In This Life: Comments

May Day Golden Week 'Gone' Forever

Thu, 01 May 2008 09:54:14 GMT

Today is Labor Day, i.e., May Day. I didn't have a plan of travelling. I planned to stay at my apartment.

Last night I asked some of my friends whether they had planned to travel out. They said no. I believe that there are quite a number of people staying at home just like us. But months ago, you couldn't foresee this situation would happen.

I can feel that this year's May Day is not as hot as the past several years'. It's not the focus any more. Why? Many people must associate it to the Olympic Games, Tibetan issue and even the train crash. Yes, of course, these events are what people focus on these days. But there is a more important reason which is also more direct resulting in it. That is, the May Day Golden Week is gone forever.

During the past seven years, China had three Golden Weeks for the Spring Festival, Labor Day and National Day holidays. And then, from this year, one of the three Golden Week holidays is abolished and several traditional Chinese festivals added to the holiday list.

According to this new holiday system, for Labor Day, people can only have a one-day holiday. Even if we use holiday shift here, people will have three days holiday -- Labor Day, this Friday and Saturday. The week-long Labor Day has been "historical". From now on, we will have two Golden Weeks.

As is known to all, the Golden Weeks were introduced in September 1999 to boost domestic consumption. It really contributed a lot to GDP. Markedly, it generated so much in tourism revenues. Now the authorities abolished one of them. What do you think about it?

And are you satisfied with the current holiday system?

By the way, today, I tried but could hardly find any news report about May Day in some China's leading media. It wouldn't happen in the past.

Maybe news for the Olympic Games means everything to them.

FeedBurner or FeedSky

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 06:56:40 GMT

FeedBurner or FeedSky? It's an option that Internet users must do in Mainland China.

Recently, I pay much attention to RSS Feed service. It's a brand new thing in Web2.0 era. I have dreamed of provide some RSS Feed service for my blog visitors for several months. This service should contain RSS Feed, E-mail subscription and RSS subscribers statistics. So I began to search for the RSS service provider.

Generally speaking, I prefer to overseas products and services. Because multinational enterprises supply better services than domestic. Especially for the customer service.

I found FeedBurner first. It seems that its service is very good and professional. But there is a problem. Many of my blog readers know little English. Whereas, FeedBurner doesn't have a Chinese version. It means I'd better to find a domestic service provider. I visited lots of blog webpages written in Chinese and found many users using service provided by FeedSky. What about FeedSky?

Then I visited FeedSky homepage. To my surprise, it's simply a Chinese version of FeedBurner, I thought. Formats, structures and modes, all these are nearly the same. Why? They are two different companies. At first, I took it for granted that FeedSky was a branch of FeedBurner in China. Then I found I was wrong immediately. FeedSky is a company owned by a Chinese merchant.

And they are many articles about service quality of FeedBurner and FeedSky. People compare FeedBurner with FeedSky. Most think of the former better. They say that service of FeedSky contains some imperfect designs and the service quality level too low. Someone sent an E-mail to FeedSky in order to ask for some help. But he hadn't received any reply for many days. There are so many complaints about FeedSky service.

Many users want to use FeedBurner service. But they can't. Because FeedBurner has been blocked by GFW. Users can't visit webpages of FeedBuner unlimitedly.That is to say, they can't enjoy the excellent service provided by FeedBurner completely.

What is GFW? GFW is short of Great Firewall of China. You can't visit some sites which contain contents forbidden by Chinese government with GFW. GFW has had great power. Users in Mainland can't visit Blogspot. And pictures in Flickr can't display. GFW blocks many webpages which contain contents about advacacy against China and pornographic information.

How to evaluate the effect of GFW? It indeed blocked some pornographic sites which do harm to children and young people. That's very good. But if the site you would like to visit is blocked and it doesn't contain any illegal content, what do you think?

And how to provide better service, it's what domestic company should consider. We shouldn't be scared of competition. We can't be protected all the time.

Advantages & Disadvantages

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:23:45 GMT

Does China's lunar exploration program have any disadvantage? Tonight someone asked me this question in MSN group.

I said yes. "Absolutely", I told him. According to Karl Marx's philosophy, everything has two aspects. So does this program.

This program has advantages and disadvantages. It's no doubt that we will see the influences in the future. And I also listed some points to him.

Out of question, Chang'e is a beautiful nickname. And Chang'e-1 loads many dreams of Chinese people. In ancient China, there are many fantasies about human flying in the sky. We have been dreaming of making clear that what the moon is on earth for a long time. Now we carry it out. It's a big success.

It shows our strength of science and technology. At least, China has strong competitive power on space science.

This program delights the government of China. Also the leaders. Nationwide celebration can be seen in the posts of media. Everybody is excited. And the government made high comments on the launch of Chang'e-1.

No wonder a man through VOA said that successfully launching Chang'e-1 made Chinese politician very proud. They thought that it could prove the country under their administration a big and strong country once again. However, China can't obtain obvious economic return. In fact, if we spent funds and human resource as much as we have spent on this program, we would make bigger and more valuable success.

And this program is mostly for the military use. I couldn't help associating it with Starwar between US and Soviet Union. No business return and then we would be beaten by ourselves.

As a Chinese citizen, I wish this program would benefit us a lot. And may it bring our Chinese people more boon.

So do you think the decision of our lunar exploration program is correct?

Let's wait for facts to tell us everything.

Why Suicide

Sat, 19 May 2007 20:36:24 GMT

In the world where we live, there are many problems. Political, economic, public, private, etc. But now, the serious problem is that, more and more people have the suicide attempt in the ivory tower.

This week more than 5 students suicided merely in Beijing. And most of them are postgraduate students in the most famous universities. In others' eyes, they are excellent students and have bright future. But they chose to "fly" to another heaven.

What happened? Why suicide?

I can't believe their choices.

This Tuesday, a girl postgraduate student jumped to death at the Science & Technology Building of BNU. I was having my class at the Electronic Building which is 100m far from the S & T Building then. I wasn't conscious of what was happening at all. Till the evening, a schoolmate told me about that when we chatted. Oh, my God! Unbelievable! What a pity!

That girl will graduate from the College of Art and Communication in July. This college is the best art college in mainland China. And her research supervisor is a professor of high prestige in that field. Out of question, she will have a good job. And wonderful life, too. Unfortunately, she chose suicide.

I never heard of that girl before. Even I don't know her name till now. But people around her gave her high praise. They said that she was a beautiful and good student. She did a lot of things in BNU. She got splendid achievements. Not only in study, but also in society work. According to their words, she was perfect. Such a nice girl chose suicide. Shouldn't we consider a lot about this?

We don't know what she did recently. We don't know what she thought recently. However, we know that she was hurt deeply. She bore so heavy pressure that she couldn't survive. Long time living under the heavy pressure beyond our imagination. That must be very very deep hurt. A poor girl.

What can I say? I don't wanna criticize her death. Just wish her have a eternal rest. Amen!

And at school, what does Chinese education system give to us? Knowledge in textbooks and scores in examinations, then NOTHING else.

On Christmas Eve

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 03:54:57 GMT

On Christmas Eve, what are we doing? And what should we do?

Besides saying

I dare to say, we Chinese people have a complex mood when we fall across Christmas Day. Various, tanglesome and even a bit painful feelings exist in our mind. In such a non-English-speaking and non-Christian country, we don't know what to do when western festivals come. We are confused.

Yesterday we took CET-6. Obviously, it's my last CET experience. I'm sure of it. I can't suffer this boring examination any more. Just for more points, we came into the examination room when the sun was shining; then we went out of the room when the night was falling. I called this process as from heaven to hell. Isn't it?

The last part of this test is writing a short essay about the celebration of western festivals. It's an easy article, but I didn't finish it perfectly. That's because I didn't have enough time to complete it.

As is known to all, with the Reform and Opening-up, we have to face more and more foreign things. No matter we accept or receive them, one point we can make sure of is that we can refuse them. Such as the prevalent celebration of western festivals. Lots of reasons are responsible for it. Young generation is exposed to the international minds or trends. Meanwhile, western views have been spread widely, naturally and culturally. People have their own rights to taste various cultures. Now people may celebrate festivals they like besides the conventional. And commercial promotion, too. I don't know whether this indicates the progress of modern times in mainland China or not.

We have to admit that we have shown more and more weakness in the culture shock between Chinese origin culture and western culture. We throw away many things that we should treasure up forever. Also we take in many things belonging to others. Unfortunately, we don't digest them well. Then distortion appears. This country is not what it should be, this government does not do what it should do, and people can't get what they should get. What awful state it is!

Out of question, we have some trouble. I like to be international, but I don't like to live in an inhuman environment.

So let it be.

By the way, tonight how much GDP will be created in Beijing? Who knows?