The Guardian: Beijing Pilots Recycle-to-Ride Public Transit Program

This seems like a clever idea and incentive structure to address a very specific recycling problem, that of discarded plastic bottles, which cumulatively represent a significant threat to the environment (see the Great Pacific Garbage Patch):

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jul/04/beijing-recycling-banks-subway-bottles

One of the crucial elements of any mass behavioral shift is the incentive structure. Unfortunately, the average human being's sense of morality or duty doesn't stand up well to repeat inconvenience, if the inconvenience in question doesn't tangibly benefit him. (People are generally willing to perform isolated acts of kindness or charity, even if against greater obstacles, in large part because these incidents seem out of the ordinary and don't connote repeat obligation.)

This system set in motion in Beijing has two obvious advantages. One is the instantaneous reward mechanism: the recycled bottles are converted to currency at the station, and the currency can be immediately used to ride the subway. It doesn't require the average person to go out of their way or alter their routine; it can be as simple as recycling your empty water bottle at the end of the day as you head home, or taking your recycling to the subway station in the morning when you leave for work.

The second is that it also incentivizes the transit authority (and thereby the municipal government) to more aggressively promote recycling. Prior to the implementation of this infrastructure, the transit authority would only be motivated to encourage recycling for environmental reasons; citizens' recycling benefited the PET recycling industry, but not the government. Now, because the transit authority would be earning money through this new program (funds which presumably help pay for operation and maintenance of the subway system), there is a direct incentive for the government to encourage recycling.

Obviously, there are some kinks to be ironed out, such as ensuring that the machines themselves operated efficiently and that the bottles collected would be processed at an acceptable environmental standard. As a collection mechanism, however, this seems like a great idea to promote environmentalism that also makes economic sense. I can't wait for the MTA to install some bottle-recyclers of its own; perhaps this would also reduce the number of track fire delays (usually caused by trash thrown onto subway tracks).

The Economist: On Pollution, China is Better and Worse Than We Think

I'm reading Jared Diamond's excellent book Collapse (you know it's important when it has its own Wikipedia page!), which devotes a whole section to the real sociopolitical dangers modern China faces as a result of environmental fragility and degradation. I rather serendipitously happened upon this article in The Economist, which discusses developments therein (both good and bad) since Collapse was published in 2005:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21583245-china-worlds-worst-polluter-largest-investor-green-energy-its-rise-will-have

I subsequently ended up thinking a lot about the subject, so I thought I'd muse about it in prose. (Sometimes -- very occasionally -- I miss writing essays for college history classes...) This post is rather long, so I've put it below the cut:

The Problem with Time Travel

I recently saw, and was amused by, this Abstruse Goose comic:

http://abstrusegoose.com/526

History buffs are often asked (in the process of making an acquaintance) what time period they'd like to inhabit, or at least to visit for a little while. I find that I tend to give answers as if I were white, male, and Christian (my main area of interest is pre-modern and early modern Europe). After all, the Scientific Revolution, or Republican Rome, or the Italian Renaissance are fascinating times to have been alive if you weren't being downtrodden, persecuted, or discriminated against. (I imagine that, being both female and Asian, I would have twice as much difficulty as either of the above characters. I wonder if the probability of death by persecution would increase logarithmically with each undesirable trait?) If I were to actually consider the logistics of visiting a particular time and place, I'd be largely limited to China and, well... there really isn't a good historical era in which to be female.

More Cute Pandas!

You thought you had already seen the cutest pandas ever, don't you? But you haven't seen this:

http://boingboing.net/2011/09/28/baby-pandas-need-a-nap-photo.html

Considering they're a severely endangered species, I certainly didn't expect to see so many in one place. As the comments suggest, there's a near-universal desire to climb in there with them and cuddle them.

From China (or Just Home), With Love

This is what my bed looks like this week:

You wouldn't be able to tell from the picture, but the bears, chicks, and leaves are actually embroidered felt patches. It's like I'm sleeping in a cocoon made of children's television shows and Sanrio-filled dreams. (I'm guessing that my mother bought the bedcovers/pillowcase in China.) Adorable, but makes me feel like I'm five again.

Escaping Baby Pandas!

Something cute and fluffy (literally!) to cheer you up after the hurricane:

Aren't they adorable?

NYTimes: Genes on the March

A very interesting, if somewhat inaccurate (well, I'm just being nitpicky here) piece on genetic history, à la Mongolian warlord: 
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/genes-on-the-march/?hp

There's likely Khan blood somewhere in my family, though the probability's lower than that of the average Chinese, seeing as we're from the south. Even if there were, though, I doubt any of my relatives would be too pleased, given the most logical method of transmission, as it were.

NYTimes: What's in a Name?

Seeing as it's Thanksgiving -- a celebration of family and loved ones -- I thought that this would be an appropriate article to post; it's an observation on an inevitable quandary in naming trends, given recent (within the past several decades) developments in gender equality and increasingly diverse modern familial structures:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/fashion/babies-surnames-to-hyphenate-or-not.html?_r=1&ref=fashion?src=dayp

I've given this a fair bit of thought. As a heterosexual female, Western social customs would have me relinquish my surname in favor of my hypothetical husband's, if I were to marry at some point in my life. I'm not so keen on that, myself; I'm rather attached to my last name. It has a history behind it, a connection to generations of family and culture.

Ergo, one of my goals in life is to achieve a level of "success" (definition variable) such that if the time comes, it would appear to be logical (rather than vain or self-serving) to keep my surname. It's rather sad that society is still at a stage where a woman needs a reason to keep her maiden name, while a man may do so merely by virtue of his Y chromosome. I hope that someday, English-speaking society will have progressed such that women keep their own names as a matter of course, and some equitable system exists whereby children's surnames are evenly distributed between their sire and dam.

I'm not sure about hypothetical children (haven't given them much thought -- I'm many years too young for that!) but I imagine it would depend a lot on the ethnic origins of their father. Surnames in some languages lend themselves more readily to hyphenation than those in others. I'd want them to have a Chinese name, too. If the father were non-Chinese, I'd like to give them my own Chinese family name to use in contexts that would require it; phonetically deriving one from the father's surname seems a little cheap, next to a name with history and family.

Interestingly, in Chinese society, women retain the use of their maiden names throughout life; it's only when referring to them specifically as "wife of so-and-so" that they go by the equivalent of "Mrs." Gender equality is, in some respects (this is a pretty significant caveat), more apparent in modern Chinese society (i.e. beginning with my generation). I think it has a lot to do with the One Child Policy, in that if parents have only one child, they will give it the best they can in the way of opportunity and attention. There is much less opportunity for parents to favor sons over daughters (after the birth of the child; female infanticide is still a problem in some areas), because they typically only have one child to dote upon. The surname given to the child is still the father's, so it's not a perfect system, by any means, but in this specific practice, it's a bit closer to gender equality than in English-speaking countries.

Chinglish and Other Amusements from China

I realized that I never posted the various amusing and interesting pictures I took in China. (Many of them are of Chinglish bloopers.) Here are some of the funnier ones:

This was taken in a mall in Hong Kong; I believe it was advertising an arcade or some such.

The circular, UFO-like thing on the ground is an information booth. I suppose that's one way to attract attention!

We found these in the shower of our hotel room. False excrement indeed (I should certainly hope so, given its intended use.)

I had opened the drawer expecting a sewing kit, or perhaps a clothes-line. This... isn't quite string.

I did not anticipate finding French fries or hash browns (especially smiley ones) in China, especially in the same box as chow mien and string beans. It reminds me of the cover of Watchmen, with the strategically-placed ketchup and all.

Liquid yogurt is a rather common drink in China; "living fungus milk," however, is distinctly unappetizing.

And this. I couldn't resist putting this up. It's my mother's big carry-on bag. Apparently it was a gift. (The arm in the picture is my father's.)

NYTimes: Odd Exceptions in the Family Planning Rulebook

An interesting article, especially given the friends I made in China, all of whom were only children:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/world/asia/07sidebar.html

The last line is so ridiculously illogical that I nearly spewed tea on the keyboard. Really? That's what ultrasounds and amniocentesis are for. It's not as though the Chinese have anything against abortion, by and large.

I can see the logic to both sides of the One Child Policy debate. China's huge population means that some method of restricting population growth is necessary (especially in the days when it was first enacted). At the same time, the lack of a social safety net, especially provisions for the elderly, mean that the burden falls on the children to care for their aging parents -- which, traditionally, has been the case, but which has been exacerbated by the lack of siblings with whom to divide this often significant burden. Obviously, parents would want to have multiple children, which means exploiting whatever loopholes are available to them -- including, apparently, nonexistent disabilities. (Also, there's the not insignificant problem of favoring male children over female ones, especially in a culture that's still somewhat traditional.)

I imagine that as China's population stabilizes, the state-mandated controls on childbirth will ease up. Legislation (of the sensible variety) seems to be moving in that direction; for example, if both parents are only children, they are permitted two offspring. In some ways, it's a more extreme, top-down version of natural, self-correcting fluctuations in ecological population density; instead of massive infant mortality and starvation, the government is heading of the problem at conception. Now, as the population is stabilizing, hopefully the Chinese government is recognizing these shifts and scaling back their artificial restraints.

Blog Hiatus

I'm flying to China tomorrow, and won't be back until early September. Given the blog censorship situation there, I likely won't be posting at all until my return. (There is a workaround. We'll see.) Meanwhile, I leave you with this:

I thought it was adorable, if slightly odd.

NYTimes: Dragon Fruit has a Knack for Getting Noticed

The New York Times has discovered the dragon fruit: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/dining/dragon-fruit-has-a-knack-for-getting-noticed.html

I'm passably familiar with this odd-looking fruit; it's rather common in Chinese supermarkets when it's in season, and especially in China. It's interesting how America/Western Europe picks up products and practices from elsewhere in the world, and then all of a sudden, with a bit of marketing, they become the next big thing. Then again, that's been happening for hundreds of years (tea, anyone?).

I think it dates back to the Classical Roman idea of the exotic (it applies to most empires in human history -- Rome just happened to be one of the better-documented ones). The Romans often conquered because they were interested in the goods produced by far-flung lands -- silk from Asia, cotton from Egypt, horses from the Arabian Peninsula, &c. Trade quickly resulted in a demand for more specialized luxury products, such as spices and exotic pets, which were valuable for their scarcity, difficulty of transport, unfamiliarity, and distant origins -- sometimes more so for these incidental factors than for their inherent trade value.

Nowadays, there are all these health-, beauty-, and palate-related fads that claim to provide some benefit intrinsic to their provenances. Stripped down, they're much the same thing.

NYTimes: Europe's Plagues Came from China

A very interesting article (from a while back) on the Black Plague in medieval Europe:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/health/01plague.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

There have been, for quite a while, theories that the plague originated the East, but I don't think there have been any definitive or substantial studies conducted until this one. Given the relative urbanization along the coast of China in those days, at least compared with Dark Ages Europe, it makes a lot of sense. Cities, then and now, are breeding grounds for disease. And other, good things, too, of course, but plague was perhaps the most transformative.

MSNBC: Two Suns Spotted in China Defy Explanation

A very interesting optical phenomenon spotted about a month ago:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41927089/ns/technology_and_science-space/GT1=43001

I'm inclined to believe that it's an issue of atmospheric refraction, as the article says. I don't think a faulty lens could produce an image of such clarity.

NYTimes: The Art of the Noodle

Noodles as a performance art:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/dining/26noodles.html

I'm going to be home for New Year's, for the first time since I started college, and it will probably be the best meal I will have had in three years. Nothing beats good Chinese home-cooking, and it's never better than on New Year's.

And of course, there will be a riotous number of people at our place. Fun!

Edit: I forgot to mention that the only reason I'll be in New York at all is because I'll be attending the NYU debate tournament. Two birds, one stone, eh?

NYTimes: A Straddling Bus to Alleviate China's Congestion Problems

My father first showed me a picture of this new vehicle from a Chinese newspaper; this is The New York Times's article on the subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/business/global/18bus.html

I really like the idea; it looks odd (not that that's a problem -- I actually rather like the design), but it's an innovative and tremendously efficient use of space. We should have these back home.

Italy Travelogue, Part 2: Rome

Rome is big. Not quite as big as New York (what is?), but after Florence, Rome seemed huge. Of course, it was the place to be (in Europe, at least) for several centuries, way before any of the other major metropolises even existed. We procured four Roma Passes, which are designed for tourists and include discounts to major attractions (museum tickets are expensive!) and free public transit, valid for three consecutive days.

Four days in Rome was definitely not enough (especially since one of them was spent outside of Rome, technically, in the Vatican). Unlike Florence, which rose to prominence in the Middle Ages, Rome was the center of a vast empire in antiquity, and has several millennia of history on Florence. (Huzzah for Ancient Empires!)

The afternoon we get there, I drag them to see the Pantheon. (I'm a sucker for Greco-Roman mythology, but this one's really worth seeing.) It also houses the work of several Renaissance masters, as well as several of their graves, most notably that of Raphael. This is an interior view of its dome:


The Romans were really architectural geniuses, given their level of technology. It's incredible that the Pantheon survived several regime changes and wars. Of course, one of the reasons it wasn't quarried for marble or anything was that it was converted to a church in honor of the Virgin Mary and assorted Christian martyrs. It stands in stark contrast to many of the temples in the Roman Forum (dating from the days of the Republic) and the later Imperial fora; most of those now lie in ruins, much of their marble facing carted off to adorn other facades. Even so, the Roman Forum is well worth seeing. Here is a photograph of the Temple of Romulus:


This was one of the most intact of the temples in the Forum (and indeed, in all of Rome), mostly because it was converted to a church, that of the saints Cosmas and Damian, two Greek brothers, to stand in stark contrast to the Temple of Castor and Pollux, also in the Forum. This is, unfortunately, all that's left of the latter:


Freestanding monuments and buildings not constructed of marble were also generally in better repair; take, for instance, this photograph of the northwestern corner of the Forum:


In the middle of the picture is the Arch of Septimus Severus, commemorating the emperor's victories against the Parthians. He was a strong leader and a military man, which was good for Rome, given the corruption and political disunity of the preceding reigns. He also sponsored numerous public works, among which were several arches like this one.

The brownish building on the right (the one with three windows above its main entrance) is the Curia Julia, the Senate building built by (somewhat ironically) Julius Caesar. (He never saw it in its current form, as it was completed during the reign of Augustus.) The height of its ceiling is particularly impressive from the inside.

While I'm at it, here's another Augustan monument:


My sister and I are standing in front of the Ara Pacis (English: Altar of Peace). It was built by the Senate on the occasion of Augustus's subjugation of Gaul and Hispania, to celebrate the Pax Augusta, the peace that the emperor brought about by uniting various far-flung European peoples under imperial rule. My father, when I explained the altar's history, aptly remarked that Augustus was rather like the first Qin (秦) Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇), who unified China. (Personally, I think Augustus was a lot friendlier. Also, Augustus's overall geopolitical achievement was probably somewhat less impressive, given that he was building upon Julius Caesar's successful military campaigns, whereas the Qin Emperor had to conquer the other six Chinese states, which were more or less equal in power to his at the start of his campaigns. Not to say that Augustus wasn't awesome, because he was.)

We also spent an afternoon at the Capitoline Museum, where there is a great glass-roofed hall housing some remarkable and historic bronzes. This one is the very famous equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, the only such statue of a pre-Christian emperor still in existence. It survived the Christian fanaticism of the Middle Ages mainly because it was thought to depict the Christian Constantine; this sort of imperial statue was quite common in the Roman Empire, but all the others were melted down.


It's greenish because it used to be prominently displayed on a pedestal outdoors, but then people moved it inside and put up a replica instead, because of precipitation damage.

This one, from the same hall, is the equally well-known bronze of the Capitoline Wolf, with Romulus and Remus as suckling infants:


Its origins are still uncertain, with some art historians contending that the wolf was first cast in the Etruscan era and others (a minority) arguing that it was made in the 13th century (both parties agree that the twins were a later addition). Either way, it's an iconic sculpture in the modern consciousness, where Rome is concerned.

This is getting ridiculously long. I'll write a third post on the Vatican, and lump in the Renaissance stuff with it. Stay tuned for travelogue part 3!

Today

is the 168th anniversary of the Treaty of Nanking, which concluded the First Opium War, famously ceded the territory of Hong Kong to Britain.

Of course, Hong Kong was repatriated many years ago. I vaguely remember the big hoopla in 1997, when we all watched the ceremony on the television, and there was a lot of noise and celebration and dancing in choreographed patterns (it seems that every major Asian celebration includes dancing in choreographed patterns).

Al Jazeera: Amnesty Report Slams Global Abuses

The usual culprits, of course: China, Russia, and the US. It's always those who aren't terribly concerned about repercussions in the international arena -- the US is no exception:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/05/2010527164537464311.html

It's so hard to be an optimist, sometimes.

Two Sides of a Coin

Praise and flattery are two very similar, and yet wholly different, creatures:

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.

~ Samuel Johnson

I do not often think of it this way, but it is quite true. It reminds me distinctly of the two traditions in which I am steeped. Americans believe in forthright truth and are wary of flattery, believing that the prettiest words are the most deceptive. The Chinese, on the other hand, have elevated flattery to a high art, placing their faith in the social lubricant of fine speech and disdaining those without such silvered tongues as uncultured and uncouth. Similarly, the Western world operates on a system of transaction, of payment of dues (catalogued, countersigned, and otherwise assured), whereas the Chinese believe in a system of favors, where it is more desirable to grant a favor than to suffer one given, where one's public honor trumps one's true ability when pressed to choose.

Veritas aut honor. Truly a difficult choice.