Beijing Newspeak

Anyone in China thinking of downing a few amphetamine cocktails and tearing around the animal market in Kashgar, armed with a pair of scissors and the intention to shear 51 sheep in eight hours in order to enter the Guinness Book of World Records (current record is 50 held by Janos of Hungary), is advised to read the small print on the record application form.

Last weekend, Xinhua released what was one of its better stories about the Chinese media getting all worked up at an attempt by a group of firecracker factories in Liuyang, Hunan, to set a Guinness world record for the longest string of firecrackers - an incredible 20 kilometers - in an unabashed publicity campaign involving local government money.

Chinese media have blasted an attempt by a Chinese city in Hunan province to set a world record for the longest string of firecrackers, labeling it “ridiculous” and a waste of money.

A 20-km string of firecrackers, stretching from Dayao Town to the downtown area of Liuyang City, home to China’s largest firecracker production base, went up in smoke on Friday afternoon, exploding for 68 minutes and littering the ground with red debris, as organizers sought to gain publicity for the city and its local fireworks industry.

The event, organized by several firecracker plants and partly sponsored by the local government, cost more than 800,000 yuan (about 107,000 U.S. dollars), including 580,000 yuan for the firecrackers themselves and the remainder to stage the event and ensure the fire service was on standby.

“The production of firecrackers is one of the city’s main industries. We hope the success of making the longest firecracker will increase the confidence of the producers and make our city well-known across the country,” said Xu Qiangguo, head of the Liuyang Firecrackers Bureau.

The Changsha Evening News had billed the event as a world record bid, saying the organisers had applied for officials from the Guinness Book of Records to be present to adjudicate. Xinhua clarifies the situation:

But the event, billed by local media as a Guinness World Record attempt, was not attended by an official Guinness World Records representative after it ignored a request from the organizers to attend.

Instead, a representative from the unofficial Shanghai Great World Guinness Book of Records turned up to present them with a certificate bestowing upon the city the honor of having only “the country’s longest string of firecrackers”.

“I can only ensure you that it’s the longest firecracker in China and I dare not say it’s the world’s longest,” said the Shanghai office’s representative Wang Yizhuo.

The “Shanghai Great World Guinness Book of Records” has been confusing the media and the public for years. As the Xinhua article explains, Guinness’ official representative in China is Liaoning Education Press which has been ”the real Guinness Book of Records representative in China since Shanghai Great World Guinness and the Guinness Book of Records split in 1996″. When the two organisations parted, the Shanghai office changed the “Guinness” part of its name from ji (1st tone) ni (2nd tone) si (1st tone) to ji (2nd tone) ni (2nd) si (1st) - ie a different first character with a slightly different pronunication. Cunning.

From then on, the state media, known fondly for its frequent displays of gullibility, and of course patriotism, were happily oblivious to the newly created discrepancy, coming up with stories like this:

Tianchi, a lake on the top of Mount Changbai in northeast China’s Jilin Province, has been recognized as the highest volcanic lake in the world.

A nearby waterfall, which plunges 68 meters over a cliff, is also regarded as the largest waterfall originating from crater lakes.

The Shanghai Office of the Guinness Book of World Records has granted certificates to these two scenic spots in Mount Changbai recently…

…Experts believe that now Mount Changbai has found an entry in the Guinness Book of Records, it will become better known throughout the world and help boost the local tourism industry.

Chinese media refer to Leshan resident Du Pinhua as the world’s oldest person, citing the Guinness Book of Records. That fount of indisputable fact Wikipedia has more:

Du Pinhua of China (born April 22, 1886?) is a claimant to the world’s oldest person title and lives in Leshan. According to the Shanghai branch of Guinness World Records (and in apparent defiance of Guinness’ London headquarters), Du Pinhua was proclaimed the world’s oldest person in 2002. The claim disappeared for almost four years before resurfacing in April 2006, when it was claimed that Du celebrated her 120th birthday. Again, her age has not been internationally recognized.

It seems the last media source to be duped was the Shanghai Daily back in May of this year, which ran the headline, “Kids in Shanghai Grab Guinness Record for Pinwheels”. Unsurprisingly, the record was approved by Shanghai Great World Guinness. Maybe the newspaper let it go because it was done for charity.

Back in 2003, the Shanghai Guinness office was actually taken to court by a disgruntled bungee jumper, according to this report from eastday.com.

With dreams of seeing his name in the Guinness Book of World Records, a middle-aged businessman from Beijing bungee jumped from a helicopter in Handan, Hebei Province, last August after paying a registration fee to a Shanghai-based company he thought was affiliated with the Guinness publishers.

The jump was a success, but his dream remains unrealized, so Zhang Di is taking the local firm, Shanghai Great World Guinness Office, to court.

Zhang said he has discovered the company isn’t affiliated with the Guinness Book and he wants it to pay him compensation of 57,800 yuan (US$7,000) for expenses and mental anguish.

Zhang paid 1,800 yuan (US$217) to register his leap from a helicopter 80 meters above the ground, claiming it was the first bungee jump from a moving aircraft in history.

However, Zhang discovered his death-defying act might not be recognized as a world record when a Beijing newspaper reported last September that “Shanghai Guinness is not an authorized agent of the Guinness Book of World Records and has been misleading the public.”

“I knew of Shanghai Guinness through the media and contacted the office last May. Its officials confirmed to me that the office is the authorized agent of the Guinness Book,” said Zhang….

…”I knew of Shanghai Guinness through the media and contacted the office last May. Its officials confirmed to me that the office is the authorized agent of the Guinness Book,” said Zhang.

I don’t know the outcome of the trial but it seems Shanghai Great World Guinness is now adopting a more honest approach to record breaking, flourishing “China’s longest firecracker” certificates instead of ones that encompass the globe. However, organisers of these ridiculous events are happy to dish out flyers emblazoned with “Guinness Book of World Records” and the local media lap it up.

Shanghai Great World Guinness has done an excellent PR job. People turn to them without even knowing about the official branch in Liaoning. Shanghai charges an application fee, Liaoning Education Press does not. And Shanghai Great World Guinness enjoys illustrious connections. It comes under the authority of the Shanghai Communist Youth League.

Newspapers around China criticized the firecracker stunt in Liuyang saying it was a waste of money, particularly as it was partly funded by the local government. Add to that, it wasn’t even an official world record. But in this case, the organizers and local government couldn’t care less - after the event they phoned Xinhua to say their factories had received 30 million yuan in orders as a direct result of their big bang.

I think I should do my bit to enhance the often rocky polisher-state media bilateral relations and save Xinhua a tiny bit of face. I don’t know if anyone has seen this snippet from the Financial Times (reproduced below via msnbc) regarding Xinhua’s reporting of the Three Gorges story that has gobbled up column inches around the world.

Observant China-watchers were given a brief glimpse of a failure in the Chinese propaganda machine on Wednesday when government mouthpiece Xinhua News Agency accidentally ran two stories in Chinese at exactly the same time by the same reporters on the same topic.

The problem was that one article quoted senior officials warning of an impending environmental crisis caused by the Three Gorges dam, while the other article praised the smooth and steady progress of environmental protection efforts on and around the project. Xinhua sources told the Financial Times that the negative story was intended for translation into English and distribution overseas to show the world that officials take environmental issues seriously; the positive story was meant only for domestic consumption.

The usually vigilant Chinese censor must have been in celebration mode for the mid-autumn moon festival on Tuesday night.

To me, this implies that the “Three Gorges could lead to environmental catastrophe” story was not intended to be released in Chinese. There must have been a misunderstanding here. The whole point of the story being published was that it comes just a fortnight before the CPC congress and it was carried, as planned, in Chinese newspapers the next day. According to a Xinhua reporter, China Youth Daily wrote a commentary saying that only after admissions are made can things begin to improve (logic that could be applied to many issues in China reported by state media).

As it turns out, the negative story was written first but due to article length and time constraints the writers deliberately missed off the positive side of events focusing on government efforts to address the problem. They then wrote a separate story with the positive angle believing that, to have both, they were providing their readers with balance. (Bizarre, I know). The editors then released both stories at the same time. The English version combined both stories.

1) Set a blurred scene in which a senior official - a member of the Politburo Standing Committee is ideal - implores an unspecified layer of society to embrace an abstract noun. Note: always start the report with the official’s name and clarify that he is a member of the CPC and not any other party.

Jiamusi, Heilongjiang Province, June 9 (Xinhua) – Wu Guanzheng, the top discipline official of the Communist Party of China (CPC), has called for earnest efforts to protect the interests of the people.

2) Quickly bestow upon the official his full title and sum up his recent inspection tour by providing a wide range of destinations under which most places in the area could be classified - “administration center” is always welcomed.

Wu, member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, visited state-owned farms, enterprises, villages and administration centers in the northeast Chinese city during a tour from June 5-8.

 3) Provide the official’s second full job title and hint at some recent unsavoury events that have occurred in the region, which have in some way had a negative impact on the local people.

The senior Party official, who is also secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, was in the city to inspect how local authorities have dealt with some incidents involving illegal activities detrimental to the interests of local people.

4) Imply that local officials have not been doing enough for the people under their jurisdiction. Paint a picture of the senior official slapping the back of his subordinates’ hands with a ruler. Make sure the senior official talks about “people” a lot even if it means awkward repetition. Reiterate “life” so readers think of death. Indicate that local officials have not been taking social problems seriously. Throw in the vague notion that local residents have suffered some kind of loss and that problems remain.

Wu urged local officials to pay attention to the life of people and try to improve the life of the people, so as to build up closer ties between the Party and the people. He urged local officials to be serious in resolving protruding problems that have brought losses to interests of the people.

5) List a series of problems which are seemingly unique to this particular region. Confirm that rural people have suffered losses as a result of fraudulent activities.

Special programs should be launched to check problems regarding food security, labor safety and fraudulent activities that brought financial losses to local farmers.

6) Detail three main areas in which there has been a lot of illegal activity. Chuck in an “-ism” to finish.

The senior official pledged to severely punish illegal activities in the fields of education, medical service and environmental protection. He also told officials to avoid formalism and bureaucracy.

7) Look back at the finished article, take stock and choose a nondescript headline (preferably one that has been used before - check on Google) which will ensure it is completely ignored by everyone except the People’s Daily.

Senior official calls for protecting people’s interests

It was probably just a routine inspection during which Wu Guanzheng said the same thing as he would have done if he was visiting the opposite end of the country in Yunnan. But the ability to suggest something more sinister through the use of obscure language is remarkable.

Unlike my colleagues who have to translate this kind of report, I have the luxury of slapping “NOT POLISHED - ADVISE AGAINST RELEASE” on the front cover followed by “this report does far more harm than good etc”. Unfortunately if the story involves one of the members of the Standing Committee there is often no choice for the senior editors but to release it.

Although, last week I did manage to reject a similar report concerning Jia Qinglin, Chairman of the People’s Political Cosultative Conference. I’m not sure what that says about Jia’s waning political influence ahead of the upcoming Party congress … Absolutely nothing actually (depends on the senior editor’s identity and mood) but just thought I’d mention it.

In some mildly deranged kind of way, I admire the Chinese Foreign Ministry. It has the ability to release brief statements with more holes than a Connect Four board, often appearing as if it has achieved the intellectual ideal of not caring about what other people think. Well why should we explain the situation, these are the facts that involve China if you are interested, it says with a shrug. Xinhua’s diplomatic desk dutifully translates the statements and reports like this one on June 4 are released:

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday confirmed that no Chinese people had died in a ship collision involving illegal Chinese immigrants off the coast of Nicaragua.

The Chinese Embassy in Mexico said that it had heard from the Nicaraguan authorities that no Chinese had been killed in the ship collision, said a statement posted on the Foreign Ministry website.

A ship carrying dozens of illegal Chinese immigrants collided with another vessel near Nicaragua on May 25.

A total of 38 illegal Chinese immigrants on the ship, who were detained in Managua, capital of Nicaragua, are now in good conditions, the statement said, adding that the officials from the Chinese Embassy in Mexico had visited them.

As China and Nicaragua have no diplomatic relations, the Chinese Embassy in Mexico has been working with the Nicaraguan side to properly resolve the issue, the statement said.

Good news, it would seem. But what about the previous media reports on this incident? The one from Reuters on May 28 that said:

Nicaraguan police have arrested 69 illegal Chinese immigrants trying to get to the United States after the boat they were traveling in collided with another craft, an migration official said on Monday.

Police also arrested 14 undocumented Ecuadorean migrants who were on the other vessel, the officials said.

“We have 14 Ecuadoreans, seven women and seven men, and from China we have 69, 15 women and the rest male,” a spokeswoman for Nicaragua’s migration office, Magdalena Reyes, said.

The collision, which happened on Friday just off Nicaragua’s largely undeveloped Caribbean coast, left five people dead — three Chinese, an Ecuadorean and a Nicaraguan who was organizing the immigrants’ passage.

Three other Chinese were still missing.

Yet at the time, as Reuters pointed out, Chinese state radio had reported the arrests of only 38 Chinese immigrants.

On June 3, another FM statement was released which put the nationalities of those that died in doubt. The figure of 38 remained firm and the FM was quoting “Nicaraguan sources”.

 China is working with Nicaragua on identifying the five people killed in a ship collision involving illegal Chinese immigrants, according to Chinese Foreign Ministry.

It was reported that a ship carrying dozens of illegal Chinese immigrants collided with another vessel near Nicaragua on May 25, said a statement posted on the Foreign Ministry Web site (www.fmprc.gov.cn).

Five people, whose citizenship cannot be identified, died, while 38 of the survivors were confirmed to be illegal Chinese immigrants, the statement said, citing Nicaraguan sources.

China’s Foreign Ministry had tried various means to confirm the information since the accident took place, the statement said.

“However, we have not confirmed whether the dead are Chinese or not so far,” the statement said.

 The following day, the number of Chinese that died was zero. There is no mention of the discrepancy in figures: 69 vs 38. Nothing about the nationalities of the people who actually did die. The report about the three missing Chinese was ignored. Not a sausage about Ecuador. The source for the report was “the Nicaraguan authority” who told the Chinese Embassy in Mexico. Why should there have been any more details? No Chinese died. The FM had done its job. Unfortunately, Xinhua was the only news agency reporting the incident but, in this case, its role was not to provide a news story. The international media had lost interest in the event and the Xinhua statement was ignored. The only information on the accident was coming from a Foreign Ministry that does not have an embassy in Nicaragua (as Nicaragua recognizes Taiwan).

I’m bored of the way my mind tries to concoct reasons for this type of confusion that happens so regularly. Just leave it. The Chinese FM has had the final say. Why dispute everything it reports? But it still bugs me … did the Nicaraguan immigration official report the wrong information to Reuters? How did the Nicaraguan immigration office get the figures so wrong? Is there any reason why the Chinese FM would alter the figures? Is it anything to do with Nicaragua’s choice of Taiwan aid over diplomatic ties with China? As the Reuters report said, this does complicate issues such as repatriation. Were the people that died actually from Taiwan?

 I have no idea but I do know that I’m fed up of spewing forth conspiracy theories every time I have to edit a FM statement that poses more questions than it provides answers. But then why should it care.

An email asking why I hadn’t written anything about Huang Ju arrived in my inbox the other day which gave me a kick up the arse (thank you, Justin) to dig up a couple of random theories just for the hell of it. To be honest, the issue has been amply covered by Positive Solutions and Richard Spencer and I am merely tossing in a couple of fag ends.

A quick straw poll of interested colleagues resulted in a resounding victory for “Huang is alive” with the simple reasoning that the Chinese government would have made an announcement if he had died. Secrecy makes the world suspicious but the Chinese authorities always deal with what it regards as ill-founded rumour by simply ignoring it. This post by a Chinese political science professor is interesting though:

It turns out that the story on Huang Ju’s demise may be erroneous. The official press has not reported on it, which is unusual if he really did pass away. In addition, it carried the following piece on Minister of Supervision Li Zhilun’s passing. Note, the second paragraph states that Huang Ju expressed his condolences. My speculation is that perhaps Huang and Li stayed in the same hospital, and rumors got out that someone important passed away. People then just assumed that it was Huang Ju, but in fact it was Li, who is on the standing committee of the central discipline and inspection committee, the party’s anti-corruption watchdog. Huang is also a standing committee member (changwei), but of the much more powerful Politburo.

新华社北京５月９日电　中共中央纪律检查委员会副书记、监察部部长李至伦同志，于４月２８日在北京病逝，享年６５岁。李至伦同志的遗体９日在八宝山革命公墓火化。

　 　李至伦病重期间和逝世后，胡锦涛、江泽民、吴邦国、温家宝、贾庆林、曾庆红、黄菊、吴官正、李长春、罗干、王乐泉、王兆国、回良玉、刘淇、刘云山、吴 仪、张立昌、张德江、周永康、俞正声、贺国强、郭伯雄、曹刚川、曾培炎、王刚、李鹏、万里、乔石、朱镕基、李瑞环、宋平、刘华清、尉健行、李岚清、徐才 厚、何勇、成思危、热地、唐家璇、华建敏、陈至立、贾春旺、王忠禹、刘延东和韩光等分别以不同方式表示慰问和哀悼。

　　李至伦是辽宁锦州 人，１９６４年１月加入中国共产党，１９６７年９月后历任广东省保亭县（现海南省保亭县）县委办公室副主任、县委常委兼宣传部部长、县委副书记，共青团中 央团校组教处处长、副教育长、校党组书记、副校长兼共青团中央青运史研究室主任，中国青年报社社长、党组书记，监察部办公厅主任、副部长，中央纪委常委、 监察部副部长，中央纪委副书记、监察部副部长、部长等职。

　　李至伦是中共十三大、十五大、十六大代表，中共第十六届中央委员

But then again a friend at Xinhua came up with this. Huang Ju is in fact dead but while he continues to be investigated for alleged involvement in the Shanghai corruption scandal, the CPC hasn’t decided on the tone, or indeed content, of his obituary yet and just need a bit more time. So there you go, one (most probably two) is pure fiction and unfortunately I can’t claim credit for either piece of imagination.

If Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed finds herself on an extended holiday, she would be advised to strike China off her list of refuge spots.

Sneed wrote in the Chicago newspaper on Tuesday that the Virginia Tech gunman was Chinese. On Tuesday evening, Virginia State Police identified the killer as South Korean. During the twelve hours between Sneed’s column hitting the shelves and the official statement, China was quivering. A host of international websites carried the story “Chinese student suspected of Virginia massacre”. The main international news agencies wisely chose to wait for the official statement much to the relief of Xinhua. Alarm bells were ringing on the eighth floor, which is home to the international news department, and there was a flurry of activity to work out how to report the nationality of the gunman.

In the end, we will never know how they planned to approach it but suffice to say the senior editors were delighted when “South Korea” was read out at the press conference. Back-slapping and congratulations ensued - one editor said that it would have been a inconceivable loss of face if the gunman had been Chinese. Xinhua can now go forth and write about the incident all they want but there is no doubt that if the gunman had been Chinese the reporting would have been understated to say the least. Galling really. To think a potential loss of face dwarfed a sense of responsibility to report such a tragic world news event.

A CCTV 9 news bulletin around 10pm on Tuesday did not lead with the story. It showed no footage from Virginia, choosing to settle with the Foreign Ministry statement expressing China’s condolences. It could be pure cynicism on my part but I wonder if the decision to report it this way was made on the assumption that the gunman was Chinese. I welcome slap downs from CCTV 9ers on this point. But on the subject of CCTV 9, their midnight bulletin, although following standard practice, inspired a hefty rant. The main news item was the Pakistani Prime Minister’s visit to China including a three-minute interview. It was followed by Wen Jiabao meeting the top Greek legislator, who promised to raise the strategic partnership … Then came China and Tunisia relations before finally a report - with footage - of the Virginia police naming South Korean student Cho Seung-Hui.

I have been vexed by this question for a while. The stories I enjoy editing most at Xinhua are the ones that revolve around quotes from officials that scream “BULLSHIT!” and are able to be proved as such (that last bit is a crucial add-on - I see a lot of bullshit).  When the opportunity to do a simple bit of detective work arises, I log on to the database, confirm my suspicions and then lavish attention on official comment that is contradictory and deserving of scorn. I slip in a smattering of my own comment - a whole line, an innocent adjective, an adverb loaded with negative connotations - pointing out, on Xinhua News Agency’s behalf, that a discrepancy might exist. Nothing special, just a snippet of analysis that is commonplace in news writing but often completely alien in my place of work.

I do this not out of mischief, a foreigner trying to fiddle with a tiny screw inside what is perceived to be a mighty propaganda machine. I do it because I want Xinhua to distance itself away from officials who should have no authority over it and produce a proper news story. I want Xinhua not to patronise its international readership and earn some credibility. Take this story from last week for example. The headline has been changed by the government portal site, China.org.cn, to an emphatic statement rather than a claim, its brashness magnified by the use of capital letters. “Drought Won’t Affect Power Generation In Three Gorges”. Actually, it appears to be a direct refutation of one of my earlier blog posts - I wish.

The “polisher’s asides” are obvious. Number one:

The Yangtze was at its lowest level last year since records began in 1877,” said Yuan, “but I believe it is unlikely there will be a significant drop in the inflow of water into the Three Gorges Reservoir from the upper reaches this year.

Therefore, power generation in the Three Gorges Area will not be affected,” he said.

Observers, however, expressed concern that Yuan fails to take consideration of the issue of climate change.

The Ministry of Water Resources Wang Shucheng said earlier this month that extreme and abnormal climatic phenomena like drought and floods have occurred more frequently due to global warming in recent years. 

More than 2.62 million people in southwest China’s Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality on the upstream of the Three Gorges have been suffering from drinking water shortages since late February.

This particular aside was toned down from some line I added about Yuan failing to provide any scientific evidence for his assertion. That is the reason, I would like to stress, for the erroneous grammar. I added a couple of paragraphs of drought background copied and pasted from the Xinhua database and decided the story was slightly more palatable.

Number two:

Cao Guangjing, deputy general manager of China Three Gorges Project Corp., said the Three Gorges Reservoir had gained a storage capacity of 11 billion cubic meters of water after the water level retained in the reservoir was raised to 156 meters last October.

“With the reservoir’s newly gained storage capacity, we can regulate the use of water needed for power generation in an efficient way and make sure that electricity is produced evenly,” said Cao.

Cao’s comments appear to contradict those of Yuan Jie early in February when the Three Gorges Project Corporation told Xinhua that the water level in the reservoir was being lowered to feed the drought-ravaged river.

“The water level in the reservoir will fall by four meters from the current 155 meters,” he said.

After editing this story, I waited to see if it would be changed by the senior editor on its way to the wire. In a pathetic and deluded kind of way I felt a rush of triumph when this story was released. Even more so when it was reprinted in full by China.org.cn, which is subject to far narrower constraints than Xinhua. Officials heavily involved in the Chinese government’s darling project for the 21st Century being gently mocked on the government’s internet gateway. Nice.

But, when I really think about it, it is absurd. Rather than reflecting a shift in what Xinhua allows itself or is allowed to report, it just comes down to one British bloke in an office scouring the database like some sort of geeky vigilante. The reporter who wrote the story is not capable of analysis or informed comment. In this case, it is not because the reporter is not allowed to add his or her own asides. It is simply because translating almost word for word a confused and jumbled Chinese version is a far easier task than needing to apply some thought, which in turn is more conducive to meeting a story quota for the month.

I suppose the role of foreign editor can be regarded as a crucial part of the Xinhua news process. My current colleagues and myself do seem to have unprecedented authority in terms of editing and asking reporters to dig out more information. But is the “polisher’s aside” just a fraud? When we are long gone and our seats are filled by other native speakers who are more interested in switching onto auto pilot and changing some grammar, will all the stories just revert to being as bland as boiled tofu? This kind of content would never be added by anyone from the senior editorial ranks. Picking holes in officials’ quotes just isn’t in any Xinhua job descriptions. Maybe, if the Three Gorges story had gone to a different senior editor, the two asides would have been deleted entirely.

I will keep on doing it though. Just maybe, when the Xinhua database is littered with “polisher’s asides”, reporters will start to copy and paste them into their news stories. Maybe, the odd piece of sarcasm or beligerence will capture an editor’s imagination. More and more reporters and editors will jump on the bandwagon of snide one-liners. The craze will spread up the corridor until one day the diplomatic section says something like: “China and Sudan have signed a strategic partnership pledging to raise bilateral relations to a new level - despite international criticism that China is propping up a murderous regime….” Allow a polisher his dreams.

Ah, do you remember those days when, as children, we would gather together pockets full of posies, skip along country lanes and yodel traditional rhymes in celebration of International Children’s Songs Day on March 21? Funny that, neither do I.

But when I received a story on the eve of March 20 previewing the event, I didn’t really think much of verifying the historical details of such a prestigious day. They have international days for anything now anyway (I’ll be munching All Bran on April 12). I set about changing the story from a dry, humourless showcase for Chinese “literary experts” to slag off pop music to: ”Chinese literature buffs lambast pop culture in time for Children’s Songs Day”. I think my main beef was the lack of any quotes from the kids of today. I don’t like R&B either but I’m not going to campaign for its extinction. On close inspection, it should be obvious a pesky foreign editor has been chucking his own opinions into this story, if only because it proved light relief from nonsensical diplomatic stories on the six-party talks.

Fan also seems to have little time for creativity, criticizing today’s younger generation for “mocking some pop songs and ancient poems to create rhyming spoofs”.

I felt like a standard bearer for the younger generations of China. Keep on downloading ridiculous pop songs from the Internet while we mock those stuffy academics. Hao ting!

The next day, I googled International Children’s Songs Day on the Internet. It only came up on the English language websites of Chinese media. But, according to my Xinhua story, it was:

“… established in 1976 in an international poetry conference in Belgium and approved by the UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1999.”

A quick inspection of the list of international days on the Unesco website. Nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t even next to “International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination” or “World Poetry Day”, which both fall on March 21. Surely Xinhua hasn’t written a story about a day that doesn’t exist..

 I can’t read Chinese but apparently news on the International Children’s Songs Day was all over the Beijing newspapers and Chinese news sites. Nobody could explain what had happened. Where had this god foresaken celebration of mindless melodies originated from? And what about stories on “International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination” and “World Poetry Day”? These bona fide celebrations had been snubbed. One colleague speculated that someone had made a translation mistake somewhere along the line. She referred to an event reported by Xinhua two years ago called “World Toilet Mountain” instead of the “World Toilet Summit”. Images of stockpiles of lavatories on desert islands ..

Was there something wrong with World Poetry Day? Are all Chinese poets so subversive in their art, the event can not be discussed? And what is it about the Chinese media that loves to celebrate international days the rest of the world has barely heard of? World Sleep Day on March 20 anyone (although I did see a story from Greece about this event)? This post has raised more questions than answers. It reflects a tortured wretch of a sub-editor babbling in a corner of a office on the seventh floor.

Incidentally, after the “international” children’s songs day had been exposed as a sham, I received a story at 10.30 pm on March 21 which began:

Chinese adults are striving to create more songs fit to children and do all efforts to encourage the country’s next generations to sing their own songs, a government official told Xinhua on Wednesday, the World Children’s Songs Day.

No way. Rejected. Binned. “Not polished”, as we say. Roll on World Press Freedom Day on May 3.