When time goes on, the relief work in Sichuan earthquake area doesn’t sound so fresh to us. But today I found something quite interesting on . As Shanghai has been assigned to help Dujiangyan City according to the one to one support scheme, some social workers are helping the survivors there to be neighborly. The team of 10 social workers led by professors from Shanghai’s East China University of Science and Technology are helping the victims to adapt to the new neighborhood. All the citizens in the community called “ Thrifty House” or “Qinjian Renjia” have been moved from villages to these temporary houses. And in the temporary shelters they have to share the limited private space with the neighbors they didn’t knew before. It’s so easy for them to get on each other’s nerves and for small conflicts to escalate. This is the first time that I heard this kind of mental relief in our media. It did show me that our government is trying to work on the reconstruction in a more professional way. But how are the other undergoing issues? Should we also try to make things happen in a more considerate way, like the Beijing Olympics? Should we help to calm down Chinese young generation’s anger towards western countries as the little world is becoming a global village? I still remember some dialogues in the movie called “ A Time to Remember”. Leslie Chang acted a big communist in it and on one of his speeches he said: “ I think Chiang Kai Shek is such a deaf guy. Because whenever he hears some critical voice the only thing he would do is to shoot the critic.” Leslie Chang didn’t do a fantastic job on acting a communist. But he tried his best to wake up his people in the movie. Are we awake now? About two weeks ago I had dinner with two friends, one is from Beijing and the other is from Hong Kong. They seemed to be so excited about rejecting Carrefour and blocking Sharon STONE. “ It’s really the time to show the whole world our power. You see, if someone says anything bad to China, all the Chinese people will attack him back immediately,” the Hong Kong girl said. So my dear friend, may I ask you what kind of image of China you want to show the world during the Beijing Olympics? A nationalism country full of angry and deaf people? I hope this is not so called harmony society.

All the warm hearted friends, please log on these two websites to check your donations. Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People's Republic of China http://www.mca.gov.cn/ Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau http://www.shmzj.gov.cn

Yesterday Premier Wen Jiabao flew to Mianyang again and gave a speech themed on “ Duo Nan Xing Bang” in a temporary primary school. “ Duo Nan Xing Bang” literally means more disasters will make a country flourish. Yes, we did get a lesson from the snowstorm last winter. The relief actions are more effective and the news resource is more open. President Hu Jintao urged the top priority was to save lives. Compared with the situation in Burma, China won a good reputation. Meanwhile a lot of Chinese people especially the new generation born after 1980s think it’s time for CNN to close its inurbane mouth. Because of the Si Chuan earthquake, people see the strong patriotic passion of new generation whom used to be regarded as a generation without any care for others. Now they put “ I love China” on their MSN name, wear T-shirts with the image of “ I only love China”, stopped going shopping at Carrefour and persuade more people to donate money to the victims. But does it mean we can put more hope on this generation only because of their intense patriotic sentiments? Besides passion should they do more? I didn’t put “ I love China” on my MSN name. I didn’t wear any patriotic T-shirt. I still go shopping at Carrefour. But I watch TV everyday to follow up the relief activities: how many people have been saved and how is their living situation now, how the donations have been transformed and what kind of things are bought by this money, how the government work on this issue, is there any corruption exist… I believe at this moment we need more actions than tears. We need more real journalism than dramas. We need more supervision than force of donations. Till now CCTV 9 is the only channel I have seen talking about the supervision and it’s in English. Most of the other Chinese speaking channels are showing the touching moments around the clock. Yes, it’s worthy seeing how Chinese people caring about each other. But to journalism is it enough? Last night I saw an interview between a CCTV journalist and a 68 years old Sichuan citizen. He was interrupted on his way to go back home. The journalist looked much sadder than the old guy and she insisted to check his luggage. Because the old guy couldn’t understand mandarin, the journalist asked for an interpreter to help. After checking the luggage and some common questions, the journalist said: “ Don’t waste your time any more, please go back.” But who was wasting the old guy’s time? What is the real care? As disaster happened, we need journalism to report the truth and we also need the journalism to work as supervision. My dearest journalist, TV news is not the stage for you to show what a warmhearted person you are. I’m glad to see that there are more and more news conferences hosted by the provincial government of Sichuan to report the relief works. It’s only thirty years since our opening up policy. We still have a lot to learn on disaster aid relief and how to face to the international media. I hope this is the real meaning by “ Duo Nan Xing Bang”.

Well, since I haven’t updated my blog for a while, it’s time to restart. I went to an opening ceremony of a photography exhibition yesterday afternoon. It was at Dong Gallery, a gallery run by my friend Sian. But I feel she prefers to be called as Xixing (her Chinese given name) since she jumped into the art business. Anyway, the theme of the artworks was about culture revolution, especially the revolutionary model operas. I’ve watched one of the operas in Beijing years ago, got quite touched and almost wanted to apply to be a Communist that night. I think we have to admit that Jiang Qin does have talents on propaganda. I’ve read my aunt’s dairy written in those days. It sounded that she did think culture revolution was a wonderful journey for all the Chinese to go through and MAO was the heroic leader. I do like MAO ( as a person, a poet) , but I always have the question how could he made all the Chinese think in the same way and only listen to him? When I look at YANG Zirong’s eyes in his portrait, this question came up again. And nowadays people still want you to think in the same way even behave in the same way as they do. These days when you log in MSN, you might be asked by your friend to put (L) China before your MSN name which could show your patriotism. Thirty years has passed and China has been developing from a so called developing country. Besides economics growth, should we expect something more? To those who never care about the domestic and international news, your patriotism is just a MSN name? What do you expect this to change? I’m doubting. Thirty years has passed. People say the young generation of China is rising. I’m still waiting and watching.

Mar 2, 10am Kerry BROWN, Duncan HEWITT, Paul FRENCH, Perspectives on China Today The speech was quite interesting, the authors really did a lot of research of China. And Mr. Ducan Hewitt's opinion is very close to me. In his book , he talked about what happened in the past 50 years in China. He thinks during culture revolution a lot of people, especially scholars and senior Party leaders were killed or put into prison. Meanwhile culture revolution also changed the ethical standards.After the opening policy established, the government felt that a lot of things need to be rebuilt, not only economics, city construction but also social issues. So that's the reason why now Chinese communist Party invented the idea of "harmony society". It means the government wants to show his people his care about them. Ducan also talked about what does Chinese people believe now. He's very open-minded. He doesn't think by research he can totally understand China or Chinese people. He just wanted to say something he got from his research during all these years. He talked about the young generation. Internet is a part of their life. They are unhappy with the government's control of internet. The young generation was growing up with Japanese cartoon, western fast food and the American Channel MTV. But the education of nationalism also has a very strong influence on the young people, like anti-Japanese. To the other Chinese people, someone is really serious. Ducan also talked about the story happened in Gallerie Lafayette. He has met a taxi driver who's very excited about it. But it doesn't mean besides nationalism Chinese people are not interested in anything. People do have their private interests especially the young generation. Kerry Brown's speech was more about history which I've already know, so I'm not very interested in his words. Paul French behaved as a host of this program. All of them are both knowledgeable and humorous. Mar 8, 3pm Fatima BHUTTO in conversation with Geoff DYER, Hope and Courage in Pakistan -Media Nowadays there are many private channels, 24 hours news channels in Pakistan because and in spite of Musharraf. Before him, there was only one channel. -Lawyer Lawyers take an important place in a society, especially in a society like Pakistan. -Blog Nowadays more and more people are writing blogs. And internet control is impossible in Pakistan. -If media and law system work well, the society will become better and better. Even though now there are still many problems in our country. No national hospital, no schools for poor gals...But you should look at the people, they do have hope. -BHUTTOs BHUTTO is just a family name to me. Maybe someone would say, oh come on...But I do think so, maybe one day I can change it. I mean I don't believe this country should depends on several fancy families. But it doesn't mean I'm trying to keep away from helping Pakistan people. I do write. -Safety I don't feel unsafe in Pakistan. But it doesn't mean that I feel totally safe like an idiot. No. Suicide bombing could happen everyday, people are wearing the concerning of it if you look at their eyes you can feel this. -Islam Islam is not a problem. The government is a problem. -China China historically has a great relation with Pakistan. Now China is helping Pakistan building roads. I mean they are really helping, not like some other countries, after one month they left. Like after the earthquake in 2005, only 2 countries stayed to help, one was Cuba the other was China. -Democracy We don't want Indian democracy, we don't want American democracy, we want Pakistan democracy.

12月27日 BHUTTO assassinated 相对于昨天来说，今天又犯懒了。下午小蓝给我看了“红老外”的视频，一个从未来过中国内地的老外在纽约大唱革命歌曲。并且在自己的博客里也以文革的语气来写日记，说是目的在于宣传毛泽东思想。我倒没有认为这是作秀，因为我始终相信毛泽东思想作为一种政治思想来说确实是永放光芒的。尤其是对于一个还没有经历过文革现实，没有来过中国内地的老外来说，我愿意相信他对于毛泽东的感情是真挚的。昨天是毛诞辰114周年，除了在韶山有纪念过冬之外，没有听到任何的其他庆祝，即使是新闻上也只字未提。我感到难过。 看完“红老外”的视频和博客之后，我又写了一会但是显然今天没有完成预定的目标。 晚上看新闻得知BHUTTO死了，终于在政治集会的时候被谋杀。我不太喜欢这个人，从她回国开始，我始终不相信这会有一个美满的结局。但是也许在巴基斯坦，没有那样近乎疯狂的勇敢的话是无法胜任政治领袖的。从这个意义上来说，她是勇敢的。

Which language we can choose to describe our own country? 2007 Shanghai Literary Festival was just finished a few weeks ago. Maybe many Chinese writers and readers would say this festival is more interested in foreign authors. The only a few Chinese authors the organizer invited are writing in English or French. Qiu xiaolong writes his detective novels in English. Dai Sijie writes about the culture revolution in French. And Guo Xiaolu moved abroad not very long ago and started to write in English. So what does Chinese contemporary literature mean now? Qiu Xiaolong said he still kept writing in Chinese and even in his English novels he added a lot of poems which symbolized the classic Chinese writing style. But he also wonders if he goes back to Chinese writing whether he still can write the stories he writes now. Recently a German scholar said Chinese contemporary literature was just bullshit. But has he read Qiu’s novels? Is Qiu Xiaolong still a Chinese writer? More and more Chinese writers are moving not only their homes but also the languages. Which language we can choose to describe our own country?