From the AllSet Blog: Web-savvy learners of Chinese have known for some time that there’s no single comprehensive grammar resource for Chinese grammar on the entire internet. Sure, there are some very helpful pages out there, but they’re not comprehensive or interlinked, or at least not publicly available.

We initially created the wiki to scratch our own itch. AllSet Learning provides highly personalized study plans for its clients, making use of a variety of materials, often including such disparate sources as ChinesePod lessons, textbooks, magazines, online articles, blog posts, and Weibo posts. While offering a variety of materials is great for keeping learners interests high, it does create a problem for tracking progress. How can we keep straight what our clients have studied, and what they still need to study?

The Chinese Grammar Wiki is our solution to the grammar part of this issue. Tracking client progress in grammar started with static lists of grammar points, and gradually involved into the current Chinese Grammar Wiki. We tried a number of approaches, but realized that the ideal solution needs to be online, easily edited, easily expanded, and heavily interlinked. Wikipedia was the obvious model for such a resource, and the Chinee Grammar Wiki is powered by MediaWiki, the same software that powers Wikipedia.

The site is still in early days, but already has more than 500 articles on Chinese grammar in the wiki. Unlike a wiki like Wikipedia, the Chinese Grammar Wiki doesn’t allow anonymous editing. However, if you feel you have something to add, John and his team hope you contact them to be an approved editor. All content in the wiki is released under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license, and so is free to share, distribute and re-use the information in a variety of ways.

As an on-again, off-again Chinese learner, I’m pretty excited for the resource. Few people I’ve met have spent as much time as John thinking about language learning, particularly as to how it relates to Chinese. His blog and various resources at Sinosplice have been extremely helpful over the years, and I have to imagine that with his ambition and love for the language behind the wiki, it’s sure to be fantastic. With some hefty Year of the Dragon mandarin learning resolutions to myself, I’m certain I’ll be wearing out my bookmark to the site in no time.

This past November the following question was posted on Quora: Why do so many Chinese learners seem to hate Dashan (Mark Rowswell)? He seems like a nice guy. Does he secretly eat children or something?. I’m sure we all have our own answers to that question, but none are likely to come close to the insight and self-reflection that the big Canuck himself answered with yesterday.

Mark Rowswell, the man behind the Mandarin, broke it down into 5 reasons:

1. Overuse – People are sick and tired of hearing the name “Dashan”;
2. Resentment (Part A) – Dashan’s not the only Westerner who speaks Chinese fluently;
3. Resentment (Part B) – Being a foreign resident in China is not easy and Dashan gets all the breaks;
4. Political/Cultural – People wish Dashan had more of an edge;
5. Stereotyping – The assumption that Dashan is a performing monkey.

The whole answer is a bit lengthy, but well worth the read. Here are a few choice excerpts:

On why Dashan is so popular (related to #2 above):

… Dashan represents or symbolizes something very powerful to a Chinese audience. I don’t want to get too deeply into this, because my answer is already running too long, but let me say this: Chinese have a very complex and conflicting view of themselves and the world at large. They have a very strong self-identity and sense of pride, and this leads to a strong sense of “us vs. them” and of being misunderstood and misaligned by the rest of the world, or the West in particular, as well as a strong sense that they are gradually losing their language and culture in the process of globalization. In the face of this, Dashan represents a Westerner who appreciates and respects China, who has learned the language and understands the culture and has even become “more Chinese than the Chinese”. It’s a very powerful and reassuring image that appeals to very deep-rooted emotions.

On being Canadian (related to #4 above):

Culturally, the Dashan character does tend to be quite Canadian. We’re just not as aggressive in general as Americans. The adjective most used to describe Canadians is “nice”. How dull and boring can you get?

Although Canada and America are very close culturally, there are some fundamental differences. Primarily, Canadians never consider themselves to be number one in anything apart from hockey. And although we are both relatively young nations built by successive waves of immigration, Canadians have a much weaker self-identity than Americans. We don’t have a strong mainstream culture of our own, which I think makes us more malleable culturally. When Canadians come to China, we don’t do things “the Canadian way” because nobody has the slightest idea what “the Canadian way” is. So we tend to adapt pretty well to different cultures.

On why Dashan isn’t political (also related to #4 above):

… So I work within cultural norms. This spills over into the political realm, because, to be honest, Chinese cultural acceptance of foreign political criticism is almost nil. In short, I don’t have to worry about what government censors might say because Chinese audiences would never let me get that far anyway.

I could make a short public statement like that of Christian Bale recently or Björk a few years ago. It’s very easy to do and ensures you get very good coverage in the Western media. You go home and everyone thinks you are a person of moral conviction who stood up to the great Chinese monster. But the fact is that these kinds of statements elicit almost no sympathy whatsoever from ordinary Chinese citizens. They simply are not culturally acceptable to the broad Chinese audience. And it’s very difficult to see what impact they have other than to further convince ordinary Chinese people that China is misunderstood and that the Western world is antagonistic towards China and resentful of China’s development. What use is that?

I’m curious to read what others think of Dashan. John, of Sinosplice, mentioned in his post on this topic that, “the hubbub about Dashan has finally started to die down”. I can’t tell if this is true, or if after a certain number of years you just stop noticing it. Any FOB laowai still cringe at the mention of Dashan by a taxi driver? Do the new generation of foreigners in China even know who Dashan is?

A new year and a new douche bag to add to our “Bad Laowai” category. Ryan Fedoruk, a 40-year-old former part-time English teacher from Canada, sublet about 30 apartments to more than 100 foreigners in Shanghai before taking the money and running.

Eva Gao, the Chinese lawyer representing his victims, sums things up on her blog:

Fedoruk began subletting apartments in Shanghai in early 2011. He would post ads online, particularly SmartShanghai.com using multiple accounts, and describe himself as the landlord. He would also refer to himself as the landlord in his contracts with tenants.

He rented one apartment after another, and his so-called business gained steam in the middle of the year when many newly-arrived university students, mostly from Europe, were looking for housing. At its peak, he was renting close to 30 apartments in Puxi and Pudong to more than 80 tenants at the same time.

Then the school semester started and business slowed. By mid-semester, the perpetually increasing number of tenants that he had relied on for cashflow had disappeared. He had trouble finding tenants for a couple apartments in the French Concession area and, compounding the problem, would give steep discounts to fill empty rooms in others. “For him it became nothing more than filling rooms,” wrote one tenant who worked part-time for Fedoruk. “It seemed like he was desperate.”

Over time, a rumor started going around: Ryan Fedoruk does not return deposits. In August, a prospective tenant had even written a lengthy email to warn others about renting from Fedoruk. According to her email, a realtor told her that “everyone knows Ryan. He is what we call a second-hand landlord (二房东). He rents and sublets, then he takes the money from the tenants but doesn’t pay the landlord. Always finds a way to run away.”

The email unfortunately did not circulate to many of Fedoruk’s tenants and he, according to those he abandoned, left Shanghai on December 24, 2011 without returning rent deposits and without paying rent to many of his landlords.

For additional coverage, check out the initial story on Shanghaiist, along with a follow-up post that tracks down a bunch of pictures of the con man, as well as relays the story of one of his victims:

Ryan picked me up with his taxi where I was and he took me to his place. I was very cautious, you know, I asked many questions, asked for a real contract, read everything, asked for a deposit receipt and he gave me his passport photocopy as a proof of his good will. I had told him on the phone about all my previous issues with flats in Shanghai, the difficulties to communicate with Chinese Landlords, my previous deposit which had been taken from me and he replied me with a text I still have: “I understand my dear .. I hear that a lot about landlords .. but I am good guy”.

This dude’s certainly not the only laowai loser scamming his way through China, but he’s the first I’ve heard of with so many victims. If you have any information about Fedoruk or his crimes, be sure to get in touch with Eva Gao.

China Daily: Foreigners who stay in China for more than six months will be required to give their fingerprints to local police when applying for residence certificates, according to a draft law submitted to the top legislature on Monday.

The draft law on the management of the exit and entry of personnel also empowers the ministries of public security and foreign affairs to decide if a foreigner should leave their fingerprints or other human biological characteristics when they enter China.

The proposal also stipulates that foreigners staying for longer than 180 days should apply for a residential certificate and leave their fingerprints.

Yang Huanning, vice-minister of public security, told lawmakers on Monday morning that the draft law can facilitate increasing people exchanges, while preventing those who should not come remaining outside the country.

The proposal also stipulates that foreign nationals, who own companies and delay wages to workers in China, cannot leave the country.

Foreigners suspected of illegal entry, stay and employment can be detained and investigated for 60 days at the longest if the case is complicated, according to the draft law.

I’m not at all against the government cleaning up the rather dodgy immigration system, but if time, money and energy is going to be spent to improve things, why not put some effort into making it more legitimate, friendly and fluid; rather than making foreigners feel like criminals the moment they arrive in the country. And what the hell is meant by “other human biological characteristics”… hair samples? Blood? Urine? Semen?

More at CRIEnglish.com.

h/t to Jeffry J Davis.

For most of my life the OCP debate was completely absent in my daily dialog. I don’t know that I ever gave it a moment’s thought before coming to China. Living here though, and watching as China-centric headlines increasingly fill Western news cycles, it’s a topic that repeatedly finds its way into my thoughts — particularly now that I’ve filled my quota.

In the reverse, prior to leaving North American soil, the great Pro-Choice/Pro-Life battle regularly found its way into my readings, discussions and thoughts. Since coming to China, not so much.

The Pro-Life/Pro-Choice discourse, in my admittedly limited understanding, primarily boils down to a Religion vs. Liberty debate. The religious feel that it is murder to have an abortion, and the libertarians believe women should have the decision to do what they wish to their body. What I find interesting is that the All Girls Allowed organization mentioned above, and others like it, while being aligned with the ‘pro-life’ camp, are primarily forwarding an argument of liberty: The OCP is immoral because it forces women to murder their unborn babies. It removes choice, and not for a fetus (as I’m sure someone is just itching to poke a hole in my description with), but specifically for the women involved. They are pro-choice.

Ok, not exactly. Their “pro-choice” only extends to allowing a women to have as many babies as she wants, not to her having the option of terminating the pregnancy should she choose to do so. Ultimately there’s an agenda there that would one day see the organizations switch to a similar rhetoric that their beliefs push to a Western-facing world — namely the encouragement of a system for authoritarian control of what women can and can’t do with their bodies.

And this is where organizations like the above lose my support. Their message is soured, to me at least, by their affiliation to religion and the beliefs that come with it that restrict another person’s liberty. I have a hard time seeing action spurred by religion, no matter how well-intended, as anything but devious. I know many readers are religious, and I know that statement is going to be a volatile one.

I wear my aversion to religion rather overtly. However, I am not trying to say that all actions of the religious are devious, simply because of their beliefs. There are plenty in the Faithful masses, just as in the non-believer circles, that do good simply because good needs doing, and not because someone or something told them it was the key to a magical place.

But ultimately, I can’t take seriously any organization that puts, as a cornerstone of their operational philosophy, prayer (nestled right between “Get Involved” and “News & Resources”). Adding “god” to an NGO is like adding made up interviews to a New York Times investigative piece. It strengthens your point to anyone who emphatically believes you or what you do, but muddles its validity and challenges your motivations with anyone even remotely skeptical.

I believe it is wrong to force a woman to abort her baby due to our rather fuzzy understanding of population and population control. And when that baby is nearly full-term, I think that’s criminal. It brings me to tears thinking about it, and I am not strong enough to spend too long considering what it must actually be like for women, for families, to actually go through that. To borrow a phrase, late-term abortions are murder. An abstract idea of “possibly better for the common good in the long term” does absolutely zero to temper my feelings about this. I would think anyone with a child feels similarly.

But when the mandate of your organization has a dark shadow just out of sight that would eventually likewise force women to sacrifice their liberty for what someone else feels is right, how can I support you? How can your message hold validity when it is tainted with the same self-righteousness and suppression that on the surface it is trying to stop?

Subtitled with “A Cautionary Tale for Expats in China“, I was curious to read both what Carver endured and, perhaps most voyeuristically, what he did to get there.

His description of the long boring days (all eight of them), spartan comforts, and brief brush with man-on-man-on-man action were not without their charms. However, throughout the telling, I was finding it hard not to feel like Lionel got exactly what he asked for.

Carver’s reason for landing in the clink is pretty much absurd, from start to finish. Washing up in Shanghai, in search of the “jade dream”, he immediately shrugs off the ESL racket to try his hand at a less-worn path. He takes a job with a real-estate company that promises him regular pay and a Z-visa — neither of which materialize.

Eventually my 3-month tourist visa expired. I thought I would be okay as long as I laid low—but I was wrong. There are eyes everywhere in China, especially on foreigners.

It was in Huaqiaozhen, a suburb of Shanghai, that everything began to unravel. I had just signed a lease for a cheap, shared apartment, but, strangely, the landlord never came to collect the rent or sign the contract.

One Saturday morning I awoke to a knock at my door. I answered, thinking it would be the landlord, only to come face to face with a PSB (Public Security Bureau) officer checking identifications for registration.

Carver repeatedly fails to renew his visa or register with the PSB/police station. He also continues to rather blatantly dodge the authorities, who are quite obviously aware something’s, well, dodgy about this fella. He was finally busted after hiding out on his balcony in sight of the cops below — no translation needed, that screams “guilty of something” in all languages.

They took him to the station, explained he was staying in the country illegally with an expired visa (a fact that surely came as no surprise) and had the option to either pay a fine or go to jail for eight days. I’m pretty sure if we knew Lionel, like personally, we all would have known from the outset that going to jail was the option he would choose. I mean, his decisions up to that point hadn’t exactly been stellar — at least he’s consistent.

Go check out the whole story (really there’s bed shaking prison love that would make Tobias Beecher clench). “A Cautionary Tale for Expats in China” though? I don’t know iLook China well enough to know the blog’s readership all that well. We get a mixed bag of readers here at Lost Laowai though, and I’m decently confident this will be anything but a cautionary tale to most, if not all, of them.

In case some half-wit happens by though: if your visa is expiring — get it renewed. Do not stay in a country without a visa. It’s not hard. It’s not expensive. It’s certainly better than spending a week in jail. And if you do accidentally do overstay your visa (and it better involve a one-legged Mongolian prostitute, the Russian mafia and a case of baijiu) for christ’s sake, pay the fine. Or, better yet — just take the fucking teaching job in the first place.

When last I looked upon her face,
A smile did greet me.
But gazing up towards her eyes,
A sadness I could see.

This hard cover, a keen disguise,
Protects us from her qi.
But with abundant aperture,
She accommodates me.

While Australasia sits down low,
And joins her on her knee
Euros, Yanks and Japs on top; she shows,
Sun’s thoughts on enemy.

Her inconsistant source of power,
Is no reason to flee.
Take in her chaotic embrace;
The electric Yangtze.

Her modern surface vaguely hides,
A twisted history.
Snaking through cracked and ancient walls,
Cemented with red tea.

Her guts ground deep within the earth;
Beneath the eastern sea.
Powering all lifeblood of the
Petty bourgeoisie

The force in her blackened fissures,
Eager to bleed forth li.
Silently, she stares long and cold,
Just waiting to be free.