While most laowai are probably familiar with the phenomenon of the “ant tribe,” a recent article in The Economist introduced a number of other “tribes” of stressed-out young Chinese struggling to survive in the urban jungle.

Perhaps the most unusual is the “crush-crush tribe” (捏捏族), who release their frustrations by hiding in supermarket aisles and crushing packages of instant noodles.

The crush-crush tribe first made its appearance in late 2009, vexing store owners and psychologists with their trails of crumpled packaging and furtive Weibo confessions.

(I’ve written a post taking a closer look at the crush-crush tribe here)

Since then, they have branched off into a number of different tribes, each with its own unique method of venting stress at the expense of innocent food items.

Here’s a partial list of the new tribes spreading chaos and destruction in China’s supermarkets, along with their rank on the “uncivilization index” helpfully provided by Shanghai’s Xinwen Chenbao.

Rip-rip Tribe (拆拆族)

Uncivilization rating: 5 stars

Unlike the crush-crush tribe, this group mainly targets household items and clothing.  Members of this tribe tear open packages, leaving underwear, socks, bedspreads and similar items scattered on the shelves.

Shopkeepers say this group is difficult to police, given the large number of shoppers who also open packages to get a closer look or feel the material.

Switch Tribe (调包族)

Uncivilization rating: 5 stars

Rather than destroy items on display, this tribe switches similar items in different packaging.  Small boxed items such as toothpaste and makeup are mixed up, with a tube of one brand being put in the packaging of another.

Some stores have advised customers to check their purchases of any such items to avoid paying the sticker price on the box only to discover a cheaper version hidden inside.

Taste-taste Tribe (尝尝族)

Uncivilization rating: 4 stars

This tribe is not limited to thrill-seeking twentysomethings who sneak a cookie or two out of the box when no one’s watching.  It also includes older shoppers  who like to sample their produce before making a selection, plucking a grape or peeling open a tangerine to see if it’s ripe.

Gentle reminders from shopkeepers to leave the fruit alone often go ignored – if you don’t try it out first, shoppers reply, how do you know if it’d any good?

Scatter Tribe (乱放族)

Uncivilization rating: 4 stars

A freshly roasted chicken hidden in the freezer aisle, a bag of frozen dumplings melting on a rack of underwear… the possibilities are endless.  Like the taste-taste tribe, this group includes as many careless customers as frustrated malcontents, and many laowai likely know a few tribe members from their home country, as well.

There is another option for gift giving or even end of the year tax breaks though, and that’s giving to a charity. You can always donate in the name of your gift recipient, and while they might have enjoyed a physical present more, perhaps they’ll be just as grateful not to have to try to figure out how to regift that panda poop tea.

Since charity giving among Chinese has dropped quite a lot this year after various charity related scandals, many charities in China could especially use the boost. Of course we don’t want to see our money siphoned off to line the pockets of dishonest charity administrators instead of really helping those it’s meant to help, so we’ve got to be careful about who we give to. I’ve put together a short list of a few charities working in China that seem fairly reputable, and of course if you’ve got more suggestions please add them in the comments!

1. Half the Sky

Dedicated to bringing the love and concern of family to thousands of orphaned children in China who have lost theirs. Their goal is to ensure that every one of China’s orphans has a caring adult in her life. They provide individual nurture and stimulation for babies, innovative preschools that encourage an early love of learning, personalized learning opportunities for older children, and loving — and most important, permanent — foster homes for children whose special needs may keep them from being adopted.

I’ve personally met Half the Sky workers in local orphanages and seen the great work they are doing.  Without their help, Chinese orphanages would be a much more dismal and horrible place for kids to spend their childhoods.

2. Wokai

Wokai is a microfinance loan provider seeking to create opportunity for those living in poverty in rural China. In their own words:

“Utilizing the principle of microfinance, we connect you with people in rural China who want to start small businesses, but just need a little help getting there. You make a tax deductible contribution to sponsor that person’s loan, watch as they grow their businesses, repay their loans, and lift themselves from poverty. At the end of the year, you re-invest your contribution and help another borrower start a businesses.”

I gave a loan through Wokai last year and earmarked it as a Christmas gift for some of my family back in the US. They really enjoyed reading the stories of those applying for the loan, choosing who they wanted “their” money to go to, and then getting to re-allocate the money after the loan was repaid.

3. Living With Dead Hearts

We’ve mentioned this film being made about kidnapped children in China and we still think it’s a good cause!  It explores the widespread problem of kidnapping through the eyes of parents searching for their children, as well as examining the lives of street children and adults to see what happens to kids after they’re kidnapped. The film is currently in production and is tentatively slated for release in 2012. They are still accepting donations so hurry to be a part of this before they wrap!

4. The Library Project

The Library Project donates books and libraries to under financed schools and orphanages in the developing world. They believe education is the key motivator to breaking the cycle of poverty that exists in the developing world. As they see it, education is change.

I used to work in a library before moving to China, and books have always and will always hold a very special place in my heart. I can’t imagine being without books. As I’m now a teacher, I’d love to see better education here in China. Although it’s also been mentioned on this blog several times already, I couldn’t leave it off. Building libraries in rural schools and orphanages? I can’t say no to that!

5. Bright Connection

The Bright Connection is a rehabilitation center for helping children with cerebral palsy, autism, developmental delays and hearing impairments live as normal people. Located in Sanya, it was founded by Maggie and John Davis whose own adopted daughter suffers from cerebral palsy. When they discovered there were no resources to help parents with these children, they poured their hearts, time, and life savings into creating one. Over the years they have had to keep expanding the center to accommodate more and more children, including several from the local orphanage. They have been featured in the Sanya Expat website as well as the Hainan news. You can see a video about their work and “meet” some of the kids here.

Full disclaimer: I have known John and Maggie since 2005 when I moved to Sanya, and have done some volunteer work with The Bright Connection. Personally I think they are doing a great job!

6. JAR – Jaiya’s Animal Rescue

Our fellow humans aren’t the only ones hoping for a bit of holiday giving. Jaiya’s Animal Rescue (JAR) in Shanghai does an amazing job running a rescue center and animal adoption events. In their words:

JAR is a non-profit small animal rescue group that is committed to protecting and improving the health and welfare of animals through pet health care, education, and the promotion of adoption / fostercare as an alternative approach to purchasing animals. We are dedicated to domestic animal population control, promoting pet adoption/fostering and reducing the incidence of abandonment.

They are currently maxed out with rescued animals and could surely use both financial support, or help with animal adoptions. Also check out our interview with JAR from last year.

Hope you have a great Christmas (or Hannukah, or birthday if you’re like me and celebrate in December) and thanks for checking out these great China Charities! And please, if you know of, or are involved with a good China-focused charity, please make mention of it in the comments.

Let’s make a deal

Simply put, gift recycling is the selling of presents by recipients who neither want nor need them. The majority of such exchanges take place inside the countless cigarette and liquor stores found along any Chinese city street. Indeed, high-end cigarette brands such as Chunghwa and Panda, along with the famous baijiu labels Moutai and Wuliangye, are among the items most frequently brought in by customers and bought by store owners. But many recyclers accept a wide range of gifts. More exotic presents such as birds’ nests, shark fins and sea cucumbers are also typically welcome.

There are limits, though, to what recyclers are willing to trade. One Guangzhou store owner declared that he refused to buy back Double Happiness brand cigarettes – a favorite gift at weddings – because they don’t fetch a high enough price.

A customer with unwanted gifts to sell can frequently get a decent price for their goods, but naturally any deal favors the recycler on the other side of the counter. An investigative report conducted in February by a local newspaper in Jiangxu found that on average, cigarettes are bought for twenty to thirty percent less than the usual market price. Liquor, on the other hand, is typically bought for as little as half the market price. Purchased goods are then resold at or slightly less than full price. A similar survey in Henan found local customers getting a far worse deal, being offered an average of seventy percent less than the store price.

While most shop owners are willing to bargain, one long-time recycler in Zhengzhou told a local reporter that the sellers usually just aren’t interested. “Some people who come in, they’re not poor, and they don’t really care. If I give them a low price, as long as they see there’s money to be made, they’re ok.”

“People like this are becoming more and more common,” he added.

Open for one week, eat for a year

Even with a customer willing to bargain, a single exchange will almost always bring the recycler a bigger profit than an ordinary sale. But it is the volume of such transactions which makes gift recycling such a lucrative business.

Almost all of the recycling that takes place in a given year centers around two holidays: the Spring Festival at the start of the new year, and the Mid-Autumn Festival in September. One recycler in Jiangsu boasted that in the week following the Spring Festival he could make enough to see him through the end of the year.

Typical estimates put the average gift recycler’s profits for a single holiday in the hundreds of thousands of yuan, or tens of thousands of US dollars. Such numbers far exceed the country’s per capita income of 4,260 USD, according to the World Bank.

A rapidly transforming business

While cigarettes and liquor have traditionally been the mainstay of the business, in some cities they are quickly being overtaken by a popular new gift item. A gift recycler in Zhengzhou told the Henan Legal News that since 2009, her business has primarily dealt in gift cards. Another Zhengzhou recycler explained the process: a card worth 200 RMB might be purchased by the recycler for 178, and then resold for 189 RMB.

But the market for second-hand gift cards is relatively small. Most individual gift recyclers resell the cards to larger outfits, who in turn resell them in bulk to the store which originally issued the cards. Occasionally, recyclers simply use the cards themselves, buying still more liquor and cigarettes to sell in their own stores.

In recent years, gift recycling has expanded beyond its brick-and-mortar beginnings and established a rapidly-growing presence on the internet. A search for “recycle gifts” on Baidu brings up over thirty million results. The growth of online gift recycling can be explained, not surprisingly, as an issue of convenience.

“A lot of customers don’t particularly enjoy taking their gifts to the actual store to sell them,” one recycler explained to Guangzhou’s Southern Daily newspaper. “Trading on a website is more convenient.” After a transaction is completed online, the two sides schedule a time for pick-up at the seller’s home or another place of their choosing.

Hidden costs

But gift recycling can be a risky business, for both customers and store owners. As an off-the-books, underground enterprise, gift recycling is often linked to organized crime, particularly the flourishing trade in counterfeit goods. According to Chinese law, gift recycling itself is an illegal activity, as it involves businesses engaging in activities not authorized by their state-issued licenses.

But one official with China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce told the Henan Legal News that prosecuting the trade is all but impossible. “If questioned, shop owners will insist that the gifts they buy back are simply for their own personal use, not for reselling,” he said. The widespread lack of any bookkeeping further means that the physical evidence required to bring charges against recyclers is almost impossible to find.

Not only is the practice difficult to prosecute, but officials have little incentive to do so.  Indeed, many of the most frequent and large-scale patrons of gift recycling businesses are government employees eager to unload the cartons of cigarettes and bottles of baijiu presented to them by ambitious underlings.

And so one of the most frequent ways that experts and cadres describe gift recycling is to simply call it a “gray area.”  Indeed, with such a name it joins a long list of other activities that make up a crucial part of China’s economy.  And as such, it is likely to remain a regular presence in Chinese society for years to come.

Mr. Lee (李先生)

Nearly anyone who has walked down a busy Chinese street is likely to have seen at least one restaurant whose sign bears the lean, impassive face of an elderly man identified simply by the three characters 李先生 – in English, Mr. Lee.  His name and his image are as recognizable as that of Colonel Sanders, but his identity and his origin are less well known.  His full name is Li Beiqi, and he was born in 1932 on the outskirts of Chongqing.  Originally a cadet in the Nationalist air force, he fled the mainland in 1949 at the age of 18 and made his way to the United States, eventually earning his MBA at the University of Maryland.  In 1972 he opened up his first restaurant, “Beef Noodle King” in Los Angeles, expanding to six more locations across Southern California over the next decade.  In time, he would return to his homeland, taking his restaurant to Beijing in 1987, the same year that KFC entered the Chinese market.

While continuing to offer the same Chinese noodle dishes he had cooked up in the States, Li Beiqi emphasized his restaurant’s American origins, playing to Chinese consumers’ infatuation with all things foreign at the height of the country’s “reform and opening” period.  As a not-so-subtle reminder of his LA roots, Li renamed his restaurant “California Beef Noodle King USA.”  Over the following decades, the chain expanded to over 400 branches all across China.  While Li Beiqi himself passed away in 2008, his name and his noodles live on.

Yonghe Dawang (永和大王)

But while Mr. Lee may have been inspired by Colonel Sanders, many other restaurants have taken the path of outright plagiarism.  In 1995, Yonghe Dawang opened its doors in Shanghai, boasting 24-hour service and a logo featuring the face of an old man with a wispy white goatee and a little black bowtie.  Unlike his Kentucky doppelganger – or even Mr. Lee – this familiar-looking figure had no name and no identity.  He certainly wasn’t Yonghe’s founder, the middle-aged and clean-shaven Lin Youao.

In any case, the mysterious old man disappeared in December 2008, when Yonghe was bought by Jollibee, a Philippine company that owns and operates fast food chains across Asia.  In his place, Yonghe now sports a new logo of a steaming golden bowl, with the character “yong” appearing on its gleaming surface.  Since then, Yonghe has proven that its brand can stand on its own, expanding to over 230 stores all across China.

Jiapo (吉阿婆)

The smiling face that greets customers at Jiapo is unlikely to be mistaken for Colonel Sanders.  For one thing, she’s a woman, and her middle-aged face is unmistakably Chinese.  But in other ways, Jiapo’s logo bears a resemblance to KFC’s that far outstrips the bearded gentleman at Yonghe Dawang.  The similarity is in the details: the same red and white color scheme, the same slant to the left, even the same apron and glasses.  The two complement each other so well that Jiapo has earned the nickname “Colonel Sanders’ wife.”

KFC’s offices in Shanghai are said to have officially complained to the city government in 2009, citing copyright infringement after a Jiapo opened right across the street from a KFC in the fashionable and modern Pudong district in the summer of that year.  But the government ruled in Jiapo’s favor.  As an official from the Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Bureau told the newspaper Xinwen Zaobao, while the resemblance of the logos is striking, the two restaurants are so dissimilar in every other aspect that it’s unlikely Jiapo will pose a threat to KFC’s business. Indeed, Jiapo doesn’t even serve fried chicken, but instead specializes in spicy made-to-order malatang.

CSC (乡村基)

If Jiapo is Colonel Sanders’ wife, then their kids can be found at CSC.  The bright and colorful faces of the boy and girl on CSC’s logo have inherited neither of their parents’ looks, but the restaurant’s name makes the relationship clear.  In Chinese, it’s called 乡村基 (compare that to 肯德基, KFC’s Chinese name), which translates roughly as “village base.”  But the official English name is Country Style Cooking, abbreviated as CSC on the storefront logo, in a font almost identical to the three-letter name of its American rival.

Unlike many of the other chains that have taken their inspiration from the Colonel, CSC actually is a fried chicken restaurant.  But while they originally started out in 1996 with a menu of sandwiches and fries, today their cuisine is exclusively Chinese-style.   And although they’re a relatively small scale enterprise, with just over 100 stores found only in Chongqing and Sichuan, they also hold the distinction of being the first Chinese chain restaurant to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, going public in September 2010.

The success of CSC and other KFC imitators has shown that they are more than just another novelty of the shanzhai culture.  To be sure, some may have simply latched onto the tried-and-true strategy of copying a foreign brand to make a quick buck.  But others have developed a more sophisticated and successful method of imitating not only the image but also the business model that made KFC such a major presence in China.  Delivering food that is not only fast, cheap, and hygienic, but also appeals to local tastes, these aspiring colonels have contributed to the birth of a uniquely Chinese fast food experience.

We’re looking to stir some fresh expat pee into the writer pool here. If you’ve got a unique voice, a solid ability to write, and — most importantly — something to say, we’d love to feature your contributions here. Whether you’re dredging out an existence as an ESL teacher, toiling away in the salt mines of Chinese learning, or comparing the size of your (expat) package at the local laowai bar; we want your thoughts, opinions and stories.

Check out the contribute page for some basic guidelines and short FAQ, and then get in touch! Simply outline who you are and why you’d like to contribute. Past writing experience is favoured, but not necessary. We’re a blog, not the New York Times, after all.

I was nominated by Charlie at Chengdu Living, and am happy to oblige. I think most bloggers would agree that we tend to post it and forget it, and it’s nice to have the opportunity to stop and take a look back at things we’ve produced (warts and all). Charlie nominated “Ryan at Lost Laowai”.

As a good deal of my blogging (some 900+ posts) resides at my personal blog, and a large share of the approximately 600 posts here at Lost Laowai are not mine at all, I was not sure how best to tackle the selection. Ultimately, I decided to limit my choices to all posts here at Lost Laowai, mine or not (and most below are not).

Most Beautiful Post

I think “beautiful” is meant to have me picking a post that is visually beautiful, but I’m going to go with a post from a couple years ago called Itadakimasu! Quincy, did a fantastic job of melding a tale about his family, Sino-Japanese relations, an ambitious sushi vendor, a music-shop meal with friends, and sticking it to “the man” all with coherency and beautiful prose.

Most Popular Post

Back in the early days of 2009 the internet was abuzz with paparazzi pics capturing Chinese superstar Zhang Ziyi topless on a beach in St. Barts’. Averaging about 3,000 page views a day, by far the most popular post on the site is “Zhang Ziyi nude on a beach“, and it’s not hard to figure out why. There’s virtually no substance to the post, as it was really only a quick little note about the frenzy. And much to the disappointment of visitors from search, it doesn’t actually contain any images of Zhang Ziyi nude on a beach.

Most Controversial Post

Unfortunately the most controversial post on the site had to be harmonized due to legal threats. As a runner-up, for sheer number of divisive comments (131 at last count), it would have to be “So some people in China are racist against blacks – should you come to China?” The post, written by Jeremy way back in 2007, still routinely gets a new bout of discussion regarding racism in China. For all the split opinions in the comments, there is a great collection of personal experiences and perspectives that gives the post much more value than the original text by itself.

Most Helpful Post

This is a tough one, as five years, 34 contributors and 600+ posts has produced a solid number of what I would like to consider “helpful” pieces; many of which were topical at the time, but are not as relevant now (here and here for two examples). In my opinion though one of the trickiest things in China is knowing where good places to travel are, and so I personally found this two-parter (with a year between them), by Glen, the most helpful: 10 Slightly Off the Beaten Path Locations in China and 7 More Slightly Off the Beaten Path Locations in China. The posts gives 17 places that might not be immediately thought of when considering good travel spots in China, and the comments contain a number more.

Surprise Success Post

I guess it depends on how we define “success” as it relates to a post, but the amount of (largely search, but also referral) traffic my post on the aPad, an Apple iPad shanzhai clone, has received is a surprise to me. If the recent BirdAbroad post has taught us anything though, it’s stick “Apple” and “China” in the same chunk of text on the Internet and they’re bound to come.

Under Appreciated Post

I have to say, despite blogging for nearly a decade, I’m still amazed anyone visits any of my sites. As such, an under-appreciated post is tough for me to choose. I post complete bollocks on this blog most of the time, and it gets far more attention than I imagine it deserves. I don’t want to leave this section linkless though, and so if I have to choose I would say I’m surprised that Travis‘ excellent series of fiction (but all too true) called the “The 7-Year Laowai” didn’t get more attention. It received quite a few reads, but I had expected it to garner a few more comments.

Proudest Post

It’s impossible to be living in and blogging about China for the length of time that I have and not change as a person. Most personal growth and expansion of perspectives develops so incrementally that it’s tough to really “see”, but with a blog it has a semi-permanence that can be referred back to with a simple visit to an archive page. Sometimes it fills me with nostalgia visiting posts I wrote 4-5 years ago, but many times it cringingly shows me how little I knew, and reminds me how that is still true. Because of this, my proudest link isn’t really a “link” but two posts that show the duality of living in China — the first ranting against China’s childishness and the second ranting against expat arrogance. Written only a couple months apart, the contrary nature may have some thinking that I just enjoy a good rant and don’t really know where to stand. That’s probably true, but on a personal level revisiting those posts does well in reminding me that no matter how we as bloggers tend to phrase things, there really are no “sides”, no “us” or “them” — those terms just make things easier to write down.

My Nominations

I really enjoyed the other posts I’ve seen in this series, and it’s hard to narrow down who to nominate as there are so many bloggers in the sinosphere that I’d like to see do the same. However, the sadist in me settled on the following bloggers, mostly because I would love to see their selections, but also because I know their archives are much, much deeper than my own and I can be cruel like that:

• John Pasden @ Sinosplice
• Richard Burger @ The Peking Duck
• Dan Harris @ China Law Blog
• Will Moss @ Imagethief
• Jeremiah Jenne @ Jottings from the Granite Studio

When I first came to China, all the hysteria I’d heard about going to live under a Communist regime turned out to be unfounded. Chief among them: the internet censorship, or as I wondered in that post-Olympics China-is-reforming-LOL, September 2008 world, a world in which I was able to upload photos of my fallacious narrative to Facebook and watch old WWF videos on Youtube, what internet censorship? Aside from researching certain topics, I had little trouble doing what I wanted.

A similar sentiment was expressed by the makers of the China Channel Firefox add-on, which lets people outside the mainland surf the internet as a Chinese user. The description said you might not notice anything too different, unless you went searching for a free autonomous region or that odd mishap in that well-known square on the fourth day of the month of June at the conclusion of the eighties.

I don’t know if the makers of the add-on ever updated it, and if not, they have a lot to catch up on. No longer is a timeout error in Google the only way to experience the internet with Chinese characteristics. From my initial month in China, I had the chance to witness the metamorphosis of Fang Binxing‘s brainchild from a minor inconvenience to damning evidence of the monstrous insecurity plaguing Zhongnanhai’s top brass.

Right after Youtube was first harmonized, some other expats and I were on our way back from a bar. As we sat in the taxi drunkenly bitching about Youtube’s banishment from the Heavenly Kingdom, one teacher sought to soothe our feelings.

“It’s not for you,” he said. “Anytime they block a website, it’s not for you.”

Well of course it’s not for me. Or any other laowai, both the dancing and that rare non-dancing variety. It’s not even for the students, both the ones I taught at a good university and the unfortunate kids in one of Wuhan’s diploma mills, their futures hostage to whatever favorable outcome guanxi can manage.

I think it’s just a sense of reassurance. So that those on top can make themselves feel better about the cracks in their shell.

A student once told me that China has an “inner-net”, a nice variation on the old “intranet” joke, and when discussing the China-wide-web, you cannot avoid the question: will it get worse? Will we live to one day see all disharmonious websites eaten alive by venomous river crabs? Well, we’re not too far from it. In fact, we’re waiting right outside the door.

Whether it opens or not, it’s best to keep those VPNs handy.

I’ll conclude with an admission, which I am a little ashamed to tell you about. I remember where I was when Facebook was blocked: a first floor hotel room in Beijing. I remember deciding to piss away a couple hours staring at strangers’ lives, only to get a timeout error. Facebook’s down. I try to load my Blogger account to whine about it. Timeout. WordPress? Timeout too. And so it goes.

But I will say one thing about such panic censorship: it does offer you an opportunity to get out of the apartment, breath in that industrial air and hopefully see the beauty China has to offer.

There’s more to it than just river crabs.

A new Chinese meme illustrates why. The meme, “Major General Genre”, takes a rambling, nonsensical dialog that Xinyu had with a reporter and applies it to different topics, mad libs style.

Here’s the original interview:

Translated by the excellent Ministry of Tofu:

Host: We are now organizing a campaign. It’s about unlicensed teachers. What do you (think of it)?

Mao: Unlicensed teachers…I want to say…Just now, I…well…then…well, my secretary showed me. I want to extend it (the topic). About unlicensed teachers…I want to…here…this…this…I want…just…just not that I want to dodge anything…I want to stress this…Which is to say nowadays those unlicensed teachers, now our country’s this…speaking of this tea…teaching rank, I think, there is a very important part, called private teachers. Just private teachers. This, how to say, I’ve considered…observed for a long time this private teacher thing. A private teacher…how to say…He even…a private teacher from…I think…Technically speaking, he is not a teacher formally certified by the country. He is…that is to say, he is also, as a private teacher…His…well…Of course, his this teaching quality, his this caliber is surely not as good as this formal normal college kind of thing. Of course, this private teacher thing, including this unlicensed teacher thing you’ve mentioned, this problem has indeed become a…a big problem of the education part. This is to say, first, this is to say…In the future, I…I…I…the problem of education, I truly deeply hope that many of this…I hope a large number of, well, private teachers can, through their…effort, their own effort, painstaking study…Um…can improve their own level. I hope many private teachers can become excellent formal teachers. Well, apart from private teachers, well…who hold our education back, I think now most..most people’s general feedback is to say…Don’t simply talk about private teachers. Even our formal teachers who came out from normal college…their, well, cultivation, and their education background, is yet to be improved.

Grandfather and grandson do seem to share a love of hong shao rou.

… And we can act like we come from out of this world / Leave the real one far behind / And we can dance…

H/T Hao Hao Report and Offbeat China.

The film needs all our of help to be made. If you have any means to, please consider donating what you can. Here is a note from the documentary’s director, well-known China blogger (and one time Lost Laowai contributor), Charlie Custer:

The kidnapping and selling of children is a serious problem in China, and has been for decades. Many children are tricked or otherwise stolen away from their parents, and then sold to other families, into lives begging on the streets or, in the case of some girls, into marriage or prostitution. We want to make a documentary about these children and their families in the hopes that we can bring more attention to this crucially important issue. We’re calling it “Finding Home”, and we’re really excited about it. But we can’t do it without your help.

Click here to learn more about this project or to make a pledge to donate.

Your donation will help us pay for expenses including additional equipment and train and bus tickets, so that we can ensure we’re 100% prepared to capture these childrens’ stories. We’ve already started research and are working with volunteers from a local Beijing charity so that every child we find who may have been kidnapped will also be reported domestically, and spread through a nationwide network of volunteers dedicated to searching for justice and for the child’s real family.

We’re funding our project through Kickstarter, a cool website that allows donors to receive rewards based on how much they give. Anyone who donates a dollar will get their name in the credits of the film, those who donate $15 or more will get access to production diaries, $50 or more gets behind-the-scenes and uncut footage plus a DVD of the film, $250 or more gets the chance to actually ask the people we’re interviewing questions, etc. (there are way more levels and choices). If you’ve used Amazon or have a credit card, you’ll be able to make a pledge easily. If our project reaches or surpasses its $5,000 goal, we get funded. If not, your money is returned to you, so there’s no risk of throwing your money away on an underfunded project. [Ed. Note: Due to an out-pouring of support, the project has already surpassed its minimum goal for funding, but understandably, the minimum amount is just that and every dollar more offers that much more assurance that the project will be a success]

Your gift would mean a lot to us, and to the children and families we’re hoping this film will help. If you really can’t afford to donate, please help us by sending this link to friends and family who you think might be interested. Together we can make this film, and make a real difference in the lives of some of these children.

Thank you so much for you time. We hope you can make a pledge and become a part of Finding Home today!
Yours,

Charlie Custer / 葛亚辉 and the rest of the ChinaGeeks staff

Also be sure to check out ChinaGeeks most recent documentary, Kedong County, and follow Charlie and the film on ChinaGeeks.org or on Twitter @chinageeks.