Imagethief

Tag: China in the News

  • The strange lunacy of translators in airliner cockpits

    Singapore is now completely infatuated with China, and the average Straits Times has about seventy-six pages of news from China. I am really good friends with two of the ST correspondents in Beijing, so I will mention that much of this coverage is of the highest standard. Now that I am done sucking up to journalists for the day, I was interested to see an article in today’s (unlinkable) ST on China’s shortage of pilots.

    Anyone who has flown domestically in China will have experienced the fallout (no pun intended) from this problem, as it’s quite clear from the vertical takeoffs and spleen-rupturing landings that many of China’s pilots are actually professional longshoremen or swineherds who are simply moonlighting as pilots for extra cash, or to make time with stewardesses.

    Like many nations with shortages of pilots, and in order to minimize the number of swineherds in the cockpit, China has looked overseas for qualified personnel. The article notes:

    There are now more than 50 foreign pilots from the United States, Canada, Switzerland and Hungary flying for Chinese airlines today. But they do not speak Mandarin, which makes it difficult for them to communicate with air traffic control.

    …and with their co-pilots and with traffic control and with their passengers, it scarcely needs be added. Perhaps I’m old fashioned, but in this era of congested airports and skylanes, and considering Beijing’s shroud of visibility-reducing pollution and southeast China’s constant supply of typhoons, the ability to communicate smoothly with air traffic controllers would seem to be…well, “friggin’ mandatory” is the phrase that springs to my mind.

    But fear not. The rocket scientists at the CAAC, China’s civil aviation authority, are on the job:

    In July the CAAC issued regulations governing the employment of foreign pilots by Chinese airlines, which included a rule stipulating that a qualified English-Mandarin speaking interpreter must be on board an airplane flown by a foreign pilot.

    I am overcome by a warm sensation of security and bliss. But that is because I am still feeling the effects of the Valium I took before my flight on Singapore Airlines this morning. If that had worn off I would now be running in circles and gibbering in terror at the thought of having to rely on translators in airliner cockpits.

    Look, when you’re barrelling along at 300 knots in zero visibility, let’s say during your typical browned-out summer approach to Beijing Capital Airport, and the shit suddenly hits the fan (or turbine blades) for some reason, I should think that every second counts. Do you really want to wait for your air-traffic control instructions to be filtered through a translator on their way to the pilot?

    Furthermore, in my industry we handle a lot of translation, both of written materials and for live speeches and interviews. There is a huge amount of what we in the industry technically refer to as “shit translation”. Now, ninety-nine times out of one hundred, that’s no big deal. We edit or clarify, and no harm is done. But, with rare exception, we in the PR industry are not landing 747s (although we do deal with the aftermath when someone else fails to land one). If I was asked to pick the one time out of that one hundred when it is a big deal to have instantaneous, one-hundred percent accuracy with no exceptions, it would be in commercial airliner cockpits. Or, possibly, nuclear reactor control rooms. It’s a toss-up.

    It really doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to envision how the scenario of cockpit translators could go wrong, especially in a moment of extreme stress:

    Pilot: “Air China 138 heavy on approach.”
    Translator (to tower): “Air China 138 heavy on approach.”
    Tower: “138 heavy turn two seven zero and descend to 2000.”
    Translator (to pilot): “Turn to two seven zero and descend to 2000.”
    Bang!
    Pilot: “Air China 138 heavy declaring an emergency. Port engine has ingested a goose, is on fire and has lost power. Clear the runway!”
    Translator (to tower): “Air China 138 Heavy is anxiously requesting roast goose! Our sexual prowess is dimished! Please empty the promenade!”
    Tower: “138 Heavy, how much goose do you want?”
    Translator (to pilot): “Why do you want goose at a time like this? We are doomed!”
    Pilot: “Motherfucker!”
    Translator (to tower): “138 Heavy extends warm greetings to your parents!”

    Perhaps I’ll take the train.

  • The Great Donkey Meat – Tiger Piss – Media Whore Axis

    Trust me, it all connects.

    Americans just don’t understand the reality of Chinese food. Mu shu pork, general’s chicken, all that Chinese restaurant crap you get in the US, has almost no relation to anything you can get in China. The defining highlights of Chinese cuisine, with the possible exception of dim sum, which followed the Cantonese diaspora, are conspicuously absent from American menus.

    This is probably because the Chinese eat, not to put too fine a point on it, a lot of nasty shit. (Civit cat?) Don’t get me wrong, the Chinese have some fabulous food as well. But this is country of extremes, and as lofty as the culinary highs are, the lows are scraped straight from the floor of Hell’s own takeaway lunch counter. I’m fairly well inured to Asian and third world diets, having prowled much of the Indonesian archipelago and Indochina (not to mention China proper). But I do have my limits. And I reckon this dish –actually a scam– tests those limits:

    Chinese Eatery Sold Donkey in Tiger Urine

    SHANGHAI, China (AP) – A restaurant in northeastern China that advertised illegal tiger meat dishes was found instead to be selling donkey flesh – marinated in tiger urine, a newspaper reported Thursday.

    The Hufulou restaurant, located beside the Heidaohezi tiger reserve near the city of Hailin, had advertised stir-fried tiger meat with chilies for $98 as well as liquor flavored with tiger bone for $74 a bottle, the China Dailyreported.

    Damn, that’s nasty. On two levels. First, that people though they were eating tiger meat. Yes, I know that tiger meat is supposed to confer sexual prowess, etc. But tigers are still cats, and I own cats, and I can tell you with complete authority that cats are nasty creatures better looked at than eaten. Anyone who has seen what comes out of a cat on a daily basis will understand this. Tigers are pretty and regal, but, when carved into deli slices, they’re still cat meat. By the way, it’s worth reading the China Daily coverage as well, if only for this statement:

    After inspection, the owner, Ma Shikun, confessed that the so-called tiger meat was actually donkey meat that had been dressed with tiger urine, to give the dish a “special” flavour.

    It’s special alright.

    Donkey I have no real issue with. Somehow the idea of eating donkey just seems somehow more savoury (in the metaphorical sense of the word) than eating tiger, and not just because donkeys are neither photogenic nor endangered. But donkey marinated in tiger urine? Check yourself in for therapy if that concept doesn’t automatically make your skin turn green and crawl like a carpet of millipedes. Only one thing on the face of planet should ever be marinated in tiger urine: Paris Hilton. In all circumstances, any form of cat urine should be treated like radioactive waste and interred in abandoned mines in Nevada under a “plain of thorns” sufficiently pointy and tall to dissuade future civilizations from excavating the site. Come to think of it, might not be a bad idea to put Paris Hilton down there too. And Da Shan while they’re at it. Of course if the two of them are put down there together with an unlimited supply of virility-inducing tiger urine, future civilizations stupid enough unearth the site may be confronted with a lost, buried society of hyper-white, inbred, bilingual media whores. I shudder at the prospect.

    There is, of course, more, in this case from the AP story:

    Raw meat was priced at $864 per kilogram.

    The sale of tiger parts is illegal in China and officers shut down the restaurant, only to be told by owner, Ma Shikun, that the meat was actually that of donkeys, flavored with tiger urine to give the dish a “special” tang, the newspaper said.

    The report didn’t say how the urine was obtained.

    Authorities confiscated the restaurant’s profits and fined Ma $296 it said. It wasn’t clear what Ma was fined for. Selling donkey meat is not illegal in China and it is widely consumed in the northeast.

    $864 a kilo is a lot to pay for piss-marinated donkey meat, under any circumstances. I am clearly in the wong business. I have to toil for days to earn $864, and that’s before Chinese government taxes and health contributions. Now many people may suggest that piss-marinated donkey meat and press releases really aren’t all that different, but I don’t write by the kilo no matter how much it may seem that way to journalists.

    As to how they collected the urine, I suppose that’s the hidden cost of earning $864 on capital costs of roughly zero, assuming that donkeys are dirt cheap and the cost of rasing and keeping the tigers wasn’t born by the restaurateur. It occurs to me that $864 might be actually be a justified price for piss-marinated donkey meat considering the health implications of collecting (and working with) the ingredients. I mean, how does one collect enough tiger urine to marinate a donkey?

    Nice kitty! Hold still…

    Thanks to Hose-B for the article.

  • Why I empathize with the WSJ’s American expats in Chongqing

    An interesting discussion broke out today on The Peking Duck, in Richard’s post on a Wall Street Journal article on the travails of an American expatriate family living in Chongqing. There was a fair bout of criticism of the family for insulating themselves from Chongqing and China and for moaning about the difficulty of living in Chongqing even as they live all-expenses-paid luxury.

    It’s worth reading the article, posted here on Howard French’s “A Glimpse of the World Blog”. You can also go read the extract on Richard’s blog.

    It made me think a bit about how I perceive “expats” and the expat lifestyle. I spent nine years in Singapore, where only my first job, which lasted for one year, was on an “expat package”. I was pretty well localized by the end of my stay (married to a Singaporean with more Singaporean than foreign friends). In Singapore I became completely contemptuous of foreigners who isolated themselves. But Singapore is a completely accessible city: wealthy, modern, English-speaking and with all the Western comforts you could ever hope to find. (In fact, Singapore often comes in for the opposite criticism, that it isn’t Asian enough, although I think only people who don’t know where to look make that claim.)

    But when I think back to my arrival in Singapore, even it was difficult enough at the time. I remember how thrilled my business partner and I were when we discovered a mass-market Italian restaurant. I remember how akward I felt on public transportation for many weeks. I remember how long it took me to feel like I knew my way around the city. I remember how many dumb mistakes I made managing my staff, and how long it took before I started having good, Singaporean friends.

    And that’s the thing about culture shock. It doesn’t really matter what the amenities are, or if the language is the same. There are degrees. You could be an American moving to England and still be culture shocked. You could move from California to New York and be culture shocked. You could damn well move from San Francisco to Iowa and be culture shocked. It might be less severe than coming to Asia, but it would still happen. And different people with different motivations will react differently to the experience.

    I came to China because I wanted to engage with it. I wanted to feel what it was like, and talk to Chinese people and “have a cultural experience”. I specifically sought out the feeling of discomfort and displacement that I first had when I got to Singapore because I missed the thrill and challenge of discovering someplace new. It has been tremendously rewarding, but also difficult. I invested two years in learning Mandarin before I arrived. I quit a good job to come here and arrived with no guarantee of work. My long-term future will be in Asia, and I will need to have some experience in China. I had every incentive to get into China.

    And yet, even as an Asiaphile with nine years in the region, it was difficult when I arrived. Classroom Mandarin got me almost nowhere on the street. I was scared of the bus, scared of the supermarket, intimidated at the thought of trying to speak to people and generally completely overwhelmed. And I was in a language program surrounded by other Westerners.

    Even today I still seek my Western comforts. I live in an international apartment with cable TV. The Internet is my lifeline. I damned well beat a path to the local Jenny Lou’s because I am incapable of giving up Western breakfasts. And I consider myself pretty culturally resilient.

    Now, what if I had no experience in Asia and no emotional investment in getting under the skin of China? What if I was here solely for professional reasons and knew I was going to leave in two years? And what if I was in Chongqing, a city far less accessible to foreigners than relatively cosmopolitan Beijing? And what if I was desperate to socialize my young Children as Americans?

    I’d probably grow a bunker mentality as well, and concentrate on emerging unscathed. And that’s why I find it hard to criticize the woman in the story.

    Sure, I think it’s a wasted opportunity to come to China and not engage with it as deeply as possible. I love it here. But not everyone seeks the same opportunities and experiences as me. And I can’t be too critical of that.