Did we mention the Opium War?

On Tuesday, Akmal Shaikh, a 53-year-old Briton who was caught in Xinjiang with four kilograms of heroin in his bag, became the first European to be executed in China for 50 years.

Shaikh’s case has caused uproar in the UK, where campaigners say that he was mentally ill and manipulated into carrying the drugs into China.

After sustained media pressure (and remember that this is Christmas time, when big stories are thin on the ground and papers lap up any news), the case has now been turned into a diplomatic issue, with Ivan Lewis, a British Foreign Office minister, saying the Chinese had ignored 27 appeals from the UK to reconsider the case and perform a mental evaluation of Shaikh. In Pittsburgh, at the G20, Gordon Brown raised the case with Hu Jintao and then again in Copenhagen with Wen Jiabao.

Mr Lewis said he was “sick to my stomach” at the decision to go ahead and execute Shaikh without testing his sanity.

I don’t know whether Shaikh was mentally ill or not. We now will not ever know. However, the story of his life is a sad one. His wife refused to have anything to do with during his incarceration and does not want her name to be known.

He has not seen any of his three children in the UK for years and was also reportedly estranged from his two children in Poland. He had spent time living homeless. His songwriting ambitions and his rambling emails suggest, at best, that he was extremely eccentric.

Article 18 of the 1997 Criminal Code states that the courts must be lenient with suspects who are mentally incapacitated and therefore unaware of their actions. However, the court has discretion to decide whether or not a mental evaluation is necessary. Mentally-ill foreigners have been treated more leniently by courts in the past.

I would hazard a guess that the local court in Urumqi would have been under enormous pressure to convict Shaikh and not to search too hard for mitigating factors. He was carrying a huge haul of drugs, 80 times the quantity that would have qualified him for the death sentence.

Moreover, as the Chinese embassy pointed out, Shaikh had no record of mental illness. He had not been committed to an institution for treatment.

Whether or not Shaikh was mentally ill, the rhetoric from both the UK and China, and the lack of understanding on both sides, shows again how poor the relationship is between China and the West.

On the UK side, predictable articles condemning China for barbarism, including one in the Daily Mail which macabrely sketched out how Shaikh’s corneas would be removed for transplant, would be more forgiveable if the UK took a similar stance against the death penalty in other countries, such as, ahem, the United States.

The reaction from the Chinese, however, has been to raise the spectre of the Opium War and of colonial extraterritoriality, when British subjects were not subject to Chinese law. Since I arrived in China, nearly two years ago, I reckon I have heard the Opium War raised at least twice a week, either in the media or in conversations with Chinese. This war took place 170 years ago and it is time that people got over it. After all, there are far more recent tragedies that no one mentions.

The fact that the Chinese embassy feels the need to point out Britain’s history of colonial oppression, and to suggest that current policy is influenced by events in the far past, does it no favours at all in terms of building China’s “soft power”. It merely reinforces the idea that China is stridently nationalistic and determined to be unaccountable.

It would win more points by outlining the legal process which convicted Shaikh, and by pointing out that every death sentence in China is now examined by the Supreme Court, a recent reform which has led to a dramatic decrease in executions.

阿克毛.沙伊克，在新疆因随包携带四公斤海洛因而被捕的53岁英籍人士，成为中国50年来第一个被处以死刑的欧洲人。

阿克毛的案子在英国引起了地震，请愿者称其患有精神疾病，且是被哄骗携带毒品至中国的。

经受住了媒体的轰炸（注意这可是圣诞假期，没什么重大事情发生，报纸媒体渴求任何新闻），这个案子现在演变成了外交事件。英国外交部高官刘易斯宣称中国无视英方27次对此案宽大处理并进行精神疾鉴定的请求。在匹兹堡的G20峰会上，布朗首相就向胡锦涛主席提过此案，并且在之后的哥本哈根会议上再次向温家宝总理提及。

刘易斯称当听闻法院没有进行精神病鉴定就直接判刑并执行死刑时，“恶心的胃疼”。

我不知道阿克毛精神是否正常。现在我们再也无法得知了。然而，他的一生是个悲剧。在其监禁期间，他的妻子已和他断绝了关系，并坚持隐瞒姓名。

他和他在英国的三个孩子多年未见，并且有报道说他和他在波兰的两个孩子关系也疏远。他曾有一段时间露宿街头。他写词作曲的雄心和杂乱无章的邮件表明，至少，他是个极端怪异的人。

中国1997年的刑法十八条表明对于精神有障碍的嫌疑人应该从轻处罚，因其不能辨认自己的行为。但同时法院有决定是否进行精神病鉴定的自主权。在过去，精神有障碍的外籍人士在中国的法院有被从轻处罚的案例。

我敢臆断当初判决阿克毛时，乌鲁木齐当地法院是面临了巨大的压力，也不能够费力寻求折中的方案。因为阿克毛携带了巨量的毒品，为此够判80次死刑的。

就如中国大使馆所言，阿克毛并没有精神疾病方面的纪录。他也没去过相关的医疗机构接受治疗。

不管阿克毛有无精神疾病，中英双方的政治辞令交锋和就此案彼此间缺乏理解认同，彰显出了一直以来中国和西方的关系有多糟糕。

英国方面，当然会有文章谴责中国野蛮，包括每日邮报的一篇报道，甚为骇人地描画了阿克毛的眼角膜被摘取做移植手术。如果英国在对其它国家的死刑采取同样态度的话，例如，呃，美国，可能会得到中方的一些认同吧。

中国的反应，却是联想到了鸦片战争和殖民侵略，那时英国的人事是不受中国法律约束的。

我来到中国快有两年。记得最初我每隔两周就会听到鸦片战争的话题，在新闻报道里或是和中国人的谈话交流中。这场战争发生在170年前，是时候人们该淡忘了。事实上，很多近期的惨剧却无人提及。

中国大使馆觉得有必要提及英国的殖民侵略历史，表明目前的政策是受久远的历史事件影响的，这与中国增强软实力其实没有多少益处吧。这只能让人们加深对中国不可理喻的民族主义，并一意孤行的印象。

如果能公布审判裁决阿克毛的法律过程，指出现在中国的每一例死刑都要经过高院的审查，或许能赢得更多的赞同吧，毕竟这一近期的举措使得死刑率大幅下降。

Liu Xiaobo court verdict

Conviction of Liu Xiaobo for Incitement to Overthrow State Power, December 25, 2009

Chinese text from http://freemorenews.com/2009/12/26/liu-xiaobo-first-instance-verdict/

Beijing Municipality First Intermediate People’s Court Verdict in Criminal Case

(2009) First Intermediate Court No. 3901

Public Prosecutor: Beijing Municipality People’s Procuratorate First Branch.

The accused, Liu Xiaobo, male, 53 years old (born December 28, 1955), Han nationality, born in Changchun City, Jilin Province, doctoral student level education, unemployed, household registration at Qingchun Street No. 5, 2-1-2, Xigang District, Dalian City, Liaoning Province. Resides temporarily at No. 7 Xiancun, Bank of China dormitory Building 10, Unit 1, No. 502 in the Haidian District of Beijing Municipality. In January 1991, he committed the crime of making counter-revolutionary propaganda but escaped criminal punishment; in September 1996 because he disturbed the social order, he was sent to re-education through labor for three years. He was summoned for detention on December 8, 2008 on suspicion of incitement to overthrow state power and on December 9 put under residential surveillance. On June 23, 2009 he was arrested. He is now confined to Beijing Municipality Detention Center No. 1.

Defense counsel: Ting Xikui, a lawyer at the Beijing Mo Shaoping Law Office

Defense counsel: Shang Baojun, a lawyer at the Beijing Mo Shaoping Law Office

Beijing Municipality People’s Procuratorate First Branch in Beijing Procuratorate First Branch Criminal Prosecution Indictment (2009) 247 charged the accused Liu Xiaobo of the crime of incitement to overthrow state power and on December 10, 2009 filed the indictment in this court. This court according to law assembled the court and held an open court session to try the case. The Beijing Municipality People’s Procuratorate First Branch sent Prosecutor Zhang Rongge and Deputy Prosecutor Pan Xuechu to sustain the indictment. The defense counsel for the accused Liu Xiaobo, Ding Xikui and Shang Baojun came to court to participate in the hearing. The trial has now already concluded.

The Beijing Municipality People’s Procuratorate First Branch incitement accuses the defendant Liu Xiaobo has, due to his dissatisfaction with the people’s democratic dictatorship state power system and socialist system of our country, since 2005, through various Internet websites such as “Observe China” and the “BBC Chinese Net” published articles such as “The Dictatorial Patriotism of the Chinese Communist Party”, “How Can it be that Only Party-Guided Democracy is Suitable for the Chinese People?”, “Change the Political Regime by Changing Society”, “The Many Faces of the Chinese Communist Dictatorship”, “The Negative Effect of the Rise of a Dictatorship on World Democratization”, “Inquiring Further into the Case of the Child Slaves of the Black Kilns”, and other inflammatory articles. The articles instigate rumors and libels such as “Since the Communist Party took power, the top priority of Communist dictators has been their own power and what they care least about is human life”; “The Chinese communist dictatorial state power promotes patriotism for officials, and the absurd theory of a party that takes the place of the state. What patriotism has become in effect is the call the people to love the dictatorial government power, to love the dictatorial party, to love the dictator. This is simply stealing the name of patriotism to create a reality that brings calamity to the country and to the people. “; “All the methods of the Chinese communists are based on a plan to support the rule and interests of the dictators, but there is no hope for them to continue for long since countless cracks have already appeared in the edifice of their dictatorship.” “Expecting a free China to appear from the “new policies” of the rulers is far less likely that hoping for it to come through the steady expansion of ‘new forces’ among the people.” Just as strong are these incitements: “Change the Society to Change the Regime”, and “Expecting a free China to appear from the “new policies” of the rulers is far less likely that hoping for it to come through the steady expansion of “new forces” among the people.”

Between September and December 2008, the defendant Liu Xiaobo colluded with others to draft and concoct the “Charter 08”, that proposed views such as “eliminate the monopoly of one party on the exercise of political power”, “to create a Chinese federation under the framework of democratic constitutional system of governance”, seeking to incite the overthrow of state power. Liu Xiaobo collected the signatures of over 300 people and sent “Charter 08” together with the signatures in an email to websites outside of the borders of mainland China publish it on websites outside the borders of mainland China such as “Democratic China” and “The Independent Chinese Pen Association”.

After Liu Xiaobo committed this offense, he was tracked down and brought to justice.

The Beijing Municipality Procuratorate First Branch provided to this court testimony of witnesses as to the guilt of of the defendant Liu Xiaobo. This included evidence such as the on scene investigation, the record of the investigation and electronic data that had been verified by the experts. The Beijing Municipality Procuratorate First Branch was convinced that the defendant Liu Xiaobo’s behavior violated section 105 part two of the “Criminal Code of the PRC”, and constituted incitement to the overthrow of state power, a serious offense. The Procuratorate handed the case over to this court for judgment according to the law.

The defendant Liu Xiaobo during the trial said that he was not guilty and that he was merely exercising the constitutional right of all citizens to free speech. The criticisms he expressed did not any actual harm to anyone and is not incitement to overthrow state power.

Counsel for the defendant Liu Xiaobo argued that the six articles written by Liu Xiaobo mentioned in the indictment and “Charter 08” did not create rumors or libels and did not insult anyone. Moreover, said counsel, the articles published by Liu Xiaobo fall within the scope of the free speech of a citizen, expressing personal opinions and do not constitute incitement to overthrow state power.

During the trial it became clear that the defendant Liu Xiaobo, due to his dissatisfaction with the people’s democratic dictatorship and socialist systems of our country, between October 2005 and August 2007, at his temporary residence at No. 7 Xiancun, Bank of China dormitory Building 10, Unit 1, No. 502 in the Haidian District of Beijing Municipality, wrote and published articles on websites such as “Observe China” and “BBC Chinese Language Net”. On multiple occasions, he incited the overthrow of our country’s political system and the socialist system. Liu Xiaobo in his articles “The Dictatorial Patriotism of the Chinese Communists”, “How Could it Be That the Chinese People Are Only Suited to ‘Party-Guided Democracy'”, “Change the Political Regime by Changing Society”, “The Many Faces of the Chinese Communist Dictatorship”, “The Negative Effect of the Rise of a Dictatorship on World Democratization”, and “Inquiring Further into the Case of the Child Slaves of the Black Kilns” slandered the Chinese Communist Party. He made statements in these articles such as “Since the Communist Party took power, the top priority of Communist dictators has been their own power and what they care least about is human life”; “The Chinese communist dictatorial state power promotes patriotism for officials, and the absurd theory of a party that takes the place of the state. What patriotism has become in calling on the people to love the dictatorial regime, to love the dictatorial party, and to love the dictator. This is simply stealing the name of patriotism to create a reality that brings calamity to the country and to the people. “; “All the methods of the Chinese communists are based on a plan to support the rule and interests of the dictators, but there is no hope for them to continue for long since countless cracks have already appeared in the edifice of their dictatorship.” Equally as inciting are the statements “Expecting a free China to appear from the “new policies” of the rulers is far less likely that placing hope in its emergence through the steady expansion of “new forces” among the people.”

Between September and December 2008, the defendant Liu Xiaobo colluded with others to draft a document entitled “Charter 08”. That document proposed to “eliminate the monopoly of one party on the exercise of political power”, “to create a Chinese federation under the framework of democratic constitutional system of governance” and other incitements. Liu Xiaobo colluded with others to collect the signatures of 300 people and then sent “Charter 08” together with the signatures in an email to websites outside of the borders of mainland China and released it on websites outside the borders of mainland China such as “Democratic China” and “The Independent Chinese Pen Association”. The documents mentioned above that Liu Xiaobo put on websites were linked to and copied to other websites and viewed by many people.

The accused Liu Xiaobo after he committed this crime was investigated and brought to justice.

The facts above were proved during the trial. The evidence presented has been shown to be true and this court affirms that the following has been demonstrated to be true:

1. The testimony of the witness Liu Xia proves: She is the wife of Liu Xiaobo and lived together with him at No. 7 Xiancun, Bank of China dormitory Building 10, Unit 1, No. 502 in the Haidian District of Beijing Municipality, that there are three computers in the home, one a desktop and other two are notebooks. Because she doesn’t understand anything about computers. Liu Xiaobo uses the computer mainly to write articles and to go on-line. Only two people, herself and Liu Xiaobo, live in the home, no-one lives with them. Only very seldom do guests come to visit — when Liu Xiaobo participates in a meeting, it is almost always outside his home. She doesn’t know how the computer connects to the Internet. Liu Xiaobo arranged for the Internet connection in late 2001. Their income comes chiefly from what Liu Xiaobo earns from his writings. Liu Xiaobo opened an account at the bank in her name. Deposits to the account for Liu Xiaobo’s writings come irregularly. Every month she goes to the bank at irregular intervals to withdraw money.

2. The Beijing and Muxi branches of the Bank of China, Ltd. provided the “evidence of opening an account” and “bank money order receipt” that prove that Liu Xiaobo’s wife Liu Xia went to the bank to receive and withdraw money orders (in foreign currency) coming from outside the borders of mainland China.

3. China United Network Communication Co., Ltd. Beijing subsidiary provided a “Reply to a request for assistance in conducting an examination of digital data”. This proves: Liu Xiaobo used an ADSL account, and a record of his having gone on-line.

4. The testimony of the witness Zhang Zuhua proves: she together with Liu Xiaobo at the end of 2008 drafted and completed “Charter 08”. She also collected signatures. Thereafter, Liu Xiaobo published “Charter 08” on websites outside the borders of mainland China.

5. The testimony of the witness He Yongqin proves: in early December 2008, he received an email from Liu Xiaobo contained “Charter 08”. Liu Xiaobo let him see it and sign it if he wants. After reading the email, he replied to Liu Xiaobo that he agreed to sign it.

6. The testimony of the witness Zhao Shiying proves: that in October 2008, Liu Xiaobo sent “Charter 08” to him through the Internet and asked for his advice on revising it, and asked that he find other people willing to sign it. At a meeting, Zhao showed “Charter 08” to over ten people. Four of them said that there were willing to sign it. Liu Xiabo through the Internet also asked him to go to Guangzhou to collect signatures. In Guangzhou, he collected five signatures.

7. The testimony of the witness Yao Bo proves: that in October 2008, when Liu Xiaobo met him, and discussed the charter with him, and he agreed to sign it.

8. The testimony of the witness Zhou Duo proves: that one day in November 2008, Liu Xiaobo went to his home to show him the draft of “Charter 08”, and asked for his help in revising it. After Liu Xiaobo left, he looked over the draft but did not revise it. He did not sign at that time, but later he saw the Charter on-line had his signature.

9. The testimony of the witness Fan Chunsan proves: that in late October 2008, when we was eating with Liu Xiaobo and others, Liu Xiaobo took out a copy of “Charter 08” for him to read. When Liu Xiaobo asked him whether or not he would sign it, he agreed to sign it. He knew that Liu Xiaobo has published this document already on websites outside the borders of mainland China such as “Boxun”, “The Independent Chinese Pen Association”. He had also read it on-line and knew that the Liu Xiaobo’s document was of the kind that criticized contemporary politics.

10. The testimony of the witnesses Xu Junliang, Zhi Xiaomin and Teng Biao prove: that in November and December 2008, they received in their e-mail mailboxes “Charter 08” but did not know who had sent it. They each signed “Charter 08” and sent it back to the mailbox they had received it from.

11. The testimony of the witness Wang Zhongxia proves: that in December 2008, after reading “Charter 08” on-line, he found that he agreed with it and signed it. Later, he had printed some “Charter 08” shirts and wore it himself and gave to other people to wear in order to publicize “Charter 08”.

12. The “investigation record” of Public Security organs and material evidence photographs of December 8, 2008 prove: that relying on the testimony of witnesses, Public Security searched Liu Xiaobo’s residence at No. 7 Xiancun, Bank of China dormitory Building 10, Unit 1, No. 502 in the Haidian District of Beijing Municipality, found and took into custody the tools that Liu Xiaobo used to write the documents and to send them to websites — two notebook computers, one desktop computer, and one copy of a printed document “Charter 08 — Request for Comments”.

13. The Beijing Municipality Networking Industry Association Forensic Electronic Data Center provided a “Judicial Testimony Opinion Document” proves: that on December 13, 2008, according to a forensic examination of the data stored on the three computers that authenticated the discovery of the electronic documents “The Dictatorial Patriotism of the Chinese Communist Party”, “How Can it be that Only Party-Guided Democracy is Suitable for the Chinese People?”, “Change the Political Regime by Changing Society”, “The Many Faces of the Chinese Communist Dictatorship”, “The Negative Effect of the Rise of a Dictatorship on World Democratization”, “Inquiring Further into the Case of the Child Slaves of the Black Kilns” and “Charter 08”. In the records of the software “Skype” on his computer were found and recorded from the software a record of multiple emails that he sent from November to December 8, 2008 multiple emails were sent containing “Charter 08” and the “request for comments” document.

14. The on the scene investigation by the Public Security organs, and record of the investigation and the explanation of the work proves:

The Beijing Municipality Public Security Public Information Network Security and Supervision Office First Detachment on December 19 – 23 discovered and downloaded the document signed “Liu Xiaobo” entitled “Liu Xiaobo The Dictatorial Patriotism of the Chinese Communist Party”. The document resided on a website with the domain name epochtimes.com. The website server is outside the borders of mainland China. The document was marked as having been published on October 4, 2005. That document as of December 23, 2008 links were found to five websites that had either published or republished that document.

Between December 19, 2008 and August 3, 2008, Beijing Municipality Public Security Public Information Network Security and Supervision Officer First Detachment founded and downloaded from the Internet a document signed “Liu Xiaobo” entitled “Liu Xiaobo How Can it be that Only ‘Party Guided Democracy’ is Suitable for the Chinese People?”. That document resided on the websites with the domain names epochtimes.com (The Epoch Times) and http://www.observechina.net (Observe China). Both website servers are outside the borders of mainland China. The document is marked published on January 5, 2006 and January 6, 2006. This document as of December 23, 2008 had been published or republished on five websites and had a total of 402 hits.

Between December 19, 2008 and August 3, 2008, Beijing Municipality Public Security Public Information Network Security and Supervision Officer First Detachment founded and downloaded from the Internet a document signed “Liu Xiaobo” entitled “Liu Xiaobo Change the Political Regime by Changing Society”. That document resided on the websites with the domain names epochtimes.com (The Epoch Times) and http://www.observechina.net (Observe China). Both website servers are outside the border of mainland China. The document is marked published on February 26, 2006 and February 27, 2006. This document as of December 23, 2008 had been published or republished on five websites and had a total of 748 hits.

Between December 19, 2008 and August 3, 2008, Beijing Municipality Public Security Public Information Network Security and Supervision Officer First Detachment founded and downloaded from the Internet a document signed “Liu Xiaobo” entitled “Liu Xiaobo The Many Faces of the Chinese Communist Dictatorship”. That document resided on the websites with the domain names http://www.secretchina.com (Secret China) and http://www.observechina.net (Observe China). Both website servers are outside the border of mainland China. The document is marked published on March 13, 2006. This document as of December 23, 2008 had been published or republished on six websites and had a total of 512 hits.

Between December 20, 2008 and August 3, 2008, Beijing Municipality Public Security Public Information Network Security and Supervision Officer First Detachment founded and downloaded from the Internet a document signed “Liu Xiaobo” entitled “Liu Xiaobo The Negative Effect of the Rise of a Dictatorship on World Democratization”. That document resided on a website with the domain name http://www.secretchina.com (Secret China). The website server is outside the borders of mainland China. The document is marked published on May 7, 2006. This document as of December 23, 2008 had been published or republished on seven websites and had a total of 57 hits.

Between December 20, 2008 and August 3, 2008, Beijing Municipality Public Security Public Information Network Security and Supervision Officer First Detachment founded and downloaded from the Internet a document signed “Liu Xiaobo” entitled “Liu Xiaobo Persisting with a Deeper Inquiry into the Case of the Child Slaves of the Black Kilns”. That document resided on websites with the domain names http://www.minzhuzhongguo.org (Democratic China) and http://www.renyurenquan.org (Human Rights in China). Both website servers are outside the border of mainland China. The document is marked published on August 1, 2007. This document as of December 23, 2008 had been published or republished on eight websites and had a total of 488 hits.

On December 11, 2008, Beijing Municipality Public Security Public Information Network Security and Supervision Officer First Detachment founded and downloaded from the Internet a document entitled “Charter 08”. That document resided on the website with the domain name http://www.chinesepen.org (The Independent Chinese Pen Center). The website server is outside the borders of mainland China. The document is marked published on December 9, 2008 and is signed by a group of people. The same day, a document entitled “Chinese People From All Walks of Life Join Together to Issue Charter 08” was found and downloaded from the websites with the domain names boxun.com and http://www.minzhuzhongguo.org (Democratic China). Both of the website servers are located outside the boundaries of China and show publication dates of December 8, 2008 and December 12, 2008. This document as of December 12, 2008 had been published or republished on 33 websites including 19 outside the borders of mainland China and had a total of 5154 hits and 158 replies. On December 9, 2008, it was found that the website with the domain name http://www.2008xianzhang.info (Charter 08) had as of December 9, 2009 the signatures of 10,390 people who had signed “Charter 08”.

The Beijing Municipality Public Security Public Information Network Security and Supervision Office investigated Liu Xiaobo’s e-mails and as a result of that examination found that Liu Xiaobo’s email mailbox is located outside the borders of mainland China. After using a password to get into that mailbox to check it, it was found that the earliest email sent from that mail box was dated November 25, 2008 and that 30 of the sent emails included “Charter 08”.

15. Liu Xiaobo’s signature in acknowledgement proves: that Liu Xiaobo confirmed the authenticity of documents downloaded and saved by the Public Security network monitoring and control departments “Liu Xiaobo The Dictatorial Patriotism of the Chinese Communist Party”, “Liu Xiaobo How Can it be that Only Party Democracy is Suitable for the Chinese People?”, “Liu Xiaobo Change the Political Regime by Changing Society”, “Liu Xiaobo The Many Faces of the Chinese Communist Dictatorship”, “Liu Xiaobo The Negative Effect of the Rise of a Dictatorship on World Democratization”, “Liu Xiaobo Enquiring Further into the Case of the Child Slaves of the Black Kilns”. Liu Xiaobo acknowledges that the documents in question were written by him and then published on the Internet. The evidence presented about demonstrate that those documents acknowledged by Liu Xiaobo contain inciting speech.

16. The defendant Liu Xiaobo’s deposition proves: that Liu Xiaobo deposes that he used his computer to write and then publish on the Internet the documents described above. Liu Xiaobo and the evidence presented above are mutually confirmatory.

17. The account that the Public Security organs provided on the progress of the case proves: that Public Security on the evening of December 8, 2008 went to Liu Xiaobo’s residence at No. 7 Xiancun, Bank of China dormitory Building 10, Unit 1, No. 502 in the Haidian District of Beijing Municipality in order to arrest Liu Xiaobo.

18. The previous “criminal verdict document” issued by the Beijing Municipality Intermediate Court (1990) Criminal Case 2373, the Beijing Municipality People’s Government Re-education Through Labor Management Committee (96) Beijing Labor Case No. 3400 “Decision on Re-education Through Labor”, proves: that Liu Xiaobo on January 26, 1991 although he committed the crime of making counter-revolutionary inciting propaganda was not given a criminal punishment; and that on September 26, 1996 because he had disturbed social order, his case was handled by giving him three years of re-education through labor.

19. Identification provided by the Public Security organs prove: that the name, residence and other information of the defendant Liu Xiaobo.

This court believes that the defendant Liu Xiaobo with the purpose of incitement to overthrow our country’s people’s democratic dictatorship system and socialist system, used the Internet to distribute his document because of its rapid speed, great scope, large social influence and the attention to which the people pay to it. He wrote the documents and used the Internet to publish it in order to slander and urge other people to overthrow our country’s people’s democratic dictatorship system and socialist system. This conduct already constitutes the crime of incitement to overthrow state power. Moreover, he has been committing this crime for a long while and the subjective evil caused is great. The published documents have been spread through links and republishing. People read them and they have a bad effect. This is the crime of a major criminal and should be severely punished according to law.

The Beijing Municipality First Intermediate Court First Branch believes that the facts are clear and the evidence has been confirmed that the defendant Liu Xiaobo committed the crime of incitement to overthrow and so he is found guilty of the crime for which he has been charged. As for the views presented by Liu Xiaobo and his defense counsel in court, the court found through its examination that the facts and evidence are sufficiently prove that Liu Xiaobo made use the characteristics of the Internet as a communications medium, by publishing slanderous documents on the Internet, to carry out his action of inciting the overthrow of our country’s people’s democratic dictatorship system and the socialist system. The actions of Liu Xiaobo are beyond the scope of freedom of speech and constitute a crime. Therefore, the pleas presented by Liu Xiaobo and his defense counsel cannot be established and this court does not accept them. According to the facts and nature of the crime committed by the defendant Liu Xiaobo, the circumstances, and the harm that has been done to society, this court according to Chapter 105, Section two; Chapter 55, Section one; Chapter 56, Section one, and Chapter 64 of the Criminal Code of the PRC, makes the following verdict:

The defendant Liu Xiaobo, for the crime of incitement to overthrow state power, is sentenced to prison for eleven years and deprivation of political rights for two years. (The sentence is to be served from the day of sentencing, with deduction for time in confinement on a day for day basis, that is from June 23, 2006 to June 21, 2020.)

All the materials that Liu Xiaobo used to commit the crime are to be confiscated (list follows).

If the defendant does not accept this judgment, an appeal can be made between two days and ten days after the issuance of this verdict, either through this court or directly to the Beijing Municipality Superior Court. The appeal should be accompanied by an original of this verdict together with two copies.

Jia Lianchun, Chief Judge

Bang Jiaowei, Assistant judge

Zhai Changxi, Assistant judge

December 25, 2009

Gu Xin, Court Clerk

The items confiscated when taken into custody are to be forfeited:

Notebook computer (IBM model T43), one

Notebook computer (Lianxiang model Chaoyang 700 CFe), one

Desktop computer (Lianxiang model Jiayue), one

“Charter 08 request for comments draft (sealed together with the court papers), 7 pages+

北京市第一中级人民法院刑事判决书

（2009）一中刑初字第3901号

公诉机关北京市人民检察院第一分院。

被告人刘晓波，男，53岁（1955年12月28日出生），汉族，出生土吉林省长春市，博士研究生文化，无业，户籍所在地辽寧省大连市西岗区青春街5号2-1-2号，暂住北京市海淀区七贤村中国银行宿舍10号楼1单元502号。1991年1月因犯反革命宣传煽动罪被免予刑事处分；1996年9月因扰乱社会秩序被处劳动教养三年。因涉嫌犯煽动颠覆国家政权罪于2008年12月8日被拘传，12月9日被监视居住，2009年6月23日被逮捕。现羈押在北京市第一看守所。

辩护人丁锡奎，北京莫少平律师事务所律师。

辩护人尚宝军，北京莫少平律师事务所律师。

北京市人民检察院第一分院以京一分检刑诉（2009）247号起诉书指控被告人刘晓波犯煽动颠覆国家政权罪，于2009年12月10日向本院提起公诉。本院依法组成合议庭，公开开庭进行了审理，北京市人民检察院第一分院指派检察员张荣革、代理检察员潘雪楮出庭支持公诉，被告人刘晓波及其辩护人丁锡奎、尚宝军到庭参加诉讼。现已审理终结。

北京市人民检察院第一分院起诉书指控，被告人刘晓波出于对我国人民民主专政的国家政权和社会主义制度的不满，自2005年以来，通过互联网先后在“观察”、“BBC中文网”等境外网站上发表《中共的独裁爱国主义》、《难道中国人只配接受“党主民主”》、《通过改变社会来改变政权》、《多面的中共独裁》、《独裁崛起对世界民主化的负面效应》、《对黑窑童奴案的继续追问》等煽动性文章。在文章中造谣、诽谤︰“自从中共掌权以来，中共歷代独裁者最在乎的是手中的权力，而最不在乎的就是人的生命”；“中共独裁政权提倡的官方爱国主义，是‘以党代国’体制的谬论，爱国的实质是要求人民爱独裁政权、爱独裁党、爱独裁者，是盗用爱国主义之名而行祸国殃民之实”；“中共的这一切手段，都是独裁者维持最后统治的权宜之计，根本无法长久地支撑这座已经出现无数裂痕的独裁大厦”。并煽动︰ “通过改变社会来改变政权”；“自由中国的出现，与其寄希望于统治者的‘新政’，远不如寄希望于民间‘新力量’的不断扩张”。

2008年9月至12月间，被告人刘晓波还伙同他人起草、炮制了《零八宪章》，提出“取消一党垄断执政特权”、“在民主宪政的架构下建立中华联邦共和国”等多项主张，试图煽动颠覆现政权。刘晓波在征集三百余人签名后，将《零八宪章》及签名用电子邮件发给境外网站，在“民主中国”、“独立中文笔会”等境外网站上公开发表。

被告人刘晓波作案后被查获归案。

北京市人民检察院第一分院向本院向本院移送了指控被告人刘晓波犯罪的证人证言，现场勘验、检查笔录，电子数据司法鉴定意见书等证据。认為被告人刘晓波的行為触犯了《中华人民共和国刑法》第一百零五条第二款之规定，已构成煽动颠覆国家政权罪，罪行重大。提请本院依法判处。

被告人刘晓波在法庭审理中辩称︰自己无罪，自己只是行使宪法赋予公民言论自由的权利，自己所发表的批评性言论，并未给他人带来实际损害，也没有煽动颠覆国家政权。

被告人刘晓波的辩护人在法庭审理中提出的辩护意见是︰公诉机关指控刘晓波撰写的六篇文章及《零八宪章》没有造谣、诽谤、诬蔑的内容。刘晓波所发表的文章属于公民言论自由、表达个人观点的范畴，不构成煽动颠覆国家政权罪。

经审理查明，被告人刘晓波出于对我国人民民主专政的国家政权和社会主义制度的不满，于2005年10月至2007年8月间，在其暂住处北京市海淀区七贤村中国银行宿舍10号楼1单元502号，以撰写并在互联网“观察”、“BBC中文网”等网站发表文章的方式，多次煽动他人颠覆我国国家政权和社会主义制度。刘晓波在发表的《中共的独裁爱国主义》、《难道中国人只配接受“党主民主”》、《通过改变社会来改变政权》、《多面的中共独裁》、《独裁崛起对世界民主化的负面效应》、《对黑窑童奴案的继续追问》文章中诽谤︰“自从中共掌权以来，中共歷代独裁者最在乎的是手中的权力，而最不在乎的就是人的生命”；“中共独裁政权提倡的官方爱国主义，是‘以党代国’体制的谬论，爱国的实质是要求人民爱独裁政权、爱独裁党、爱独裁者，是盗用爱国主义之名而行祸国殃民之实”；“中共的这一切手段，都是独裁者维持最后统治的权宜之计，根本无法长久地支撑这座已经出现无数裂痕的独裁大厦”。并煽动︰“通过改变社会来改变政权”；“自由中国的出现，与其寄希望于统治者的‘新政’，远不如寄希望于民间‘新力量’的不断扩张”。

2008年9月至12月间，刘晓波又伙同他人撰写了题為《零八宪章》的文章，提出“取消一党垄断执政特权”、“在民主宪政的架构下建立中华联邦共和国”等多项煽动性主张。刘晓波伙同他人在征集三百余人对文章的签名后，将《零八宪章》及签名用电子邮件发给境外网站，在“民主中国”、“独立中文笔会”等境外网站上公开发布。刘晓波在互联网站发布的上述文章，被多家网站链接、转载并被多人瀏览。

被告人刘晓波作案后被查获归案。

上述事实，有下列经庭审举证、质证的证据在案证实，本院予以确认。

1、证人刘霞的证言证明︰她是刘晓波的妻子，与刘晓波共同居住在北京市海淀区七贤村中国银行宿舍10号楼1单元502号，家中一共有三台电脑，其中一个台式机，两个笔记本电脑。因為她根本不懂电脑。刘晓波使用电脑主要是写文章和上网，家里只有她和刘晓波两个人单独住，没有其他人，平时家里也不怎幺来客人，刘晓波有聚会也基本都是到外面去。家里的电脑以什幺形式上网她不清楚，是2001年底刘晓波联系安装的。她和刘晓波平日的生活来源就是刘晓波写东西的稿费，刘晓波在银行以她的名字开户，稿费不定期的匯到帐户里，她每月不定期的去银行取钱。

2、中国银行股份有限公司北京市分行和木樨地支行出具的《开户证明》和《银行匯款单据》证明︰刘晓波的妻子刘霞的银行账户接收和支取过境外匯款（外币）。

3、中国联合网络通信有限公司北京市分公司出具的《关于协助对相关数据进行调查的復函》证明︰刘晓波使用的ABSL账号，有上网记录。

4、证人张祖樺的证言证明︰他与刘晓波于2008年年底共同制作完成了《零八宪章》，他也征集了签名，后刘晓波将《零八宪章》发表在境外网站。

5、证人何永勤的证言证明︰2008年12月初，他收到刘晓波发的《零八宪章》的电子邮件，刘晓波让他看后签名，他看后以电子邮件形式回復刘晓波，表示同意签名。

6、证人赵世英的证言证明︰2008年10月份，刘晓波通过网络向他传送了宪章，并征求他的修改意见，让他寻找别人签名，他在一次聚会上拿出宪章给聚会的十多人传看，有四人表示愿签名。刘晓波还通过网络让他到广州征集签名，他到广州征集了五人签名。

7、证人姚博的证言证明︰2008年10月份，刘晓波在一次与他见面时，跟他说了宪章的事，他同意在宪章后签名。

8、证人周舵的证言证明︰2008年11月份的一天，刘晓波到他家给他看了《零八宪章》的文稿，让他帮助修改。刘晓波走后他看了文稿，但没修改。当时没谈签名的事，可后来在网上看到宪章时有他的签名。

9、证人范春三的证言证明︰2008年11月底，他和刘晓波等人一起吃饭时，刘晓波拿出《零八宪章》给他看了，刘晓波问他是否签名，他同意签名。他知道刘晓波在境外的“博讯”、“独立中文笔会”等网站上发表文章，也在网上看到过，刘晓波写的文章内容都是时政评论类的。

10、证人徐君亮、智效民、滕彪的证言证明︰2008年11月至12月间，他们的电子邮箱先后接收到电子邮件《零八宪章》，不知是谁发给他们的，他们分别签名后将《零八宪章》发回了原邮箱。

11、证人王仲夏的证人证言证明︰2008年12月份，他在网上看到了《零八宪章》，他认同文章内容签了名。后他印制了一些《零八宪章》的文化衫，想自己穿和送给别人穿，宣传《零八宪章》。

12、公安机关出具的《搜查笔录》及物证照片证明︰2008年12月8日，公安机关在见证人的见证下，对刘晓波的居住地北京市海淀区七贤村中国银行宿舍10号楼1单元502号进行了搜查，发现并扣压了刘晓波撰写并发送文章到互联网上的工具二台笔记本电脑、一台台式电脑和一份《零八宪章》（征求意见稿）的打印件。

13、北京市网络行业协会电子数据司法鉴定中心出具的《司法鉴定意见书》证明︰2008年12月13日对搜查起获的刘晓波的三台电脑内存储的数据进行了电子数据司法鉴定，鉴定中发现、提取到电子文本《中共的独裁爱国主义》、《难道中国人只配接受“党主民主”》、《通过改变社会来改变政权》、《多面的中共独裁》、《独裁崛起对世界民主化的负面效应》、《对黑窑童奴案的继续追问》和《零八宪章》。

在电脑中的SKYPE聊天软件记录信息中，发现、提取该软件自2008年11月至12月8日间多次发送《零八宪章》及其“征求意见文本”的记录。

14、公安机关出具的现场勘验、检查笔录及工作说明证明︰

（1）2008年12月19日至2008年12月23日，北京市公安局公共信息网络安全监察处一大队，在互联网上发现并下载了暑名“刘晓波”的文章《刘晓波︰中共的独裁爱国主义》，该文章存在于域名為epochtimes.com（大纪元）的网站，该网站服务器位于境外。文章显示发布时间為2005年10月4日。该文章截止至2008年12月23日，在互联网上存在登载或转载该文章的网页链接共计5个。

（2）2008年12月19日至2009年8月3日，北京市公安局公共信息网络安全监察处一大队，在互联网上发现并下载了暑名“刘晓波”的文章《刘晓波︰难道中国人只配接受“党主民主”》， 该文章存在于域名為epochtimes.com（大纪元）和域名為http://www.obseruechina.net/（观察）的网站，网站服务器均位于境外，文章显示发布时间為2006年1月5日和2006年1月6日。该文章截止至2008年12月23日，在互联网上共存在登载或转载该文章的网页链接共计5个，总点击率402次。

（3）、2008年12月20日至2009年8月3日，北京市公安局公共信息网络安全监察处一大队，在互联网上发现并下载了暑名“刘晓波”的文章《刘晓波︰通过改变社会来改变政权》， 该文章存在于域名為epochtimes.com（大纪元）和域名為http://www.obseruechina.net/（观察）的网站，网站服务器均位于境外，文章显示发布时间為2006年2月26日和2006年2月27日。该文章截止至2008年12月23日，在互联网上存在登载或转载文章的网页链接共计5个，总点击率748次。

（4）2008年12月20日至2009年8月3日，北京市公安局公共信息网络安全监察处一大队，在互联网上发现并下载了暑名“刘晓波”的文章《刘晓波︰多面的中共独裁》， 该文章存在于域名為http://www.secretchina.com/（看中国）和域名為http://www.obseruechina.net/（观察）的网站，网站服务器均位于境外，文章显示发布时间為2006年3月13日。该文章截止至2008年12月23日，在互联网上存在登载或转载文章的网页链接共计6个，总点击率512次。

（5）2008年12月20日至2009年8月3日，北京市公安局公共信息网络安全监察处一大队，在互联网上发现并下载了暑名“刘晓波”的文章《刘晓波︰独裁崛起对世界民主化的负面效应》， 该文章存在于域名為http://www.secretchina.com/（看中国）的网站，网站服务器位于境外，文章显示发布时间為2006年5月7日。该文章截止至2008年12月23日，在互联网上存在登载或转载该文章的网页链接共计7个，总点击率57次。

（6）2008年12月20日至2009年8月3日，北京市公安局公共信息网络安全监察处一大队，在互联网上发现并下载了暑名“刘晓波”的文章《刘晓波︰对黑窑童奴案的继续追问》， 该文章存在于域名為http://www.minzhuzhongguo.org/（民主中国）和域名為http://www.renyurenquan.org/（人与人权）的网站，网站服务器均位于境外，文章显示发布时间為2007年8月1日。该文章截止至2008年12月23日，在互联网上存在登载或转载文章的网页链接共计8个，总点击率488次。

（7）2008年12月11日北京市公安局公共信息网络安全监察处一大队，在互联网上发现并下载了标题為《零八宪章》的文章， 该文章存在于域名為http://www.chinesepen.org/（独立中文笔会）的网站，该网站服务器位于境外，显示网络发布时间為2008年12月9日，作者署名為公民群体。同日在域名為boxun.com（博讯）和域名為http://www.minzhuzhongguo.org/（民主中国）的网站，发现并下载了标题為《中国各界人士联合发布<零八宪章>》，网站服务器均位于境外，文章显示发布时间為2008年12月8日和2008年12月9日。上述文章截止至2008年12月12日，在互联网上存在登载或转载该文章的网页链接共计33个，其中境外网站19篇，总点击率5154次，回復158篇。2009年12月9日，在域名為http://www.2008xianzhang.info/（零八宪章）的互联网站发现该网站首页显示截止至2009年12月9日，《零八宪章》签名共计10390人。

（8）、2009年8月14日北京市公安局公共信息网络安全监察处对刘晓波使用的电子邮件进行了核查，经查，刘晓波使用的邮箱属境外，通过密码登录邮箱中核实，邮箱发件箱中最早发件时间為2008-11-25，发送的邮件中有30封涉及发送《零八宪章》。

15、刘晓波签字确认的文章证明︰刘晓波对公安机关网络监管部门下载、保存的文章《刘晓波︰中共的独裁爱国主义》、《刘晓波︰难道中国人只配接受“党主民主”》、《 刘晓波︰通过改变社会来改变政权》、《刘晓波︰多面的中共独裁》、《刘晓波︰独裁崛起对世界民主化的负面效应》、《刘晓波︰对黑窑童奴案的继续追问》、《零八宪章》及从其电脑中提取的电子文本《中共的独裁爱国主义》、《难道中国人只配接受“党主民主”》、《通过改变社会来改变政权》、《多面的中共独裁》、《独裁崛起对世界民主化的负面效应》、《对黑窑童奴案的继续追问》进行了辨认，刘晓波确认辨论的文章是其撰写并发布到互联网上的文章。刘晓波辨论并签字确认的文章，有上述事实认定的煽动性言论。

16、被告人刘晓波的供诉证明︰刘晓波供认其使用电脑撰写上述文章并发布在互联网站上，刘晓波的供述与上述证据可相互印证。

17、公安机关出具的到案经过证明︰北京市公安局于2008年12月8日晚，到刘晓波的住处北京市海淀区七贤村中国银行宿舍10号楼1单元502号将刘晓波抓获。

18、原北京市中级人民法院（1990）中刑字第2373号《刑事判决书》、北京市人民政府劳动教养管理委员会（96）京劳省字第3400号《劳动教养决定书》证明︰刘晓波于1991年1月26日因犯反革命宣传煽动罪被免予刑事处分；1996年9月26日因扰乱社会秩序被处劳动教养三年。

19、公安机关出具的身份证明材料证明了被告人刘晓波的姓名、住址等身份情况。

本院认為，被告人刘晓波以推翻我国人民民主专政的国家政权和社会主义制度為目的，利用互联网传递信息快、传播范围广、社会影响大、公眾关注度高的特点，采用撰写并在互联网上发布文章的方式，诽谤并煽动他人推翻我国国家政权和社会主义制度，其行為已构成煽动颠覆国家政权罪，且犯罪时间长，主观恶性大，发布的文章被广為链接、转载、瀏览，影响恶劣，属罪行重大的犯罪分子，依法应予从严惩处。北京市人民检察院第一分院指控被告人刘晓波犯煽动颠覆国家政权罪的事实清楚、证据确实、充分，指控罪名成立。对于被告人刘晓波在法庭审理中提出的辩解及其辩护人发表的辩护意见，经查，本案庭审查明的事实和证据，已充分证明刘晓波利用互联网的传媒特点，以在互联网上发表诽谤性文章的方式，实施煽动颠覆我国国家政权和社会制度的行為，刘晓波的行為显已超出言论自由的范畴，构成犯罪。故刘晓波的上述辩护及其辩护人发表的辩护意见均不能成立，本院不予采纳。根据被告人刘晓波犯罪的事实、性质、情节和对于社会的危害程度，本院依照《中华人民共和国刑法》第一百零五条第二款、第五十五条第一款、第五十六条第一款、第六十四条之规定，判决如下︰

一、 被告人刘晓波犯煽动颠覆国家政权罪，判处有期徒刑十一年，剥夺政治权利二年。

（刑期从判决执行之日起计算，判决执行以前先行羈押的，羈押一日折抵刑期一日，即自2009年6月23日起至2020年6月21日止。）

二、 随案移送的刘晓波犯罪所用物品予以没收（请担负后）。

如不服本判决，可在接到本判决书的第二日起十日内，通过本院或直接向北京市高级人民法院提出上述。书面上述的应提交上述状正本一份，副本二份。

审判长贾连春代理审判员郑文伟翟长璽

二****九年十二月二十五日

书记员顾昕

扣押物品处理清单

先烈物品予以没收︰

1、 笔记本电脑（IBM牌T43型）1台

2、 笔记本电脑（联想牌朝阳700Cfe）1台

3、 台式电脑（联想牌家悦型）1台

《零八宪章》征求意见稿（随案卷封存）7页

Is Shanghainese making a come-back?

December 15, 2009

Shanghai

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

We’re working on a piece about Shanghai’s local dialect, so we drove out to deepest Pudong to visit the Modern Baby kindergarten. Opened three years ago, by Ling Jie, it was the first kindergarten in the city to teach its pupils Shanghainese. The kids spend three days a week being taught in Mandarin, while Wednesday is Shanghainese day and Friday is English day. In each class, there is a Mandarin teacher and a Shanghainese teacher, who cajoles the children along in roll call and with other parts of their day. I was surprised to hear that even names are pronounced differently in Shanghainese. My Mandarin name, Ma Qian, which means Humble Horse, is Mo Qie.

Ling Jie told us that she had the idea after discovering that her own 12 year old son, a native Shanghailander, couldn’t speak the local dialect. His nanny, of course, was from outside Shanghai and so she spoke to him in Mandarin. Ling Jie and her husband spoke to each other in Shanghainese, but not to their son. She also said 60 per cent of his classmates were similarly mute. It was important to her, as a Shanghainese, to do something about it, and there remains a huge pride about the city’s dialect. Mrs Ling explained how Mandarin had deliberately simplified its language while Shanghainese remained descriptive and idiomatic, with many different ways of saying something. Instead of Hao (good) and Feichang Hao (very good), there are a range of Shanghainese words to convey everything from sparklingly brilliant to excellent or amazing.

After years of insisting that standard Mandarin was the only tongue worth having, the city government is now supporting Shanghainese and Shanghai culture. But it is still impossible to find Shanghainese spoken in any junior, middle or senior schools. With such a large population of migrants in Shanghai, teaching in Shanghainese is seen as divisive. Which may be precisely the reason that the locals are suddenly falling back in love with the dialect. With many Shanghainese growing increasingly resentful of the waidiren (the people from outside the city) who arrive to take their jobs and display country-bumpkin ignorance, it makes perfect sense to start communicating once again in a language that can only be understood by real insiders.*

* According to Qian Nairong, a professor of linguistics who we interviewed earlier this year, it can take up to a year for a Chinese from elsewhere to assimilate Shanghainese, and that’s with total immersion.

我们目前在做一期沪语保护和推广的专题，为此打车去了浦东郊区的一家现代宝贝幼儿园。该幼儿园是学前教育专家凌捷女士于三年前创办的，是上海第一家专业教授沪语的幼儿园。孩子们在一周当中，周五学沪语，周三学英语，其余三日学习普通话。每个班级都配备一名普通话老师和一名沪语老师，负责孩子们的课程和活动，沪语老师会用上海话点名。我很诧异名字也有区别于普通话的沪语发音。我的中文名，马谦，谦虚的马，上海话念起来像“抹七”。

凌女士夫妇都是上海人，自己12岁的儿子却不怎么会说上海话。他们家的保姆也是外地人，家里除了夫妻间的交流，基本都用普通话。凌女士还发现儿子班上60％的学生都不会说上海话。凌女士觉得很震惊，觉得有必要对沪语的保护推广做些工作。凌认为沪语传承了上海文化，上海人也以乡音为傲。凌女士举了些例子说明普通话为了推广方便故意简化了用语，而上海方言却保有了其鲜活地道，丰富多样的特性。譬如称赞的用语，普通话一般会用“好”，“很好”等相对贫乏的词汇，上海话却有一系列的词语去描述，像是灵啊，赞啊，哈灵，老赞的。

经年不遗余力的推广普通话，奉其为圭臬，上海市政府现在也开始支持推广上海话以及保护上海文化。然而，目前在上海的小学，初中，高中，上海话几乎没有立足的地方。上海的外来人口庞大，学校开设沪语课程可能会被视为歧视排外。这大概也是当前上海话回潮的一个原因。很多上海人开始排斥甚至痛恨外地人，因其抢占了自己的资源空间，工作机会，并带有乡野的一些陋习和无知。上海人说上海话，这给他们一种“自家人”的感觉。

我们先前采访的钱乃荣教授说只要用心学习，一般外地人不出一年就可以学好用好上海话。

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

China’s sexual revolution

December 13, 2009

Beijing

Woke up sore-headed after the Foreign Correspondents Club of China party last night at the Bookworm in Sanlitun. A big turnout and a jolly party, even if some of Beijing’s journalists come across as a touch self-important. As John Huntsman, the US ambassador, remarked, anyone who thinks they are an “expert” on China is usually “a moron”.

We travelled out past the third ring-road to meet a young professor of sociology who specialises in the sexual habits of “marginalised” members of society. By which he meant the gays, transsexuals, nudists and swingers. Well-dressed in a leather jacket and delicate glasses, he was very open and optimistic about China’s sexual revolution, suggesting that while it had taken a different form from the liberation of the 1960s in the West, China had caught up rapidly and was now on an even par.

He told us that swinging is growing rapidly among young Chinese, for whom little is taboo. With China’s economic miracle and the arrival of the internet the young have become empowered, having more money than their parents, a better education and usually access to more information and more contacts.

Meanwhile, the old system of social control, of which parents were only one part, has been entirely dismantled, beginning in the 1980s and running through to the 90s. Before, the danwei, or work unit, controlled every aspect of their workers’ lives, including who they could marry. Any extramarital affairs or improper liaisons would be punished, possibly even by the loss of a job and a permanent stain on a worker’s record.

At home, neighbourhood committees closely watched the comers and goers from each house. But the grannies have now been replaced by professional property managers, and while the guards may know who goes into which apartment, they are not as meddling.

Economic prosperity has also resulted in more privacy, larger apartments, and greater urbanisation, all liberating people to lead freer sexual lives. I asked whether the destruction of the old traditions during the Cultural Revolution, and the empowerment of the young had created a brief flowering of sexual activity. The professor said that while the Red Guards had been determined to smash Chinese morality, at the end of the day they still lived at home with their parents and depended on their families for food and money.

He was ambivalent about the effect of the one-child policy on China’s sexual revolution. Some of his colleagues believe the policy disassociated sex from procreation, while others have detected a new selfishness among single children which may heighten their transgressive tendencies. He was unconvinced.

2009年12月13日

北京直辖市区

醒来时疼痛为首的后外国记者俱乐部中国 党昨晚在三里屯书虫。阿大快活的投票率， 即使在北京中国手有些势利小人。正如约翰亨斯迈的
美国大使说，谁认为他们是“专家”的 中国通常是“白痴”。
我们走过第三圈的道路，以满足年轻教授 谁专门从事社会学的性习惯“边缘化” 社会成员。作者：他是指同性恋者，变性人，裸体主义者 和浪荡公子。
那么在一个微妙的皮夹克和眼镜穿着，他非常 开放，对中国的性革命乐观，这表明 虽然它是从20世纪60年代以不同的形式解放 在西方，中国迅速赶上，并于1平标准杆了。
他告诉我们，正在快速摆动年轻人中，对 他们很少禁忌。随着中国的经济奇迹，在到达 互联网已成为年轻的授权，有更多的钱比他们的父母，更好的教育，通常获得更多 信息和接触。
同时，社会控制，旧的制度，包括父母 只是一个部分，已完全拆除，在20世纪80年代开始 并贯穿到90年代。在此之前，丹维，或工作单位，控制每一个工人的生命方面，包括他们是谁 可以结婚。任何婚外情或不当的联络会 先打由工作损失和永久的污点工人的 记录。
在国内，居民委员会看了一和观众的拉萨 房子密切合作。但是，奶奶现在已经取代专业 物业管理人员，而保安人员知道谁在其中去 公寓，他们不是干预。
经济繁荣也导致更多的隐私，大 公寓，和更大的城市化，解放了人们的所有领导 自由的性生活。我问老销毁 文革期间的传统，以及赋予妇女权力 年轻的建立了一个简短的性活动开花。教授 说，虽然红卫兵已经确定要打破中国 道德，在今天，他们仍然住在家里的结束 家长及食物和金钱取决于他们的家人。
他模棱两可的一个关于中国的独生子女政策的影响 性革命。他的一些同事认为，政策 脱离性行为生育，而另一些新的发现 在独生子女自私可提高他们的 海侵倾向。他信服。

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

A meeting with China’s most famous sexologist

December 12, 2009

Beijing

I spent Saturday morning trying to write up the story from Harbin, but failed to finish. Saw Adam Dean, who is now accredited as the Telegraph’s photographer, for lunch near the Drum Tower. David Eimer, another Telegraph journalist, had introduced me to a Guizhou restaurant only a couple of months ago, so we headed there only to discover that it has since transformed itself into a Sichuan “dry” hot pot place where they pour a range of hot ingredients into a large bowl and mix in the Mala – or Sichuan peppers and chillis.

We then visited Li Yinhe, the sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who has broken endless ground with her work on China’s sexual revolution. Or at least I think she has. Since none of her work is available in English, we had not read any of it, and consequently the interview was vaguer than it should have been.

Li’s husband, the novelist Wang Xiaobo, died over 10 years ago and she lives quietly in an apartment in a remote suburb. Pictures of her grandchildren are on her mantelpiece opposite a print of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. On the floor sat a pair of happy pig statues.

Over her career, Li has repeatedly called for China to modernise its laws regarding pornography and sexual behaviour. We’re lucky to get the interview. A couple of years ago, a weary Li said she was feeling tired of talking about her studies. Although she said senior officials no longer regard her work as politically sensitive, she was still under pressure to maintain decorum. She said she was going to stop publishing sex-related papers and speaking to the press.

She answered our questions briefly and efficiently, but we never really connected properly. Understandably, she came across as either guarded or just bored of our ignorance. The interview didn’t throw up much that we didn’t know already, although she did tell us about her latest project.

She is studying families in five cities across China, from Harbin to Guangzhou, and how their family structure fits together. She said she had been expecting to discover that China was becoming more Western as it develops and that the traditional Confucian obligations between children and their parents were breaking down, to leave couples as the main nucleus of a family. But in fact, she said, the bonds between fathers and sons, or mothers and daughters, remains tight and the family unit spends a lot of time together still.

Oddly, she also found few regional differences in family behaviour between north and south, although she did say that while most families in China have either a dominant husband or an equally-matched husband and wife, the situation in Harbin was different. Up north, either the husband is dominant, or the wife is dominant, but the two are rarely evenly-matched, she said. “They have strong characters,” she smiled.

2009年12月12日

北京

周六早上，我开始写哈尔滨无煤村的报道，但没能完成。中午和Adam Dean在鼓楼碰头吃饭，他现在已经是每日电讯的专职摄影师了。David Eimer，我们的另一位记者，几个月前带我去了鼓楼附近的一家贵州菜，回味三日，所以这次还是朝着那家奔去。结果门面没换，菜却变成了川系的麻辣干锅，就是将各色热食放进一个大锅，用没麻辣炒拌。

饭后，我们去了李银河家。李是社科院的社会学专家，在性发展的领域有很多惊人之作，至少我这么认为的。李的作品都没有英文译本，我们了解感受不深，所以采访也相对的大致含糊，很是可惜。

李银河的丈夫王小波已过世十年多，李一直在北京边郊的公寓里过着平静的生活。屋里的壁炉台上摆放着她孙辈的照片，对面的墙上挂着一幅梵高的向日葵。地板上立着一对欢喜猪的雕塑。

在她的职业生涯里，李银河一直呼吁政府更改关于色情和性行为的相关法律，和世界同步。我们这次能联系采访到李银河真的很幸运。几年前，力尽神倦的李银河曾宣称不愿再讨论自己的工作和研究。虽然当时政府高层已经不认为她的作品有政治敏感性，但李还是被要求符合道德标尺，社会礼仪。那时她说不再发表和性研究相关的文章，也不接受媒体采访了。

采访中，李银河的回答是简洁而精准的，但我们一直没能很好的交流传达。自然，她的回答要么有所保留，要么对我们的无知问题有所不耐。采访结束，我们发现得的的信息和我们已知的信息没什么大的出入，尽管李向我们介绍了她目前在研究的项目。

目前，李在做家庭关系发展的相关课题。她选取了中国东南西北中五个城市，从哈尔滨到广州，研究这些城市里家庭关系的发展变化。李原先料想的是中国的家庭关系已经日趋西化，亲子间的传统的责任纽带正被消弱，核心家庭渐成主流。然后事实上，中国的家庭里，父母和儿女间的纽带还是牢不可破，家庭成员在一起的时间很是很多。

诧异的是，李同时发现家庭关系的地域性并不明显，南北差异不大。大部分的中国家庭，要么是夫权，要么是夫妇分权，只有在哈尔滨，东北地区，要么是丈夫主导，要么是妻子掌权，没有中间分权地带的。“（东北人）他们性格比较强。”李笑称。

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

Plastic surgery in Beijing

December 11, 2009 – Beijing

A meeting with Huang Chuanren, a plastic surgeon, in one of those Chinese coffee shops with plastic plants, mock ornate furniture, and a range of pretentious-but-disgusting coffees. This one offers a Blue Mountain coffee, or a Jamaica blend, or several types of sweet milky versions catering to Chinese tastes.

Huang wears a dark grey sweatshirt with a plastic Playboy logo. He is middle-aged, open and very chatty. We discuss sex change operations. He was the first surgeon in China to specialise in this procedure and advised the government on the regulations that now govern the operations. Every hospital in China tries to provide them now, since they are seen as proof of the technical skills of their surgeons, as well as of the open-mindedness of their bosses.

However, he himself has given up performing operations however, and not because of their grueling length or because his clients have struggled to readjust to normal life. Many of them end up dancing in the seedy bars on Sanya island, he says, because they are unable to hold down their original jobs or face down the prejudice and curiosity of society.

He quit because his mother insisted that his failure to have a child with his wife was because he had disrespected the laws of nature. Huang visited a Buddhist monk, together with three of his patients, in order to seek advice. He said that while no ordinary person would have been able to spot that the women were transsexuals, and that one of them was even married to a man who didn’t know she had formerly been a man, the monk saw through them straight away. He warned Huang it was bad karma to continue, but that he could do some modest repair work on previous clients if necessary. Huang lamented, however, that his wife had still not been able to conceive.

Then he told us about the growing demand for plastic surgery among Chinese government officials. Faced with having to appear before the television cameras on a more regular basis, and with having to make more public appearances, officials want to make sure they look the real deal. Demand for eye-lifting operations, nose jobs and other facial operations is through the roof. They now represent 20 per cent of all his work. He said no Politburo members had been tampered with, but said provincial governors and party secretaries were common enough and are smuggled in under cover of darkness, his other clients having been hustled out of the clinic.

Plastic surgery is also becoming a popular corporate gift for the senior executives of state-owned enterprises and their wives. It’s one way of cementing a deal, I suppose, although I’m surprised that the people giving the presents are willing to risk offending the recipients with the suggestion that they could benefit from a touch-up.

Dinner with Peter Foster, our Beijing bureau chief and his wife Claire in Sanlitun, where we went to a French restaurant above a flamenco dancing club, which itself was above a hip hop club, which sat in turn on top of a kebab stand that infused the whole building with its fragrance.

2009年12月11日，北京

和整形医生陈焕然的会面采访是在一家典型的中式咖啡店进行的。店堂里装修风格华丽却失真，摆设着塑料植物，咖啡价格昂贵味道却难以忍受。这家提供的就有蓝山咖啡，牙买加混合咖啡，还有一些迎合中国人口味的加糖添奶咖啡。

陈医生穿着深灰色的羊毛衣，上面绣着花花公子的标志。陈大概40岁左右，非常健谈。我们讨论了变性手术的相关话题。陈是中国变性手术的第一人，也是他建议政府立法规范变性手术的操作。现在中国大一点的医院都希望能提供变性手术的服务，这是整形医疗水平最高标准的体现，也是院领导们思想开放的证明。

陈医生现在已经不做变性手术了，这倒不是因为手术时间非常长，过程辛苦，或是大部分的手术者之后回归正常生活的挣扎艰辛。陈医生说很多人手术后都落到去三亚酒吧跳艳舞，因为原先的工作无法继续，社会的偏见和歧视依然严峻。

陈医生不再主刀变性手术的原因是他的母亲坚持认为他和他妻子多年未育是做变性手术的业障报应。陈去和厦门，寻访一位得道高僧。同行的有三位变性人，都是由陈完成的手术。这三位男变女都非常漂亮，普通人根本看不出他们曾经做过变性手术，其中的一位结婚多年，丈夫还一直没发现妻子最早是男儿身。然尔，那位高僧却一眼就看出他们半生为男，半生为女。他提醒陈继续做变性手术的话业障会变深重，但可以做些修复手术。陈叹息道时到今日他们夫妻两人还是没能怀上孩子。

陈透露说近年来找他做整容手术的官员越来越多。现在国内的政府官员出镜率高了，他们希望能有个正面年轻的形象。特别是去眼袋，提眼角，垫鼻子还有其它面部整形手术大热。官员整容在陈医生的整容手术中占到五分之一。中央高层倒是没人来找过他，但是省长，省委书记有挺多的，都是乘夜间，手术室清场操作。

公关公司现在经常把整形手术当作礼物送给国企的高层和他们的配偶。这倒不失为达成协议的一个好方法。自然我也好奇在送出这样的礼物时，送礼方会没有得罪受礼方的顾虑，毕竟是在提醒人家你需要一点改造工程。

晚餐去了三里屯的一家法国餐厅，和Peter，Claire夫妇一起进餐。这家餐厅坐落在一家弗拉门戈舞吧之上，弗拉门戈舞吧之下是一个街舞吧，街舞吧之下是个卖羊肉串的地方，烟雾弥漫，整栋楼都充斥着肉串的味道。

Don’t force the chief to admit he lied

December 10, 2009 – SHUANGQIAO

Biofuel machine "factory"

Adam and I return this morning to room 208 to eat a meagre breakfast of millet porridge, a few stale steamed buns and a tea egg.

Shuangqiao, the nearest town to the village, is clearly coal-powered. Huge lorries trundle through, carrying coal to nearby factories and homes. We visit a few private coal yards close to the hotel. At each one, two or three temporary workers spade coal from middling piles into bags or onto the back of horse-drawn carts. The horses look well-fed, but frequently whipped. As I approached them, they bowed their heads to the ground with worry. The hairs on the back of their legs had frozen into icicles of sweat.

The people are much jollier than down in the south, and universally preoccupied with my height and Adam’s PLA hat, which has flaps and makes him look Russian in their eyes. The bosses of the coal yards we visit say they have heard of the biofuel, but dismiss it as a fuel for peasants who can’t afford the superior luxuries of coal. One worker, however, says he is interested in investing in a biofuel machine, since he feels that it represents the future.

In the biggest yard, we sit inside with a family who have been coal salesmen for a decade. They tell us that with more people moving into apartments and using electricity, their sales have halved in three years. A brand new coal-fired power station at Hulan, with four cooling towers, has also crippled them – the station gets its coal from a state-owned mine and supplies their former customers.

After a huge lunch of beef, potatoes and a mix of cucumber, gourd, and egg and mushroom dumplings we return to the village. Yesterday, the boss claimed that he was selling his biofuels to nearby factories. When we asked if he could take us to them, he hesitantly agreed.

But when we get to the village, we are too early. The chief is still in the middle of his baijiu lunch. He sends his wife to look after us, but we scarper into the fields to avoid putting her out because she hasn’t eaten yet.

After half-an-hour, one of the chief’s cronies shows up, roaring drunk and with his flies undones. He takes us to the “factory”. This turns out to be where they made their biofuel compressor machine, which is romantically titled “Compress and Support BioEnergy Machine”. Rather than a production line, the factory is a yard in which two men are welding a few boilers.

Inside, another couple of engineers are busy reverse-engineering an enormous machine made by a company called Weida. The men take it slowly to pieces before hammering out their version of the machine’s cogs and gears from brick-sized blocks of steel. Adam is forbidden to photograph the process in case he lands them in trouble from the manufacturer. A small boiler in the corner is burning the biofuel briquettes.

When we push the chief to take us to a factory that is actually using biofuel for production, he demurs, muttering that there was a chicken farm that was heated with his biofuel but that they had sold all of their chickens yesterday. Adam nudges me and reminds me not to ask too many awkward questions. If the chief has to admit he was exaggerating, it will be a huge loss of face. And since he is relatively drunk, and staggering around the room, he might not react well to pushy foreigners. Adam reaches out to stroke his fur coat in a friendly manner and is rewarded with a venomous stare.

2009年12月10日，双桥镇

这边的居民普遍比南方的要快乐活泼点，对我的身高和Adam的军帽都感到好奇。Adam的帽子有耳廓，看起来像苏联人，当地人都这样认为。煤厂的老板对生物燃料有所听闻，但认为只是农民因为买不起煤才退而求其次。一个工人倒是对投资植物燃料压缩机感兴趣，觉得生物能源是未来所趋。

在附近最大的一个煤厂，我们和煤厂老板一家人在屋里聊了会天。这家人从事煤炭行业已愈十年。在过去的三年里，镇上很多居民搬进了公寓房，开始使用电取暖，他们的生意已经比以前减半了。新建成的呼兰发电厂对他们的生意也造成了打击。电厂的煤是国有煤矿提供的，火力发的电供给了一些原先采煤取暖的居民。

中餐我们吃了一大锅土豆炖牛肉，还有两三斤各色饺子，有黄瓜，西葫芦还有蘑菇鸡蛋馅。饭后我们回到了村子里。昨天村长介绍说他们也给周边的工厂提供玉米杆子燃料块。我们提出希望能参观工厂，他很不情愿地答应了。

车子到达村子的时候，离约定的时间还早。村长还在白酒席上。他让他的妻子回来招待我们，但我们还是找借口去了村口田里，村长妻子还没顾的上吃中饭呐。

半小时后，村长的一个跟班找到了我们，明显有点醉意，裤子拉练都没拉上。他带我们去了“工厂”。结果呐，却是他们制造压缩机的工厂。这个压缩机还有个名字，叫做“扶压式生物能源机”。工厂外间没有生产线，只有两个工人在焊接锅炉设备。

工厂内间有两三个工程师在拆装一个巨型设备。他们把机器慢慢拆成砖块大小的铁部件，再锻击成他们想要的压缩机的齿轮装备。车间禁止拍照，大概是怕被机器的原厂家（weida）发现，给他们带来麻烦吧。车间一角的锅炉就是用他们的玉米杆燃块采暖的。

我们后来催促村长带我们去一个用玉米杆子做燃料的工厂，他表示为难，咕哝着说附近只有个养鸡场是用玉米杆子燃料的，但是昨天所有的鸡都被卖掉了，今天暂时关停了。Adam示意我别问太多不合适的问题，如果村长被逼承认自己夸大事实的话，那可是很失脸面的。并且他当时已经很有醉意，走路都有点不稳，可能也应付不来比较坚持己见的外国人。Adam友好地拍了拍他的毛大衣，却被狠狠地回瞪了一眼。

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

Not quite a green revolution

December 9, 2009 – Harbin

Biofuel compressor machine, Qinlao

An early flight from Pudong into Harbin, in Heilongjiang, where it was -10C. The airport is equipped with small cabins where disembarking passengers can change into warmer clothes. The sign on the outside was in Chinese, English and Russian. In the airport cafe, two tables of blonde Russian ladies sipped tea and ate bowls of rice.

From the airport, we went directly to a small village which the People’s Daily had earmarked as a model project to pioneer the use of biofuels. According to the report, the entire village would try not to  burn coal during the winter, and would instead use plant stalks.

It sounded unlikely in print, and over the phone earlier in the week the village chief had admitted to Elyn that they “didn’t have enough plant stalks”. When we arrived, the smell of coal was heavy in the air and the first door we stopped outside had a large sign on it offering coal at 490 kuai a ton.

The village was very neat and seemingly more prosperous than some of the rural villages we have seen in the past. It turned out that they are indeed using the plant stalks, but the People’s Daily may have jumped the gun. Coal is still being used because there are not enough plant stalks to go around. By next year, the village chief promises, Qinlao will have abandoned coal altogether. This year, they simply can’t make enough to keep up with demand.

We clamber into his Hyundai, which smells of baijiu, still has the plastic covers over its sun-visors in the front, and has been tricked out with fluffy white seat covers and fake Louis Vuitton monogram floor mats.

He took us to the old village school, which has been converted into a factory. One machine makes corn stalks into animal feed pellets and another turns them into compacted briquettes for fuel. His grand plan is to start exporting the feed to South Korea and the fuel across China. Although the corn burns up faster than coal, it also ignites more easily and creates a fiercer heat.

His sister-in-law shows us the inside of her house, complete with a multicoloured kang. I felt the platform in the hope that it might be warm, but sadly it was off. They heat the house for two or three hours every night before bed, and that’s enough. One or two tons of corn, which would cost around 450 kuai a ton, is enough to power them through the winter.

The village chief seems like a feudal lord, although he peppers his speech with enough reference to Laobaixing, the common people, to show he is at one with his constituency. Still, his house has ornate ironwork, including bright orange leaping deer, the thickest double-glazing any of us has ever seen, and he tells us that he paid for the village road after striking it rich in the construction industry in Qingdao. He also paid for the plant stalk compacters. The fuel compactor, which threw up huge clouds of dust as it made its bricks, is a design the village came up with itself, with the help of some local engineers. They’ve been perfecting it since February.

Departing, we made our way to a “business hotel” in the nearby town. I get a larger room than Adam, our photographer, and Elyn. In fact, the room is the size of two tennis courts but empty of furniture. It looks like you could use it for ballroom dancing. It’s the second cheapest room available. I wonder if the suite is a whole floor. Or maybe the suite costs more because it has more fittings. The room is 280 kuai. Elyn and Adam are paying 180 each, but there were only two of the cheapest rooms available so I took the ungentlemanly step of upgrading myself.

After check-in, dinner. A classic example of how helpless I am without my assistant. Adam and I descend to the lobby but decide it is too cold for a drink there. We ask about a restaurant and are pointed to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs, there is a large spread of plastic dishes, each piled with the raw ingredients to choose from. Since, however, we don’t know the Chinese names of any of these dishes, we resort to smiling and pointing at a whole range of mismatched courses. The helpful waitress warns us not to order too much, but we ignore her and end up with a mountain of food.

We then start looking for a table to sit down, but it turns out that there is no dining room. We are asked to get in the lift and go to the second floor, where we are ushered into room 208, which has had a table and chairs installed. Adam and I drink a couple of warms beers. Because it is freezing outside, the locals don’t want their beer chilled too.

On CCTV, as I sit in the giant hotel room, there is a show discussing the Telegraph’s website report about a fish that was boiled in oil and was still gasping desperately when served. A video of the fish had made its way onto Youtube and been picked up by our web reporters in London.

There’s a particularly gruesome bit when the Chinese diners start poking their chopsticks into the fish’s maw. The story became the most-read item on the website, but I was a bit ashamed of it and under the microscopic scrutiny of the Chinese talk show hosts, who debated the differences between Chinese and Western culture, it came across as yet another attack on Chinese habits from the foreign media.

Telegraph story: http://twurl.nl/v413qn

哈尔滨

我们搭乘了从上海浦东机场飞往哈尔滨的早班机。中午落机的时候，地面温度只有10度。哈尔滨机场很贴心的给落机的乘客提供了添衣加暖的小隔间，门上贴有中文，英文和俄文的标识。哈尔滨的俄国人很多，在机场咖啡屋等摄影师的时候我们就发现了两桌金发碧眼的俄罗斯姑娘，喝着茶，吃着米饭。

从机场出发我们直接去了这次采访的目的地，人民日报誉为的生物燃料环保示范村。人民日报的文章称该村今年过冬取暖将尽量不使用煤，而用秸秆取代。

没有亲眼所见，很难不置疑。之前我们联系了该村的村长，他承认“我们没那么多的杆子”。我们到达村子的时候，空气中漂着浓厚的烧煤气味。我们走访的第一户农家大门上就写着出售煤炭的告示，490元一吨。

村子还是很整洁的，比我们之前去的一些农村要富裕些。访问了几户农家后，我们发现他们的确在烧玉米杆子，只不过人民日报的数据稍微过实了点。玉米杆子供应量不足，村民们也只得烧煤。村长承诺等明年冬季，这个村子就会成为真正意义上的无煤村。今年的话还是供不应求的状况。

我们爬进了村长的现代轿车。车内弥漫着白酒的味道，防晒板上还套着塑料封套，座位上铺着白色毛绒坐垫，底下垫着仿冒的LV毯子。

村长带我们去了原来村里的小学，现在已经改造成加工玉米杆子的工厂。厂里有两台机器，一台将玉米杆子压缩成块状做燃料，一台压缩成颗粒做饲料。村长雄心勃勃地计划明年将饲料出口给韩国，将燃料售往全国各地。虽然玉米杆子烧的比煤快多了，但其燃点低，致暖性好。

之前走访村民的时候，村长的嫂子邀请我们进屋参观。内屋有张色彩斑斓的大炕。我摸了摸炕，希望是张暖炕，结果却是冰冷冷的。村民一般晚上在睡觉前采暖两到三个小时，就够维系一夜了。一到两吨450块一吨的玉米杆子燃块就够他们过一个冬天的了。

村长看起来像一个封建领主，虽然他的话语中多次提及老百姓以示自己是为村民服务的。然而，他的房子却有华丽的铁门，上面配有亮橙色的跳鹿饰品，房屋镶着双层玻璃，厚度前所未见。村长告诉我们他在青岛的填海建筑工程中赚足钱后，回村里修了马路。两台玉米杆子压缩机器也是他购置的。燃料压缩机在将玉米杆子压缩成块的时候吞吐出大量的尘雾。村长介绍这个压缩机的主意是村委想出来的，当地的一些工程师提供了技术支持，从今年二月开始他们就一直致力于机器的改良工作。

离开了村子，我们去镇上找了一家“商务酒店”。我的房间比摄影师Adam和Elyn的要大一点。事实上，我的房间足有两个网球场大小，只是空荡荡的没家具摆设。这样的空间足够做一个舞池了，价格却是倒数第二便宜的。我好奇如果是套房的话，会不会占据整个楼面，或者是家具多，设备齐全的原因，套房的价格才贵些？我的房间是280元一晚，他们两个是180元。因为只剩两间最便宜的标间，所以我很不绅士的拿了高一级的房间。

办理好住宿手续后，我们准备用晚餐了。Adam和我先下到酒店大堂，本想喝上一杯，但实在太冷了。想前台询问附近的餐厅，却被带到附一楼的酒店餐厅。在楼梯底部摆放着满满的塑料餐盘，里面盛着各色生冷食品供客人选择。我们不知道如何用中文说出菜名，只好胡乱指一些菜肴。服务员很好心地提醒我们不要点太多，我们却没听进去，结果点了一大堆菜点。接下来我们开始寻找餐桌吃饭，未果。服务员让我们坐电梯上二楼。我们被领到208房间，里面放置了一张桌子和几把椅子。我和Adam喝了几杯热啤酒。哈，外面天寒地冻，本地人大概不希望自己的啤酒也是冰的吧。

饭后我回到自己的巨型房间，开始看电视。CCTV上有一档谈话类节目正在讨论每日电讯报网站上的一篇报道，内容是关于一条鱼被活煎，送餐时还在拼命挣扎。相关的录像视频被上传到Youtube上，每日电讯伦敦的记者看到并做了相关报道。其中尤为悚心的是中国餐客用筷子插入鱼颚的片断。这篇报道成为网站上阅读点击最多的文章，我倒觉得这篇报道价值没那么大。那位话题节目主持人分析说，这是中西文化的差异之处，是外国媒体对中国习俗的又一次攻击。

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

Welcome

Welcome to Foreign Correspondent.

This is the diary of a foreign journalist working in China.

Over the last 18 months, my assistant and I have travelled across the
country, from Heilongjiang to Guangdong, from Zhejiang to Xinjiang.

The idea of this blog is to bring you a running commentary of what
life is like for journalists in China and hopefully entertain you with
some of the characters we meet along the way.

There will be a time lapse of a few days before we post each day’s
diary. This is to allow my newspaper to publish my articles first –
they are my employers, after all.

Each post will appear in English and Chinese. I hope you enjoy them,
and please do leave comments so we can improve our work.

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

欢迎来到外国记者博客

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

这是一名外国记者在中国采访报道工作的日记。

在过去的18个月里，我和我的新闻助理几乎走遍了中国大地，北抵黑龙江，南达广东，东到浙江，西至新疆。

这个博客希望能给您展示外国记者在中国采访报道工作的过程细节，也希望和您分享我们途中遇到的奇人趣事。

博客的更新和文章登出相比要后延几天。我们要等报社发表了文章后才能相应地贴出其间的日记。

每篇日记都有中英文对照。希望您会感到有阅读的价值。并请不吝评论，有助于我们提高工作和博客的质量。