People's Republic of...

May holiday sunshine (so far) has brought the full extent of crowds onto the streets and all forms of public transport.

Having spent May 1st waiting 30 minutes for a bus that never arrived, then wondering the streets for about 20 minutes in search of an available taxi, I can tell you that public holidays are still living up to their fearsome reputation for tainting people's free time.

Nonetheless, myself, and tens of thousands of other people, happened to be at JinJi hu (yes, that's Golden Chicken lake) here in Suzhou. And despite a somewhat hellish journey for most people to even get there (most number 68 buses resembled cattle trucks, with some people's faces scrunched up against the panes of glass as the pressure of about 100 people crammed into the double-decker bus forced new extremes of inter-personal proximity), the sun shone, people bought and flew kites, paddled in pools, canoodled in the shade, rode rented tandems, and generally lazed around in a contented fashion. Here are a few pics:

Yes, it's almost the start of Golden Week (黄金周; huang jin zhou), as it is optimistically termed, in which about one-sixth of the world's population attempt to board every available train, bus, coach, plane, and boat in an attempt to get somewhere else for a set period of time, and then return again.


As seen in the above image of my computer's calendar, this annual Chinese holiday is technically not really a whole week long. But most workers have between 6 to 9 days off, depending on where the holiday's beginning falls within the week. The first day of this holiday, May 1st, is the 'international worker's day', though here it's simply described as the national holiday.

However, it is a holiday in the sense that it is a (very) welcome respite from work, but it's not a holiday in the sense that one is free to choose one's moments of leisure.

In China, the vast majority of people make some effort to return to their hometowns to visit parents and older relatives, although a new recent trend is, instead, to jet off to a nearby foreign country - especially Thailand - which doesn't celebrate the same golden week, and thus avoid the crowds, traffic and the price-hikes associated with vast public holidays.

No point bitching about everyone being forced to take their breaks at the same time (as I tend to do this annually), or even post images of scenes of human swarms (as Ryan over at 'Life in Suzhou' beat me to it by a good few days - fast work, man!), and instead just quietly hope and pray that in the years to come the rather socialist attitude towards human activity will soften into a more Euro-American mood of allowing individuals two weeks of holiday time, at their leisure, and at their discretion.

At the weekend it was stated that only 244 genuine versions of Microsoft's newest operating system had been sold in China in its first two weeks. This is due, presumably, to a mix of ludicrously high prices for the genuine product, and rampant piracy which saw Vista pirates on the streets for less than a dollar. Oooops!

And all this despite MS spending more money on the launch of Vista in China than any other country, including fancy laser adverts on the side of Shanghai's highest building, Jin Mao tower. Inspiration enough for this week's newest cartoon, featuring MS boss, Bill Gates, and his associate Steve Ballmer (Cartoon: 3 images, which'll load below)...

This publicity stunt by the WorldWide Fund for Nature (WWF) occurred three weeks ago, but this is the first I've seen of it, after stumbling across it on Digg.

It's an interesting graphical representation of how much toxic emissions are produced by an average car in an average day of motoring. It's also interesting to note that this stunt was not only allowed to occur, but was also broadcast on several networks here in China.



On the balloon is written: Drive one day less, look how much carbon monoxide you'll keep out of the air we breathe.

Green organizations and charities do operate in China, albeit carefully, tactfully, and in very apolitical ways. Hence the public service nature of their campaigns, worded to suggest a change in habits of ordinary folk, not any change in policy.

WWF China has it's own site in both Chinese and English, although on the English site the numerous tabs - such as 'Get Involved' - don't seem to be working for me.

I originally made this cartoon last month, and put it on my blog when it was located on the blog.com service. Sorry about re-posting it, but I wanted to see it up on this new blog space!

Anyway, nothing has changed too much with regards Google or it's Chinese web-search nemesis, Baidu.

Here's the cartoon (3 image panels, which will load below):