more arduous road. From last September we have spend day and night with the master. When there were patients we saw how to treat them; when there were none, we listened to the master's sermons. Going to bed at eleven or twelve at night was a frequent occurrence. The majority of the time we practiced on the master's own body; he would give us affirmation when we performed well, and instruction when we were insufficient. After a half year of this, the master finally believed that we could work on mildly ill patients. He would stand aside, watching us work and pointing out any inadequacies. By this May, when we had seen the master treat cases of high blood pressure, decade-long migranes, and black eyes, after we had throroughly mastered his theories, did he say we could go out on our own. But he still cautioned us to be especially careful with small children and the elderly.
I don't know, does five days worth of studying deserve the title "master"?
Links and Sources
- Oriental Outlook (瞭望东方周刊) 2007.08.16 (#196): 李爱珍, 《速成医生》
- Image from Gupen.com
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 Illegal characters (left) paired with their standard counterparts. Is it illegal to attempt to display Chinese characters on a low-resolution screen? That's one interpretation of a Hunan man's complaint about his Nokia mobile phone. Here's Law Weekly's breathless account from its 4 June issue:
Have you ever heard of a phone that has more than 30 incorrect characters? Recently, this weirdness happened to Mr. Zhang of Xiangtan, Hunan. And the phone that "produced" these typos was the famous international brand, Nokia! Mr. Zhang, who was once a Chinese teacher, believes that this infringes on consumer's interests and seriously harms the authority of Chinese characters to the point of hurting the feelings of Chinese consumers.
Mr. Zhang wants to sue Nokia to get it to recall the "typo phone" and issue an open apology to all consumers.
...
"I never imagined that such a basic error would appear on a famous international brand like Nokia." When Mr. Zhang started entering Chinese characters into an SMS, this reporter saw that the three middle horizontal lines of the 真 character had changed to two, while in 置 they had become a single vertical line. The 言 on the bottom of 警 was just a dot, a line, and a square, and was missing two horizontal lines. Then the reporter used Mr. Zhang's mobile to input 攀, 搏, 青, and 遭, and found that they were all short a few limbs.
Anyone who's had to read small text on a cell-phone screen or a poorly-designed web page has certainly run across similar problems (which may actually appear in the quoted article, depending on how your browser renders things). The left-hand characters in the above image, for example, were enlarged from a web-browser set to a small font size.
Even the phone - a 1200-yuan Nokia 1600 - is not unique in its character issues. Southeast Express unearthed a second case in Fuzhou, only this time the culprit was a low-end domestic brand - a 399-yuan Hisense - whose owner couldn't correctly write the characters 碧, 喜, or 贵.
Unfortunately, this technical solution to the problem of displaying complicated characters in a limited space might be illegal. From LW:
Xiao Jun, a law professor at Hunan Normal University, said that according to the National Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language, the standard spoken and written Chinese language used in information processing and information technology products shall be in conformity with the norms of the State [Article 15]. It it evident that Nokia has violated that law, and it should correct the mistaken characters as soon as possible. Second, according to the stipulations in the Law on Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests, Nokia's manufacturer's use of non-standard characters in its mobile phones violated the rights of consumers and is disrespectful to consumers and to the language and writing of China.
Similarly, SE found a government staffer in the Fuzhou Education Bureau who suggested that the phone manufacturers might be violating the Language Law.
More unfortunately, Nokia doesn't seem to be handling this PR crisis very skillfully. The LW investigation found a representative who explained that it was a question of resolution, but the company could not explain why the horizontal lines in 置 were replaced with a single vertical one. And in a follow-up story the next week, LW reported that Nokia refused to offer any further explanation.
Here's an op-ed that ran in The Beijing News on Monday that castigates Nokia's recalcitrance:
Nokia, why are you so pig-headed?
by Chen Jieren / TBN
...
When consumers and the media reported these errors to Nokia China, Nokia responded: "No comment." Furthermore, when the Hunan Provincial Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision Complaint Center conveyed to Nokia China the complaints it had received, there was still no response from Nokia. So one might ask, "Nokia, why are you so pig-headed?" Pig-headed (牛) here can be understood as Nokia's attitude that it can bully consumers with its size and care nothing for language errors.
Language and writing concerns the culture of a country, and at its root it concerns that country's ethnic and national dignity. Because of this, many countries, including our own, have implemented laws tailored to the standardization of the use of their own spoken and written language. For example, our country has implemented laws requiring good sold by foreign countries in China to be accompanied by a Chinese intruction manual; in actuality, this is protection of the dignity of culture as signified in language.
Certainly, a few language errors will not obstruct consumers' ability to use the mobile phone for communication, but if we look at this IT product against the breadth and frequency of information transmission, we will discover the dangers posed by a mobile phone that uses non-standard characters. For, through their continual use and widespread transmission, mobile phones have become an important language medium. Serious mistakes in the Chinese characters of this medium will misguide the public and bring harm to the serious cultural dignity of Chinese characters. For this reason, the National Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language clearly stipulates that "the standard spoken and written Chinese language used in information processing and information technology products shall be in conformity with the norms of the State." A Nokia mobile phone is a typical IT product; whatever the reason, there is no excuse for using non-standard or wrong Chinese characters. The data shows that Nokia sells huge numbers of mobile phones in China, millions of handsets sold to Chinese people every year. You can easily imagine the cultural violation posed by the mistaken Chinese characters in these phones. Regrettably, in the face of consumer complaints, media criticism, and even notification by the government, Nokia just doesn't care. Such an action harms the commercial reputation of an international brand, but even more, it is an offense to the cultural dignity and national feeling of China.
At present, Nokia sits atop the list of consumer complaints because of this "typo-gate." The manufacturer must make a swift decision to arrest the effects. For example, it could first issue a quick recall of all mobile phones that have errors in Chinese characters. Actions by its peers in the world market demonstrate that in matters of the dignity and national feeling of a country, the best choice for a business is to quickly recall all products with language mistakes to clearly demonstrate that it sincerely respects the dignity and feelings of another country. Second, it should work swiftly to uncover the source of the Chinese character errors and issue an open apology. Third, it should swiftly halt the distribution and sales of phones with similar problems until the problems have been completely cleared up.
* * *
And today, TBN ran a letter in response, from a civil servant from Hubei:
To get an apology from Nokia, the government must be strong
by Zhou Zhinan / TBN
...
Yes, that Nokia should apologize, and how it should apologize, are not problems. The issue is what to do if it doesn't apologize. For powerful companies, relying on consumers "voting with their feet" to change policy or actions is not highly effective. The government's oversight of the economy, markets, and companies is the key to resolving the issue. A night-watchman government on the one hand must guarantee companies' free operation and full competition, but on the other must also guarantee that consumers' rights, the law, and the dignity of the state is not infringed. For this reason, the government must take an active role in this matter. But the facts are that when consumers' complaints were turned over to Nokia, the Hunan Provincial Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision did not take any further steps, so Nokia is free to happily dissemble.
Evidently, when the products of a multinational corporation have problems, we cannot merely "persuade them to be good" by, for example, asking them to take measures to correct their errors. When the company reacts, then everyone is happy. Right now what is lacking is the government to step in to take legal action. In this matter, if the government does not take a rigid posture, then I do not believe that Nokia will say anything at all.
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