Beijing Newspeak

How did anyone get a proper boycott campaign going ten years ago? A full on leaflet assault has never really captured revolutionary imaginations. A piece of paper thrust in the hand is treated with the kind of suspicion normally reserved for a gaunt 50-year-old man lurking behind a park bush in a trenchcoat and a pair of wellies. The receiver is afraid to take a glance lest they be verbally bludgeoned for abandoning Jesus for a spot of unspiritual shopping on London’s Oxford Street.  ”Dont be a sinner, be a winner” as the phrase coined by the renowned, megaphone-touting scouser who lectures consumers outside Top Shop goes.

China has spreading-the-word down to a fine art (leaflets can only reach a meagre fraction of the total population after all) through the use of mobile phone text messaging. The latest digital call to arms is of course a boycott of French supermarket Carrefour following the Paris Olympic torch relay debacle. A measure of how widely the message has been distributed came courtesy of a friend travelling in deepest, darkest Guizhou. His minibus driver received the text, “Let Carrefour be empty for 17 days etc”, in a middle of a remote Dong, or maybe it was Miao, village, provoking a brief rant about those troublesome French and why no one should buy their products under any circumstances. There isn’t a branch of Carrefour near where he lives but, if I remember correctly, there’s a bakery in the small town of Kaili which sells sickly sweet pastries that resemble deformed croissants. Maybe he can continue not to shop there.

The proposed boycott of Carrefour seems to have many supporters. Their voices are heard on online forums through excited phrases like: “People who work for French companies must resign, change their jobs and let love of the country be their reason!” But naturally there are those with perfectly reasonable justifications, who see a boycott of Carrefour for a single day as a good, peaceful way to show their feelings, without bringing any long-term detriment to the company.

Boycotting French products in China is not particularly difficult. Avoiding “Made in China” products in somewhere like Britain, however, is a lot harder, as this amusing article from the BBC demonstrates. A note of thanks to Danwei commenter Ming the Merciless for the link. This kind of article really needs a bit more explicit mockery of its subjects than it dishes out but I suppose that wouldn’t be very BBC. Those who wish to boycott Chinese products are welcome to their own opinions of course but the situations they find themselves in during the course of their mission reach slapstick proportions.

Here’s one British crusader, who seems to be auditioning for a Little Britain sketch.

Tricia Hall spends a lot of time in charity shops. A trip to the High Street means a slew of questions and baffled stares from shop assistants. “Where was it made?” “Dunno, doesn’t it say?”

“When they are labelled it is easy enough,” says Mrs Hall. “We are very careful. But they have a very large grip on the market.

“We do avoid the High Street. You can’t trust them any more. I certainly don’t go to the cheap shops.”

And here’s another tormented soul who obviously hasn’t heard of the Royal Canine beauty parlour near Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium:

John Yelland is struggling to print things out. He decided to start a boycott after seeing a video of dogs being mistreated in China. Now he can’t find a new printer because they all seem to be made in China, or from Chinese components.

“I would rather pay a few quid more for the same product. You have got to be extremely careful. A lot of products don’t specify where they were made. They might say made in Bedfordshire when the product is shipped in from China.”

The task takes on a new dimension when it comes to electrical products:

It’s the “component problem”. Let’s say you buy a television from a big name brand in Korea or Japan. It may be assembled in the home nation, it may even have been assembled in Europe.

But it’s hard to imagine that of the dozens of different components inside it, some haven’t come from China. Whether it’s chips, LEDs or humble wires, there’s a lot of stuff that could potentially not be from the place it was assembled.

“It’s very difficult to go down to every single transistor or circuit board in every device,” says Stuff magazine editor Fraser Macdonald.

(It must be incredibly annoying to be called up by a journalist and asked to state the obvious as Fraser had to do.)

At least, one boycotter had the decency to recognise the hilarity of his predicament instead of sinking into a life of OCD.

Tim Spencer, from Wimborne in Dorset, has only been boycotting for a little over a week, since watching a TV documentary about China. But he can already see problems on the horizon. What happens when he needs to go clothes shopping?

“If you walk down the High Street and every garment’s made in China, what do you do? Do you go naked?”

Wonder what documentary it was. Bloody western media …

Yesterday, Xinhua released this story which highlighted a number of foreign media sources condemning the riots in Lhasa and accusing the Western media of showing the bias of a crown green bowl.

A precis: Pakistan Television said Pakistan opposed any attempts to violate “China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”, Indonesian Chinese-language newspaper Guo Ji Ri Bao accused some western media or groups “harbouring evil intentions” of seizing upon the riots in Lhasa to tarnish China’s “image of peaceful development” and the LA Times quoted tourists describing the ferocity of the rioters. Singaporean paper Lianhe Zaobao said the Western media was playing its part in attempts to “sabotage” the Olympics, New Zealand TV3 relayed the anger of Chinese citizens in New Zealand at Western media bias and NZ’s Dominion Post published a reader’s letter saying people should stop labouring the human rights point and look at the actual situation in Tibet. The Albania-China friendship association said the riots were “premeditated splittist activities” and the Western media’s reporting was a “manifestation of their traditional prejudices”. And the former director of Romania’s national news agency said the riots were “elaborately planned” to discredit China.

Xinhua, forget about all that. Lay off the Tibet subject for a moment and make hay like you’ve never made hay before with this piece from Britain’s bastion of respectable journalism, the Daily Mail.

The headline goes: “I’m off to China to be with my bride: the food’s fresher, living is cheaper …. and bins are emptied TWICE a day.” Here it goes:

In just 18 months of marriage, Ken Miller and his bride have found the road to wedded bliss rather rocky.

There is their 25-year-age gap, the fact that they live 6,000 miles apart - not to mention the small matter of neither speaking the other’s language.

But when 70-year-old Mr Miller managed to secure his 46-year-old Chinese wife Lei Genxiou a place in his sheltered accommodation near Swansea, it seemed they would at last be together - until she was refused a visa.

So now he is turning his back on Britain and moving to China to be with her … and he can’t wait to get there.

Mr Miller will set up home in the south-western Chinese city of Nanning, where the couple married in 2006 after meeting on the Internet.

“The quality of life over there is much better than it is here,” he said. “The food is fresher, the lifestyle is cheaper, and you get your rubbish emptied twice a day.

“The British have an old-fashioned view of China. It is a great place to live. I know of people who have come from Nanning to live here, and hated it.

“In China, there are 14-lane roads in the middle of town lined with shrubs and trees which are never damaged by vandals.

“They’ve got shops that women over here would die for. I am very excited about going to live with Lei, and she is too. I have just been talking to her on the computer. We have never been closer.”

He has visited his bride three times since they married and says he will have no regrets about leaving Britain.

Recalling a recent visit to Nanning, he added: “We went out to a restaurant which served 30 different dishes of food. The bill for seven of us was £14, and we drank 35 pints of beer.

“So they haven’t got an NHS, but on practically every street there are doctors and dentists which are open 14 hours a day, seven days a week. And yes, they eat dogs there - but we eat deer and rabbits.”

Mr Miller, who has been married twice before, said they can live well off his pensions. “And my wife has a job as a buyer for a restaurant so I will definitely be well-fed.”

He dismisses anyone who might be tempted to question the basis of their relationship.

“People have said to me that she’s just after a visa. I say, ‘Yes, of course she wants a visa. Of course she wants a better life. And who can blame her?’ But it works both ways - I get companionship, so I think it’s a fair gamble.

“And now she has been refused a visa and we are still together, so what does that prove? This is my life and after all my years, I’ve earned the right to do as I please.”

Asked if he is nervous about moving to a country without understanding the language, he said: “Lei’s not taking English lessons, and I can’t say five words in Mandarin. But when we’re together, we communicate a lot through touch.

“I’ve been around long enough to know I’ll get by. You pick up the language more easily if you live in a country, and I might take some lessons.”

Their romance began after Mr Miller saw an advert in a local newspaper for a dating agency which specialised in matching British lonely hearts with Chinese brides.

After paying £300, he was put in touch with Lei and they began communicating via the internet.

He described the lifestyle he is seeking abroad with a younger woman as “every old man’s dream”.

Describing their mutual attraction, Mr Miller added: “She is absolutely gorgeous. She says I’m handsome. But whether or not she loves me, I don’t know. What is the definition of love anyway? I’ve only got a few years left, so I’m going to China and I’m not coming back.”

You could develop quite a few lines of argument here. Britain’s draconian visa laws? Carnivorous double standards? Or just proof the Western media is indeed Satan incarnate.

(Jim from Indianapolis makes a good point in the comments section. How do Ken and Lei communicate on the Internet given their language predicament?)

UPDATE: I can’t believe I’m updating this post but anyway … it appears the Daily Mail found the story in Wales on Sunday. The original article has a couple of amusing snippets and the answer, as kindly pointed out by Chris Crook in the comments section, to the how-do-they-communicate conundrum. Here are a few pars:

“I’ve heard all the knockers saying things like ‘she’s only after your money, Ken’, but we’ve been together 18 months now and if that was her intention she would have done it by now,” said the passionate pensioner, before pausing.

“Hang on, wait. I’ve got to put my teeth in.”

Ken continued: “Right, as I was saying, we’re even stronger than ever now so the doubters can get stuffed.

“I’ll admit the language barrier can get a bit frustrating, but we have a machine that can translate English to Mandarin and vice versa, although it tends to get things a bit wrong sometimes,” laughed the twice-married former Royal Navy man.

“One time she was trying to tell me she loved me, but it came up with, ‘you are a big elephant’ instead.

But the real answer as to how they communicate lies here:

Ken’s been investing in new technology so he can get to see Lei every day.

“I bought one of those web-cams and we get together two or three times a day.

“Actually, it’s surprising what you can do on those!”

The Ministry of Public Security announced today at a press conference that “large-scale mass activities” in Beijing would not be banned during the Olympics, according to Xinhua (Chinese version). I had no idea this was even an issue and it’s just as well the MPS has shown leniency when you consider Xinhua’s definition of “large-scale mass activities”.

“Large-scale mass activities refer to those events with more than 1,000 participants, such as sports events, concerts, exhibitions, fairs and firework displays.”

Glad that’s been cleared up.

Oh Xinhua, sometimes you look so vulnerable I just want to smother your newly refurbished 25-storey tower (more about this next week) in cotton wool, hide you away from the harsh ridicule of those judgmental outsiders and tell you everything will be alright. But that would be a false promise and it is only right your gaffs are held up for public consumption. What’s that? You don’t care? No, I didn’t think so …

First of all, to answer a couple of suspicious text messages/emails I had nothing to do with an X-ray of Homer Simpson’s peanut brain being placed next to a story about Multiple Sclerosis on Xinhua’s website. Unfortunately the offending picture has now been removed, which I am ashamed to say, was my fault. But thanks to the wonders of screenshot technology, it is still here and here.

In fact, the English-language website is a completely separate department from my home of Dui Wai Bu (Home News for Overseas Service Department), which operates the main news wire, and is even tucked away in a different building somewhere west of Xinhua headquarters. It does not have a foreign polisher and mainly reproduces stories word-for-word from the wire service. Sometimes, it will slap in a China Daily or People’s Daily story for a bit of variety particularly when Duiwaibu has an office party and there are less stories than usual. It will often ignore the more risque (I use that term very lightly) stories and indeed the nauseating statements from the Publicity Department about “mass incidents”. There is always the name of an “editor” at the bottom of each story which is amusing given the vast majority are totally unedited.

So how did Mr Simpson manage to blunder his way onto Xinhua’s website? This afternoon, I thought I might as well phone up and get Xinhuanet’s reaction. I was put through to someone in the English department and the conversation was as follows:

Me: Hello, I work as a foreign polisher in Dui Wai Bu. I wanted to ask about a story on your website that has caused a lot of controversy on the Internet.

Female voice: Umm, what is it?

Me: Type in Multiple Sclerosis in the website’s search function

Female voice: Can you spell that?

Me: M-U-L-T-I-P-L-E-S-C-L-E-R-O-S-I-S

Female voice: It’s not working. S-G..?

Me: S-C

Female voice: Ah yes, ok … is it … Two genes …

Me: Yep, that’s the one. Can you see the story?

Female voice: Yes. So what’s the problem?

Me: The picture.

Female voice: Oh I see … what about it?

Me: Do you know what it is?

Female voice: Yes … er … what is it?

Me: It’s an X-ray of Homer Simpson’s brain.

Female voice: Ah yes.

Me: Do you know who Homer Simpson is?

Female voice: Er …

Me: He is a yellow American cartoon character.

Female voice: Ah.

Me: And he looks odd next to an article about a scientific breakthrough in the research of a serious disease.

Female voice. Ummm … ha ha ha ha … it looks like a pe …(inaudible)

Me: Looks like a what?

Female voice: Nothing, just joking.

Me: (Frustrated silence - would have loved to have heard what she said)

Female voice: Ha ha ha ha, it’s quite funny isn’t it.

Me: Ha ha ha ha. I suppose it is, yes.

Female voice: I think we should probably change it.

Me: (thinking, well you could just leave it ..) I suppose so

Female voice: Ok, thanks.

Me: No problem, bye.

Female voice: Bye

It’s a mystery that is more entertaining left unsolved. I know someone at Xinhuanet is familiar with Homer Simpson because this article about the Simpsons movie’s popularity in the US, dated July 30, 2007, was accompanied by a picture of Homer in his pants and a tiny Superman top. However, the telephone conversation would suggest that the use of the picture was done in inexplicable ignorance.

The howler was first picked by a Danwei reader and then popped up on Computerworld and a couple of other sites. I appreciated Jeremy’s (of Danwei fame) comments carried in the Computerworld article which distanced myself from the incident:

“Despite the foreign-language polishers, the writers and editors who produce English and other foreign-language content for Xinhua and other state-owned media organizations do not have the cultural awareness necessary to avoid errors like the misuse of the Homer Simpson illustration,” said Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of the English-language Chinese media blog Danwei.org. 

In fact, maybe that quote means foreign polishers are inept at making anyone at Xinhua listen to them …

This post at a blog called Harvard Extended took a more detailed look at how this incident further emphasises Xinhua’s poor reputation in the media world and exposes some serious editorial deficiencies.

The New China News Agency (Xinhua, 新華社) has a credibility problem. It’s not just because NCNA is a state-run news agency that publishes propaganda alongside news. It’s also because basic editorial processes are so broken that a “file photo” of Homers Simpson’s brain can show up alongside a serious article about multiple sclerosis, and remain there for days.

Now, you may chuckle at what appears to be a one-off mistake, but it reflects major editorial problems at China’s official news agency. This is not just a harmless error (or prank) by a single employee — it’s very likely that at least two other people were involved, and the editorial processes that are supposed to catch such mistakes either failed to work or are not even in place at Xinhua.

Regular readers of this blog will recognise these points. The entire organisational structure of Xinhua is flawed to the core. Each department within Xinhua exists independently, each scoring performance points for the release of reams of often meaningless words, or losing points for an individual’s mistake eg writing China and Taiwan in a headline. The departments compete with each other to secure as high a place as possible in the end-of-year league table which ensures there is absolutely zero cooperation between them. It is each for himself which means that if Xinhuanet uses a picture of Homer Simpson’s brain to illustrate a MS story, and in doing so tarnishes the reputation of the whole news agency, no one cares. As long as it doesn’t affect our department. Which is why it took a phone call from a foreign polisher, whose pay and reputation is not affected by the points system, to cause the removal of the picture. Many of the Xinhua “leaders” do not read English or simply regard the non-Chinese services as trivial. As a result, Xinhuanet is not really accountable to anyone for inspiring headlines like “Xinhua caught with Homer’s brain”, as on this website.

Nor will Xinhuanet punish the person responsible. The picture has been removed and that is that. No harm done. No point in attracting attention. A departmental performance point may be deducted otherwise. And why did no one from Xinhuanet notice the attention the story received on English-language websites? Because it is no one’s job to check. Pick story off wire. Paste it into software program. Upload to www.chinaview.cn. Why would you need to check any English-language websites? Ian Lamont, of the Harvard Extended blog, asked if anyone at Xinhuanet checked the english@xinhuanet.com inbox. I very much doubt it.

Oh, Xinhua all is forgiven. I doubted you during my run of night shifts but you have bounced back with a story to make my existence seem acceptable. Well, ok you plagiarised the main body of it from a local news website based in Henan but never mind that. You showed an eye for a story and you did phone up and ask a couple of questions. You even welcomed my polishing comrade’s god awful pun in the second paragraph. And the cheeky last subordinate clause. I think it deserves a full spread (copy and pasted from China Daily website for IPR purposes).

Bounty on flies sets central China city buzzing

LUOYANG — The authorities in a central China city have set a bounty on dead flies in a bid to clean up their image and promote public hygiene.

But critics have swatted down the move, questioning the benefits of paying 0.5 yuan (seven US cents) per insect turned in at the Xigong district office of Luoyang city, Henan Province.

Xigong District paid more than 1,000 yuan (US$125) for about 2,000 dead flies on July 1, the day it launched the bounty, with the aim to encourage cleanliness in residential areas.

“I and colleagues believe it’s the best way to push residents to do more for their living environment,” said Hu Guisheng, the office chief, adding it had proved effective with the district’s 390,000 residents.

The payment scheme is the first of its kind in Luoyang, a medium-sized city of 1.55 million people, which is striving to earn the title of “state-level hygienic city”.

The “State Hygienic City Standard”, issued in 2005, has ten criteria for the award, including the prevention and treatment of disease-transmitting lifeforms, which requires hygienic cities to effectively control pests like rats, mosquitoes, flies and blackbeetles.

The Xigong District office has set up cash desks with signs urging everyone to “participate in the campaign against mosquitoes and flies” at the entrances to six residential compounds. The office staff have been busy in counting dead flies and giving out cash.

A passerby surnamed Ge was attracted by the red board at a compound. “I couldn’t believe anyone was willing to buy such disgusting things,” said Ge, who admitted his compound seemed to have fewer flies since the campaign was launched.

“I support the move,” said Ge.

However, not everyone agreed. A shopkeeper criticized the campaign, calling it an attention-seeking gimmick.

“It is a typical act of paying for an image, in this case the state-designated hygienic city title,” said the shopkeeper who would not give his name.

The bounty has sparked an on-line debate. An Internet user named “Jiejiaguitian” said that although the office had good intentions, the action itself had made the district look like a laughing stock.

“The key point is the government should encourage residents to clean up the environment so that no flies can live there, instead of spending money on dead flies,” wrote “Jiejiaguitian”.

Hu maintained the district was working for the common good: “It is meant to draw attention, but what’s wrong with that? The money is being spent properly.”

However, he would not reveal how his colleagues would dispose of the 2,000 dead flies, which were stored in the district office health department room.

I’m eagerly awaiting the follow-up stories on how Xigong residents are cultivating the most rotten food products known to man (except those in the polishers’ waste bin) to attract even more flies to the area, how street vendors are sacking off selling those infeasibly pink sausages and investing in huge crates of yellow plastic fly swatters, how a “mass incident” broke out, sparked by the protests of those employed to count flies and how people from all walks of life descended on Xigong with suitcases of dead flies in search of their fortune.

Given the official refused to reveal his fly disposal plans, I am staying clear of any garibaldi biscuits with a “Made in China” label.

UPDATE: The ability of google to come up with entertaining ”flies in China” links is truly astonishing. This guy could have saved the Xigong district authorities a bit of cash:

http://www.webtvhub.com/chinas-fly-slayer-video-mr-hu-is-a-one-man-swat-team/

I doubt this post is going to provoke quite the same level of coverage, debate and entertaining abuse (actually maybe the latter will be constant) as the previous one but anyway …

The story below landed on my desk at a particularly busy time this week. I glanced at it, giggled at what I considered to be its utter irrelevance and put it at the bottom of the pile with the intention of writing a rejection note on it at the end of my shift. Unfortunately, I completely forgot about it and it was released in the early hours by an impatient editor without being edited.

HOHHOT, April 17 (Xinhua) - Seventeen chefs from the Republic of Mongolia have wrapped up their 15-day training in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in north China on Monday.

The selected chefs from the South-Gobi Aymag who arrived at the Urad Rear Banner on April 1 were sent to four restaurants, said Qegeg Delger, chairman of the South-Gobi branch of the Mongolian Chef Association.

They learnt to cook more than 20 hot dishes, 30 cold dishes and 20 snacks made of wheat.

Miao Xi, a chef with the Dianli Hotel who had exchanges with four female Mongolian chefs was quite impressed by their diligence. “They took notes from time to time of the ingredients and procedure,” he said.

The Mongolian chefs also taught their counterparts in the Urad Rear Banner to cook 20 cold dishes and 20 hot dishes and soups.  Enditem.

It was with sheer horror that I saw its presence on the database - probably the most woeful attempt to laud China-Mongolia relations I have ever seen. Still, I’m sure the reporter from the Inner Mongolian bureau got a tasty yak out of it.

The following day, I pointed it out to the first editor that came into my office fully expecting him to laugh and cry. Unfortunately, the editor in question wasn’t in a good mood. He had taken exception to a story I had polished the night before about Ablikim Abdiriyim, son of Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer, being sentenced to nine years in prison. He didn’t appreciate my efforts to try and make it resemble some kind of news story by adding quotation marks around certain phrases and “a document released by the Urumqi court said …”. Wouldn’t want anyone thinking it was an open trial. So, he read the chef exclusive with a stony face and said, “Of course it is relevant. The Mongolian News Agency would be interested.”

“Even if I was a Mongolian chef with a penchant for wheat snacks, I wouldn’t be interested,” I replied churlishly.

My subsequent glance at the Mongolian English-language press prompted me to curse my own arrogance. Although, the story in question was nowhere to be seen, there was this snippet from Montsame, the Mongolian state news agency, previewing the chefs’ visit under the headline ”Cooks to leave for China”.

Ulaanbaatar, /MONTSAME/. Twenty cooks of Omnogobi aimag will improve their professional qualifications by being involved in courses in China. The training will be conducted for 20 days in the Bayannuur city of Inner Mongolia, China within the scope of the “Year for Great Construction and Increase of Vacancies”. The above cooks will study methods to prepare various meals of foreign countries. This year, vacancies are being created in the culinary field in all soums of the aimag. B. Bolortuya.

Shame on me for not looking at the wider picture in terms of Xinhua subscribers. And shame on Xinhua for depriving Montsame of the scoop of the week with such an embarrassing effort.

The odd week cavorting in the countryside is a well-known antidote to institutionalisation. Plough through an excessive stint at Xinhua and - apart from spelling centre “center” without even remembering to growl with patriotic pride - you can end up being unable to distinguish between the run-of-the-mill and the ridiculous.

 Yesterday - my first day in the office after a week’s holiday - I was able to look at the working day with a fresh mind. Frightening. First up was the question to my fellow polishers, “So how’s it been?” This usually invokes pained expressions as brains are racked for the best example of absurdity from the past seven days. My favourite was an account of one of the most ludicrous pieces of censorship I have seen in a year and three months. The story concerned was actually very entertaining (barring the broken body parts), revealing the latest calamity to befall “China’s leading amateur birdman” who crashed his home-made aircraft in a field in Beijing. Extra amusement came from the fact that birdman Li Xianfeng works in a ten-pin bowling alley in Tsinghua University which according to the “uncensored” copy has produced “some of China’s most prominent engineers”. Any hint of irony was lost when a senior editor (and I must stress this particular editor is especially keen to cover his back at every opportunity, which is not a fair reflection on his colleagues) decided to add two words:

“which has produced some of China’s most prominent engineers and politicians”

Why the politician addition? Because Hu Jintao studied at Tsinghua University. Oh dear god.

My second action was to log in to the editing system. The previous days’ carnage was on display. The stories that never made it. One intro read:

“A popular science book was published in China to popularize anti-terrorism knowledge among public.”

Another story talked of the Danish Ambassador to China, Laurids Mikaelsen, on a trip to Jiangxi Province where he was visiting the hospital in which he was born in 1948. “Mikaelsen noted that he had preserved some Chinese customs even to date, such as eating Chinese food.” Umm … authentic.

One headline which read, “China is frank on human rights issues, says Austrian experts”, was preceded by the word “ABORTED”. The story that was polished into something more palatable can be found here and China Daily put its own version on page three.

Neither of these two versions included the following material that my colleague received in the original text:

In a talk with officials of the Office of the State Council Three Gorges Project Construction Committee, Hosek for the first time learned that the Three Gorges Project is a multi-purpose water conservancy project in the Yangtze River.

“I have never heard such a huge project before,” said Hosek, “it has both anti-flood and electricity-generation functions and its ultimate goal is to safeguard the life and property of millions of Chinese citizens.”

I often wonder about the accuracy of the quotes from Xinhua reporters in the local bureaus or if they have ever heard of a notepad. What they do possess is an incredible ability to make overseas visitors sound very clueless. I think I’ll take the opportunity to email Austrian delegation leader Gabriele Heinisch-Hosek to see whether this reporting is an accurate reflection of her visit.

Later in the afternoon one of my polishing colleagues received a story about the difficulties Beijing is facing in standardising English translations on menus in the capital’s restaurants. He didn’t appreciate these efforts to “sanitize” Beijing, nor was he impressed with the total lack of substance to the article. So he decided to make up a quote expressing his own opinion.

However not everyone agrees with the need to standardize everything. “Weird and wonderful English on Beijing menus - like ‘pea soup’, ‘complicated cakes’ and ‘grass with fishy smell’ - are part of the city’s charm,” said Theo Theodopolopodis, a Greek businessman who has been living in Beijing for two years. “If we sanitize everything, what happens to local flavour?”

I certainly don’t advocate the fabrication of news but it was partly my fault. I thought he was just joking around when I mentioned Theo’s name. But he sent it through and it was released. Quite frankly I couldn’t be arsed to deliver a lecture on responsibility and thought it was best to allow things to follow their natural course. The author of the article was most unimpressed.

The final folly was conveyed to me by a polisher in the international department. He was called up at home and asked to be on the panel of judges for a Xinhua oratory competition. “Sure, no problem,” was his reply. “And just one other thing … we would like you to do a performance.” “Eh? What do you mean, a perfomance?” “Just a small song.” “Er, sorry I don’t really sing.” “Ok then, what about a few tricks?” “Er, sorry I don’t know any tricks.” “Juggling?” “Sorry, I can’t.” “Oh … a story about your hometown?” “I am happy to be on the panel but I’m not doing anything else.” “Ah, ok well your boss will probably call you later to ask again.”

Good to be back.

To be a Politburo member is often to be as helpless as a naive Xinhua foreign editor trying to persuade his superiors that quotation marks around “Taiwan independence” just look a bit petty.

The central leadership must have collectively spluttered on their shark’s fin soup at the sight of a 800-metre concrete and marble dragon reclining nonchalantly on a mountain ridge in Henan province. And they must have been pounding their skulls with the red hardback edition of the Chinese constitution on hearing that the dragon’s total length will be 21 kilometres, its total cost could be up to four billion yuan and it is all being done in celebration of 60 years of Communist rule in 2009.

Obviously this story has been lapped up by the international media which has used headlines like: “China to build 13-mile dragon to fire up tourism”. It implies a Chinese government tourism think-tank has huddled together and come up with a triumphant plan to make Henan a hotspot for the world’s travellers. In fact, the whole harebrained scheme, similar to the painting a mountain green incident (which prompted the inevitable headline, “Why did China paint the mountain green?”), is being propounded by an egocentric maniac with an incredibly poor taste in giant concrete and marble animal garden features who wants to be remembered as the man who made the Great Wall look like a picket fence.

Li Xiong, president of the Zulong company behind the dragon, says it will cost more than £260 million and he hopes Chinese people all over the world will contribute.

“The finished dragon is to wear 5.6 million scales of jade or gold-coated bronze. People can pay to carve words on the scales, and inside the body there will be trains and clubs. It will be a place for cultural activities and relaxation,” he said.

“I am not afraid of attacks. Our ancestors built the Great Wall, and now I am building the Great Dragon. I will succeed.”

It is another example of the chaos that reigns far away from Beijing’s influence. Not even the local authorities know what is going on. Apparently, the project was halted for not going through the correct planning procedures back in 2003. Xinhua has reported that the dragon is already under threat as it appears to constitute a serious breach of environmental regulations.  The local environmental department has only just managed to get out of the dark:

The Zhengzhou environmental protection administration said they had learned of the project through media reports.

And someone is of course lying:

A Henan newspaper quoted an official with Xinzheng City as saying the dragon is a business project and has nothing to do with the government. Zulong Company vice president, Li Xiong, told the media that the dragon project had support from the government.

Meanwhile, China looks like a crazy place to the rest of the world and the politburo has to find an excuse not to attend a 60th People’s Republic of China birthday party in Henan.

I do wonder what the central government really thinks about incidents like this. Is it similar to working for Xinhua? Do China’s leaders fill the corridors of the Great Hall of the People with exasperated wails even though they know that very few people are listening? Do they have as much chance of berating the man behind the Great Dragon as I have of any form of acknowledgement of my existence from the director of my department? Do they bang on about China’s international image as much as I do when I see a story from the diplomatic desk? Or do they giggle about it (did you see the thing’s head - it’s enormous hee hee!) over morning tea?