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Kooky Cathay: Forteana From China

Sorry, making reference to reputed town in Sweden where only lesbians live as reported in Chinese media
 
Sorry, making reference to reputed town in Sweden where only lesbians live as reported in Chinese media
My apologies - I was trying to mentally connect China and Sweden, and not getting very far. Thanks to you and Ramon for supplying the missing link, as it were!
 
It seems the media has made up another story about Sweden, that it is switching to a 6 hour work day.
 
Yes, I'm sure that Swedes may be many things, but you won't find me calling them lazy!

These stories that get reported do make me wonder whether, for the Chinese media, Sweden is akin to Timbuktu - somewhere that most people aren't even sure exists, but where the most fantastic things are said to happen.
 
To be fair growing up in the UK in the 70's it wasn't far off that. I knew they had blond people and saunas and ABBA and had loads of nookie whenever a fridge repair guy turned up (I never did find out if he ever fixed that fridge) but I had no concept of what the country was, merely it was foreign and exotic.
 
A man in Sichuan killed himself by jumping in a river. When his parents went to identify the body, fishermen asked 180,000 RMB for dredging it up, but eventually negotiated down to 8000 RMB. However, his parents couldn’t pay the fee, so they had to just let the corpse swell. Three days later the civil police coordinated with both sides, and the fee was set at 5400 RMB, so the body was pulled out and dragged ashore. The boy’s father said that the money was all lent from relatives

http://www.chinasmack.com/2015/digest/dead-boy-fished-out-of-river-for-a-fee.html
 
The Chinese are now more 'capitalist' than we are... money grabbers!
 
Inside the Unregulated Chinese Hospitals That Make Men Impotent
R.W. MCMORROW
May 16 2016, 9:00am


On the afternoon of September 30, 2015, 23-year-old Little Huang stood on the roof of the 11-story Shenzhen Health and Family Planning Commission building, ready to jump to his death. In the lot below, Chinese officials' cars looked about the size of matchboxes, and the clamor of a nearby construction site filtered up as a dull hum. As Little Huang peered through the light haze toward the hills of Hong Kong, he dialed a 25-year-old man named Junjun. "We're on the roof," he said. "Bring alcohol and water bottles."*

Junjun exited the metro at Cui Zhu station, stopped for rice alcohol and water bottles, then rode the elevator of the white-tiled building to the tenth floor. There a staircase wound up to the crumbling concrete roof, where he found that Little Huang had now scaled even higher, to the top of a mechanical shed that seemed to sway in the breeze over the building's edge. Two other young men who Junjun recognized, Mr. Wang and Mr. Peng, stood with Little Huang. Junjun was nervous, but Little Huang cajoled him to climb up, too. The men wore matching white ball caps. Characters on the front explained the reason the men might jump: "Black-Hearted Men's Hospitals Destroyed Our Well-Being."

All four men, like more than a thousand across China who communicate with one another in online patient chat groups, say they were duped into surgeries that doctors worldwide have determined pose great risk and have little scientific merit: a dorsal neurectomy that severs penile nerves, ostensibly to cure premature ejaculation issues, though Chinese physicians sell the surgery with whatever explanation will likely get the person on the operating table. As a result of the surgeries, Junjun, Little Huang, Mr. Wang, and Mr. Peng's penises have gone completely numb, they can't get full erections, and some experience searing pain, probably from neuromas, which result from nerve trauma. No known corrective surgery or therapy exists. (In this story, these victims are referred to by nicknames or surnames.) All four men, who are in their 20s, may never have offspring. The men, in turn, refer to themselves as "China's 21st century eunuchs."

Physicians at private clinics have bargained with patients during surgery, female patients have been tricked into aborting healthy fetuses, and there have been many documented deaths as a result of physician negligence.

Sham penile surgeries are just one part of a much larger system of poorly regulated and corrupt private healthcare in China. In other instances of medical malfeasance, physicians at private clinics have bargained with patients during surgery, female patients have been tricked into aborting healthy fetuses, and there have been many documented deaths as a result of physician negligence. Pseudoscientific medical devices are in wide use, as is the practice of proffering false diagnoses, as more than 60 private hospitals have done to Chinese undercover journalists in the past six years. Meanwhile, the number of private hospitals in China is blossoming—between 2005 and 2015, 9,326 new facilities opened their doors. Today they make up about half of all hospitals in China. That proportion will likely grow as ongoing Chinese healthcare reforms aim to increase private investment in the sector and government-run insurance schemes expand to cover private healthcare facilities. American companies including Morgan Stanley Private Equity Asia, a division of Morgan Stanley, are pouring in millions of dollars as well.

CONTINUED IN HORRIFIC DETAIL AT CONSIDERABLE LENGTH:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/chinas-21st-century-eunuchs-v23-n3
 
Immigrant communities within communities are generally interesting and this tale grabbed me because it seems structurally as if it belongs in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

This extract is not the start of the (well-written) article, but an introduction to the scam that the writer utilises to introduce the topic--you may well be able to guess where it's going:

One afternoon in late April of last year, she [Wang Jin] was leaving the Bensonhurst branch of Marshalls when an agitated woman in her early forties rushed up to her. “I’m looking for a doctor called Xu,” the woman said, in rapid-fire Cantonese. “It’s urgent—for my daughter.”

Wang had been to plenty of traditional Chinese-medicine practitioners in the neighborhood, but she’d never heard of a Dr. Xu. “He is very well known here,” the woman went on. “I think he’s my daughter’s only hope.” She said that the girl had begun her first menstrual bleeding two weeks earlier and nothing would staunch the flow. Friends spoke of Dr. Xu as a miracle worker, but no one knew where to find him.

A woman passing by overheard and interjected, “Are you talking about the Dr. Xu? He’s a treasure. I have him to thank for my mother-in-law’s incredible recovery.” When the first woman asked for more details, the newcomer shrugged. “He’s become a real recluse in recent years,” she said. “I don’t even know if he sees patients anymore.”

Wang was curious. She’d had her own share of ailments. A decade ago, she had surgery to remove a tumor in one of her ovaries, and, a dozen or so years before that, her husband had suffered a back injury that left him unable to work. She became responsible for supporting their two young children. “I would tell the kids, ‘Mama is not hungry today—you guys hurry up and eat,’ ” she told me. At the time, she made around a hundred and thirty dollars a week, at a garment factory on Grand Street, and the physical demands of the work had ravaged her body.

As Wang and her new acquaintances talked, it turned out that the woman who’d met Dr. Xu was from a village not far from where Wang had grown up. She introduced herself as Liu, asked about Wang’s husband and children, and extended an open invitation to have tea at a bakery she owned with her husband. Wang was touched by her solicitude. It reminded her of life back in Taishan, where you’d constantly cross paths with acquaintances and there was a web of trust, woven over generations, from the reciprocal exchange of favors. If you had an unfamiliar problem, you’d seek out a shu ren, a “familiar person,” to help. In the U.S., however, Chinese people shared less about themselves. “Everything is business,” Wang said.
Full Article:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/chinatowns-ghost-scam
 
Best story of the year so far.

I've checked the date. It's not April 1st.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-43137005

"Music blaring through loudspeakers, strippers dancing to the beat and audiences whistling along. In some parts of China, this is what you would see during a funeral procession.

Earlier this year, China renewed a clampdown on strippers performing at funerals, wedding and temples, calling it "obscene and vulgar".

This isn't the first time authorities have tried to get rid of the practice but it has proven resilient.

Why do people hire strippers at funerals?
According to one theory, strippers are used to boost funeral attendances because large crowds are seen as a mark of honour for the deceased.

Another states the practice could be linked to a "worship of reproduction".

"In some local cultures, dancing with erotic elements can be used to convey the deceased's wishes of being blessed with many children," Huang Jianxing, a professor of Fujian Normal University told state-media outlet the Global Times."
 
There is some logic, in the sense that the only true prophylactic against death is reproduction, and even then it does have certain flaws as a survival mechanism.

I'm astounded to read that this custom is alleged to be recent in origin, and also that it was reportedly exported from Taiwan to mainland China.

Two responses: if it has gone from ROC to PRC, this is more likely to have been a preserved custom, rather than a new innovation. Secondly, I thought there were no links *at all* between Taiwan & P.R. China? In a classic Cuba vs USA 'denial style'?

ps at school, in Geography class I remember there was often mention of the "Little Chinas", which I thought included Taiwan/Formosa, Korea (both), Hong Kong, Macau ....perhaps the term is now forbidden, I haven't heard it in 40yrs
 
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I'll say there's a Youtube video for that.

 
Secondly, I thought there were no links *at all* between Taiwan & P.R. China? In a classic Cuba vs USA 'denial style'?
I don't think it's as extreme as that. Taiwan is certainly a popular holiday destination among Hong Kongers.
It seems that travel is possible both ways, just with a fair bit of paperwork involved. https://www.quora.com/Can-people-from-Taiwan-travel-to-mainland-China-and-vice-versa
Amusingly, speaking of denial, Mainland Chinese airports have 'Domestic' and 'International and Taiwan' sections
 
I don't think it's as extreme as that. Taiwan is certainly a popular holiday destination among Hong Kongers.
It seems that travel is possible both ways, just with a fair bit of paperwork involved. https://www.quora.com/Can-people-from-Taiwan-travel-to-mainland-China-and-vice-versa
Amusingly, speaking of denial, Mainland Chinese airports have 'Domestic' and 'International and Taiwan' sections

There are a great many links--the governments simply don't recognise each other.

I'm sorry, have we met...
 
Perhaps they are making sure the stiff stays that way? Oh FFS did I really write this? Just be thankful you don't have to live in my headspace.
It's like we share a brain.
 
'White Monkey Jobs'

China’s Rent-a-Foreigner Industry Is Alive and Kicking

Is there something more trustworthy or authoritative about a person who is white? In the early 90s, when my parents ran an after-school program in a highly competitive suburb of Southern California, they often debated hiring exclusively white teachers as a way to appeal to their predominately Asian-American customer base. I remember feeling baffled and indignant that they believed Asian faces didn't broadcast prestige the way a white face did.

Although casting white faces has become less prevalent among the Asian diaspora community, in remote parts of China, "face jobs" or "monkey jobs" are still common. Businesses can rent laowais—foreigners—to show up at parties, to masquerade as CEOs and doctors, even to act as emissaries of Obama.

Filmmaker David Borenstein, who made the New York Times Op-Doc "Rent-a-Foreigner in China," first went to the country as an anthropologist to research the massive housing developments that were being built in provincial western China. While he was there, he was often approached by agents in the rent-a-foreigner industry to participate in real-estate openings organized to lure potential buyers.

Borenstein's new film, Dream Empire, from which the NYT Op-Doc is excerpted, examines not only the rent-a-foreigner industry but also the political and cultural climate in China that allows these "international" spectacles to seem like valid demonstrations of prosperity and progress. While it is easy to focus on the surface-level absurdity of the phenomenon, the economic realities underneath the spectacle remain enormously complicated.


Continued here:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4wb84b/chinas-rent-a-foreigner-industry-is-still-a-real-thing
 
Fabulous! Both the ghost culture one and the Tiger Balm ones!

Reminds me of the bible fundamentalist parks that have the dioramas of humans and dinosaurs together.
 
This is more Fortean than mainstream news, but not sure where to put it. We've just had the qingming festival, something like the Chinese version of the day of the dead - a time for families to visit their ancestor's graves.

This year some guy decided to take it further and did a nude photoshoot with his late dad's bones, before posting it on social media.

Photo blogger Qingming digs his fathers bones naked and takes pictures with his wife
 
This is more Fortean than mainstream news, but not sure where to put it. We've just had the qingming festival, something like the Chinese version of the day of the dead - a time for families to visit their ancestor's graves.

This year some guy decided to take it further and did a nude photoshoot with his late dad's bones, before posting it on social media.

Photo blogger Qingming digs his fathers bones naked and takes pictures with his wife
South China Morning Post article mentions that he is an artist.
 
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