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Re: What is Digital Censorship in China? 07/24/2025 by ♭♫ [+-]

[www.youtube.com]

China’s internet just went dark, not offline, but empty. Today, some of the country’s biggest online voices are vanishing without warning. Creators, influencers, and bloggers wiped clean from platforms they helped build. No explanation, news coverage, or digital footprints. Just silence and a growing sense of fear.
Why are hundreds of Chinese creators being digitally erased overnight? What secret rules are suddenly deciding who stays and who disappears? And could this purge be the start of something much bigger?
To understand what’s happening, we need to start with the very first name that went missing…

Re: 🇨🇳 Spies Are Everywhere...Let the witch-hunt begin! 07/24/2025 by ♭♫ [+-]

[www.youtube.com]

Mass Purge Begins! USDA Fires Many Chinese Postdocs, ICE Arrests Over 100 Chinese in LA

Re: That's life... 07/23/2025 by ♭♫ [+-]

These are discussions you can have with a religious zealot who accuses you of being closed minded: [www.youtube.com]

Quote
From Hong Kong
Nun of d'Above Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Anyway, There's a Mormon ritual of sending out
> young boys out into to world on their own and
> profess their faith I guess before they turn 20.

> Nun of d'Above

Wow, these Mormon boys are like everywhere on the Hong Kong MTR. Turn left, turn right and there they are as if they've just been weaned from the farm. I think that's nice that they're promoting same gendered couples here. Just by being together, that's the message I'm getting...which in the west it's known as male bonding. They all look so adorable together in pairs. Mitt Romney, eat your heart out!!!

From Hong Kong

Re: A Guide To The Cantonese Bakery 07/23/2025 by ♭♫ [+-]

[classicchicagomagazine.com]

Another good bakery is Feida Bakery at 2228 S. Wentworth Ave. Grab a pastry and a cup of tea and join the locals in the back room. You feel like you are in the middle of China!! I just stopped in and had their walnut bean paste cake and as in the past, it was excellent.

Re: A Glimpse of Seattle Chinatown 07/23/2025 by ♭♫ [+-]

[seattlerefined.com]

Scenes from the Seattle Chinatown Seafair Parade

Re: China US Decoupling Ain't Gonna Happen 07/23/2025 by ♭♫ [+-]

[www.youtube.com]

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Kyle Chan argues that America is in terminal decline and China is poised to dominate the 21st century. It’s polished, persuasive — and completely wrong.

Re: Harvard Business Review Article: Why China Can’t Innovate 07/22/2025 by ♭♫ [+-]

[www.youtube.com]

Why Chinese Education Is a Crime Against Childhood

Quote
soeng
[hbr.org]

The reason that Chinese students including ABCs (etc.) fail to use their cognitive faculties in a manner that brings about innovative outcomes is discussed in the article; furthermore, these and additional reasons likely constitute a factor in the federal justice's ruling that Harvard should continue to be permitted to limit the number of East Asian students, ABCs (etc.) admitted to Harvard University, since excessive pencil twirling and mere regurgitation of textbook material leads to a thoroughgoing, abysmal failure to creatively innovate with regard to the interpretation of course content, a condition that irreparably harms a university culture of free inquiry --
Harvard Does Not Discriminate Against Asian-Americans in Admissions, Judge Rules [www.nytimes.com]

Re: Shen Yun 07/22/2025 by ♭♫ [+-]

[leeshailemish.com]

It sounds strange, doesn’t it, that representatives of the Chinese government would want to stop a performance of traditional Chinese culture. Shouldn’t they be happy that a U.S.-based performing arts company is promoting Chinese culture around the world? Well, they’re not, and for two main reasons.

Re: Circumventing China's Exit Ban 07/22/2025 by ♭♫ [+-]

[www.youtube.com]

China Blocks US Patent Office Employee From Leaving

Re: A Glimpse of Sidney Chinatown 07/21/2025 by ♭♫ [+-]

[www.smh.com.au]

At the edge of Sydney’s Chinatown, on the corner of George and Hay streets, is a heritage building that has spent years with the lights off and the doors shut.

The plaque next to the door of the sandstone building, with scuffed walls, bird droppings and pieces of rubbish lining the windowsills, reads “Sydney City Library Haymarket”, but it is listed on Google Maps as the Museum of Chinese in Australia. “We are currently closed for refurbishment,” the museum’s website says.

Despite millions of dollars in government funding, the museum has never opened.

The doors did open one evening in April this year, when Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Sydney MP Tanya Plibersek stopped by during the federal election campaign to announce $2.6 million in federal funding for fit-outs and refurbishments.

“These stories should be told,” Wong said. “We want our stories to be told – the Chinese communities of this nation, Australia’s past, our present and the future, and the space where all Australians can celebrate our history and our diversity. Now we’re on the cusp of launching ... hopefully this year.”

As Wong spoke downstairs, the rest of the building sat virtually unchanged from when the museum, a registered charity, was handed the keys by the City of Sydney in late 2021, after the last tenant, Haymarket Library, moved to Darling Square.

Wong’s announcement has galvanised the museum’s decision-makers towards a new deadline of February – before the Year of the Snake ends.

But as the institution enters its fourth year of a five-year lease with little progress made, impatience is brewing in some parts of the Chinatown community over the extensive delays. So why hasn’t the Museum of Chinese in Australia opened yet?

History in the making
Sydney’s Chinatown is one of Australia’s best-known and most frequented, with roots tracing back to the 1870s, when Chinese migrants shifted their fruit and vegetable trading from the Rocks to settle around Haymarket.

Chinese people began arriving in Australia as part of the massive migration wave during the gold rush of the 1850s. During the 1900s, they spread into other trades and services, finding prosperity in fruit and vegetable trading, shopkeeping, tobacco farming and clothes laundering. The end of the White Australia policy in 1973 brought another wave of migrants.

But unlike Melbourne and regional cities such as Bendigo (which established its Golden Dragon Museum in 1991) and Ararat (which opened its Gum San Chinese Heritage Centre in 2001), Sydney has fallen behind in establishing its own museum to showcase the contributions of Chinese Australians.

That looked to finally change in mid-2020. As the pandemic set in, Lord Mayor Clover Moore announced the council would lease the property to the Museum of Chinese in Australia.

It would feature a gallery and exhibition space, programming activities, community spaces for events, an artist-in-residence program, and a cafe and shop. It is chaired by 82-year-old Daphne Lowe Kelley, who has spent most of her career serving Chinese-Australian organisations, and was presided over by Dr John Yu, a Chinese-born Australian paediatrician and 1996 Australian of the Year.

But neither the council nor the museum’s leadership anticipated the challenges of establishing a new gallery in a heritage-listed 19th-century building. While the site has given the museum a spiritual and physical home, with rent subsidised by the council, the lease agreement contains pages of added requirements, heritage restrictions and red tape.

“This is an amazing gift,” new MOCA chief executive Peter Cai said of the building. “And it came with a lot of conditions, and some conditions are not easy to address. There are a lot of costs to remedy.”

The initial renovation proposal, overseen by Tony Stephens, the previous chief executive who departed the organisation in January, came to roughly $4.7 million, said Kelley, who estimates the true cost would have been closer to $6 million or $7 million after factoring in contingencies and other unanticipated expenses.

Figures from the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) show revenue from donations and bequests came to $1,766,821 in the four years between fiscal 2021 and 2024.

This figure doesn’t include rent subsidies from the City of Sydney’s accommodation grant program, $2.28 million from Create NSW given in 2022, or two grants from the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations that exceeded $400,000.

In the absence of local donations, lobbying government has been crucial. “It was almost impossible trying to raise any funds during COVID,” Kelley said.

‘People are now questioning many things’
A number of departures on the museum’s board has added to perceptions of volatility. Only three inaugural board members remain: Kelley, Joanna Capon and Yin Cao. Dr John Yu, Stephen FitzGerald and Su-Ming Wong have departed the board. Since then, a number of others have come and gone.

One former director, speaking anonymously to discuss confidential matters freely, said board members had at times disagreed on the best approach to raising money.

“It’s become a fundraising issue. They need a certain amount of money to open. They haven’t been able to achieve that yet,” they said.

Despite being volunteers for the charity, the former board member described the work as a “full-time job”.

“It was very intense,” they said. “I found myself spending a lot of time on the wrong things.

“While I’ve stepped off the board, I’m still a big supporter and would love to see it open.”

An active representative of the Chinatown community, who declined to be named, said the museum had lost a lot of the goodwill it initially had. “Because it’s been years, people are losing interest or faith,” they said. “People are now questioning many things; where has [the money] gone, how has it been spent?”

The same Chinatown community representative feels the museum has had little to show. “If you can’t fix the building with the money you have, what are you delivering in the meantime?” they asked. “They’re not engaging in the community at all.”

Kelley is aware of the critiques. “They don’t really know what goes behind the scenes, what has to be actually done, and how difficult it is to achieve a lot of what it takes to actually get it open,” she said.

Putting on a show
Plans are now being redrawn for a “reduced scope” refurbishment. Even then, Kelley estimates opening will cost $3 million to $4 million. “That’s still a lot of money,” she said. “You’ve got to remember, we also need to have funds for the programs and operational costs.”

The race is on to pull the various pieces together for a soft launch. On top of refurbishment plans to be redrawn, costed and commenced, an exhibition director (historian and Chinese art and photography curator Shuxia Chen) has been drafted to conceptualise the museum’s first exhibition, which will focus on local stories about Haymarket habitants that have been there for generations, such as the Lam family of Asian grocer Dong Nam A, or the Pang family, which ran a Chinese restaurant in Haymarket for nearly three decades and have donated large sums to the museum.

“We must put on a good show for people,” Cai said. Decisions need to be made about the exhibition’s budget. “You’re talking about special lighting, casings, you have to hire expert consultants to put it all together. It’s not as easy as hanging something on a wall.”

Meanwhile, Kelley is hustling for donations, having visited Canberra to lobby Wong and Plibersek, and sharing bank details in community newsletters. “I’ve been lobbied about this so much,” Wong said at the April event.

The museum has secured its tenancy for another decade, which Kelley hopes will help to encourage donations after hearing feedback that some felt reluctant to donate money for a building that belongs to the council.

“A refit is not as sexy to the philanthropic community,” said another former board member, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “We spoke to a lot of other Chinese museums around the world ... The Chinese Canadian Museum took eight years to get running from conceptualisation to open doors. It just takes a little while.”

Cai is excited to showcase the many contributions of Chinese Australians over the decades and is at pains to convey the “complicated nature” of the project to supporters, whom he said had been generous and full of goodwill.

“I can empathise with some of our supporters who just want to see the building open soon,” he said. “I want as much as I can to speed things up.”

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