click-a-nic

Champion boxer, Filipino senator and national icon, Manny Pacquiao has recently come under fire for his anti-LGBT sentiments in response to US President Obama’s stance on gay marriages, leading organization the Courage Campaign to start a petition asking Nike to halt any Pacquiao sponsorships.

The Inquirer does a clean sweep of the story on the Philippine front while gopride.com takes a look at the LGBT side here. A piece on Interaksyon however has claimed that Pacquiao is innocent of the ire he apparently invoked by quoting a phrase from the Bible quote, saying it was the blogger who interviewed Pacquiao who inserted that phrase, making it seem like it seem like Pacman said it. Their story however, does not match with what PDI reported, saying that the statement was also on Pacquiao’s website.

Two things I’m getting from this that are troubling me.
1. GoPride brought up something that no one else has— Pacquiao is a statesman and though his showbiz/actor/whatever persona may eclipse his national duties, he is still a foreign statesman criticizing another country’s head of state. So, about those international repercussions… The Philippines is already in so much hot water and needs the US’s military might to help fend off China with this Scarborough Shoal debacle. Why piss them off??

2. Like I said earlier, the Interaksyon story doesn’t match with what other news sources stay, so it could be completely bogus. I won’t even bother asking a question, there are too many lame-ass comments on the page about being holy and shit.

One last thing I wanted to reiterate was that the Courage Campaign didn’t go out and blast Pacquaio for his views but the violence targeting the LGBT community. Good on you, Courage Campaign, I respect that.

China suspends travel to the Philippines— I just wrote about this a couple of minutes ago, but it seems that rumors are circulating that it works the other way too.

My friend and her boyfriend from the Philippines originally slated to come visit in Beijing over the weekend is now canceling their hotel reservations over the news.

Calling the Philippine Embassy in Beijing, the very helpful Wendy had this to say on the matter of travel restricted by China to the Philippines. “There are some travel agencies who are restricting (travel) but individuals can still go through or proceed with their travel to the Philippines.” When asked if there was any reciprocal action on the Philippines on travel to China, she said “there’s no pronouncement in the news, so as long as a visa is issued travel is permitted.”

Weekend visit, take that!

News is that due to the escalating tensions between China and the Philippines over the Scarborough Shoal and rumors of a “planned anti-Chinese protest” on Friday have caused travel to be suspended to the Philippines. The Shanghai Tourism Board has halted tours to the Philippines indefinitely and CTrip.com has apparently suspended trips due to safety concerns.

Then how come I can still book a ticket from Beijing to Manila for this weekend (Friday-Sunday) I choosing the US English option at the language landing page? I can get all the way to the ticket buying page, and fill out my travel and billing information…

Meanwhile, choosing the Chinese language option has left me on this page for over 15 minutes.

Hmm.

Update (1:02pm):

After refreshing the page a couple of times, I finally got to the fill-in-your-information bit.  Suspend travel my ass.

It could be me. Or it couldn’t. But being a student in a Chinese university has exposed me to working with and testing alongside native Chinese students. And they cheat. A LOT.

Blatantly too. The foreign professor is standing right in front of you, looking away because perhaps back where he’s from, cheating is kind of a big deal (in a bad way, of course), so he trusts that you won’t be doing it. Though the students do it lightheartedly, as if it were a game.

I have classmates opening up their computers, going through notes and looking for answers in the middle of tests. They whisper to each other, turn their chairs around to their classmates sitting behind them asking, what’s the answer for number X? A classmate of mine hands his test paper to the asking classmate who already has her laptop open, looking for the answers.

This leads me to ask, why do Chinese students cheat so much? Or do they not cheat too much at all, I’m just being a self-righteous prick because in my university, that’s kind of a big deal (again in a bad way).

Saving face is important so you cheat to get good grades, but won’t you lose even more face if you’re caught? Or are people not caught at all as its a common practice? Mmmm, smells like collusion…

Or is it just within my university? Tsinghua, being a top university in China, there is arguably much more pressure to do well… so is Tsinghua a special case for cheating students?

Not going to say that I’m a saint, but that was back in middle-high school when you did things for shits and giggles— not in university when you started to take things seriously. Anyway, this smells either like a story or a non-story— a major issue or a total non-issue. Stay tuned.

*Not naming names right now because it might actually be a sensitive topic

Headlines abound of the China-Philippines stand-off in the waters of the South China Sea. Quick paraphrasing of the possible scenario that could have taken place.

Philippine patrolling navy ship sailor: Captain, we’ve just spotted eight Chinese fishing vessels on the Scarborough Shoal, what should we do?

Captain: See what they got on ‘em.

Later…

Sailor: Captain, they have lots of illegally caught fish and coral.

Captain: Aww, shit. They shouldn’t be messing with our fish and corals like that! Call the damn Chinese ambassador to straighten them out and get them out of there. Without our fish and coral. We should hang around here till they pick ‘em up.

Two days later…

Sailor: Captain, there’s a Chinese surveillance ship now in between us and the fishing boats.

Chinese surveillance ship: GTFO of our Skah-boh-loh Shoh, Filipinos! This watah’s ours, y’heah?

Captain: Dude, what? This is the map of the area, you fcking idiot.

Shows map

Chinese surveillance ship: Yeah! All ours!

Thanks, BBC for the map!

I’ve been shuffling (or hustling) between this blog and my other one for my Advanced Biz Writing class so apologies first off for the confusion, if it’s led to any.

And we’re off!

I recently (and by that I mean about an hour or two ago) read an article on The Atlantic about China’s recent love-affair with US educational institutions. This story has been told a couple of times, but what was different about this retelling is the change in characters. Instead of students entering college, its about students in middle school applying to private high schools in the US. Sound strange? It shouldn’t.

Author, Helen Gao says its becoming increasingly common for the upwardly mobile to send their children to the US as early as in their high school years, prepping them for their ultimate goal: an Ivy League college education.

The article talks about the quasi-businesses its produced because of this demand for a US high school education: coaches/advisors who teach and facilitate Chinese students’ passing application tests, interviews and the like to be accepted in their institutions of their choice. For a hefty price, of course. On the flip side, schools in America are now admittedly having a difficult time discerning the “real” capabilities of an applicant with what their coaches/whatever tell them to answer/write in their tests or interviews.

Interestingly enough, both Chinese students and parents want the same thing (rare for any teen), according to Gao. One of the reasons cited was the different teaching styles. Another was the chance of being given the opportunity to succeed (in life) based on talent and not based on who you know (ie connections, or as some of my friends in the Philippines like to say, “conneks”).

Teaching styles is interesting because it breaches another hotly debated topic in the Sino-sphere, the innovation issue. Though I feel the latter is more ubiquitous than Gao portrays it to be. I think connections will always play a role in opportunities given to an individual, no matter where in the world you come from— it is rare that you can attain such chances purely based on talent. Perhaps Gao is implying that this is especially true in China where everything is reliant on guanxi.

guan·xi/gwanˈCHē/

Either way, I would encourage anyone interested in China or education to read this piece as it offers an interesting look into the evolution of educational needs in China and how the US is reacting to it.