CAFAM Maine

By Craig Dietrich

Chang E, the lady in the moon, appears in different versions of Chinese folk legends.

She is usually paired with her husband, Hou Yi. The two immortals get demoted to mortals. Hou Yi manages to acquire a pill of immortality, but Chang E swallows it and flees to the moon. (Husbands take note.)

In one version, the heavenly couple are doing just fine, when Hou Yi notes that the Jade Emperor’s ten sons have transformed themselves into ten suns (son/sun is not a pun in Chinese, in case you wondered). To rescue mortals from this situation, he shoots down nine of the suns with arrows, leaving just one remaining. Not amused, the Jade Emperor banishes Hou Yi and Chang E to earth and makes them mortals.

Now the Queen Mother of the West gets in the act, when Hou Yi talks her into giving him a pill of immortality. For some reason, he brings the precious medicine home, puts off taking it, and is shocked when he learns that Chang E has popped it in her own mouth. Immortal again, she floats heavenward, and ends up on the moon. She is stuck there because, after all, the Jade Emperor is still mad, so she can’t go to heaven, and she can’t get back to earth, where she would have to deal with a cranky Hou Yi. More

By Jasmine Qu

Editor’s note: Among many issues created by China’s rapid development, the issue of organizations not controlled by the one-party state has repeatedly emerged. Before “Reform and Opening” the socialist system sponsored and controlled all organizations, whether national, provincial, or local; economic, social, political, or cultural. The recent advent of entrepreneurialism, a freer labor market, a freer press, and the (limited) rule of law has challenged the government to loosen up. NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are a particularly interesting phenomenon. They were unheard of before the 1980s. Still in their infancy, they face official suspicion and have no tradition of private philanthropy to tap. In this follow-up article to her account of waste pickers in the November-December issue, Jasmine Fei Qu sheds light on one particular case, and reflects on the difficulties facing China’s NGOs.

The Institute of Contemporary Observation (ICO) is a China-based NGO in Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong. My two-month internship there in 2006 offered me an opportunity to work with waste pickers as well as a valuable experience inside a Chinese NGO.

In some ways, what ICO has achieved is very impressive. Its name has appeared in major international newspapers because of its expertise on the south China labor movement. Recently, its director was even interviewed by the Brunswick Times Record for a report about Shenzhen city. Besides its reputation as a research institute, it has conducted several projects relating to south China migrant workers, including a Migrant Worker Community College, in cooperation with UC Berkeley, and the waste picker project. It has offered free or low-cost education and vocational training to 3,000 workers. It also provides training programs to factories and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) audits to multinational companies. It is a partner with many famous brands, such as DuPont, Fuji, Xerox and Nokia. More

By MC

A few years ago, the spring dust storms here were so large and so powerful that they blew across the ocean and hit Seoul, an unwelcome surprise for the Capitalist South Korean neighbors. Locals in Beijing may not exactly enjoy the spring storms that some years sweep in and dump tons of desert dust everywhere, but they are at least able to deal with them. It’s not like Washington, D.C., hit by half an inch of snow and municipal paralysis shutting down the federal government. Here, whether snow or sand, people just put on their face masks and get out their brooms and sweep it all up. More