This may somewhat explain the muted response from China. People are largely puzzled by the gesture. When reporting the story, the editor of the Beijing News even felt necessary to add some explanation of what the gesture means, “a common gesture can be suspected as racist, which is not often seen in Asia.”

It may also have something to do with the timing. Chinese media only caught the story after it was raised during the daily news conference during the Olympics. Search “Spanish basket ball team” in Chinese and you get dozens of results all saying “Spanish basket ball team apologized for the guilian (making a face) photo”. One blogger commented that if only the story was broken 24 hours earlier, before the two countries’ basket ball team met, then the Chinese team might be more motivated to resist Spain’s comeback.

The slit-eyed gesture may take some explanation for Chinese to understand, but that does not say we don’t make fun of other people’s look. Cantonese use ‘gwailo‘ (ghost man) to call foreign people because their deep eye sock and funny coloured hairs. You can say it’s disrespectful but over the time it has become neutral, even affectionate. I guess Spanish could use the similar line to defend that photo. Indeed a Chinese blogger living in Barcelona felt moved to defend the locals. “A friendly gesture between close friends to be interpreted as racist. No wonder Spanish people are angry.”

Something deemed to be friendly may not be felt the same way when seeing the light. I guess like gwailo, the slit-eyed gesture was originated at a time of ignorance, when mocking people’s racial characteristics was more acceptable. Whether those participated in this public display thought the time hadn’t changed or the viewers would think the same I have on idea. The advertiser who insisted to take this photo may think it was harmless fun to mock Chinese in such a way when they only thought the Spanish-speaking population as the targeted audiences. But in a globalised world, this is insensitive to say the least.

I frowned on the photo when I thought I finally worked it out, some of my fellow countrymen would shrug it off, but I can understand others may be furious and hurt. Spanish media seem to think all the fuss about this is storm in a tea cup, a misunderstanding of Spanish culture, or even a witch hunt. However, whether stereotyping is playful or hurtful can only be decided by those are being targeted. In this instance, the Spainish may well their image some good by opening their eyes.

Let’s not forget the opening ceremony was directed by Zhang Yimou, a film director renowned for his pursuit of visual perfection, which is not only about striking prime colours and stuning special effects, but also, perhaps more importantly, the perfect face expression and image composition. Zhang Yimou obviously took the latest challenge of directing the opening ceremony performance as if he was shooting a film watched by 4 billions people simultaneously. Image perfect is the holly grail while conventions and rules were something could be bent and ignored.

And lip-syncing is not so unusual in Chinese cinema. In early Chinese cinema, there were those actresses, like “Gold throat” Zhou Xuan who could act as well as sing, but Chinese audiences largely accepted, even expected, the song they heard was not sung by the leading actor and actress, but someone with better voice. During 1950s and 60s when sing-song movies and musicals were hugely popular in Hong Kong’s mandarin film scene, there was a mixture of popular actresses who did and who did not sing. The fact that an actress could not sing wouldn’t dent fan’s affection, only advanced the career of the singer behind the screen. This tradition continued to 1980s Chinese cinema. When Joan Chen, still a budding young actress, played a soprano and sang “I Love You China” in the film Loyalty (1979) (《海外赤子》), of course everyone understood that was a song by a famous soprano Luo Tianchan.

This may somewhat explain the relaxed attitude Chen Qigang displayed. He certainly didn’t expect such a clever act would be ridiculed, mostly by Chinese internet users. What he seemed not to realize, was that audiences enjoy spectacle and perfection in sports, yes, but a performance replying on unfairly borrowed ability isn’t the message the Olympic Games want to sent out.

Since last Wednesday, I’ve been helping to build the Sichuan Earthquake Update website. This is to update the public with latest information about the earthquake, its aftermath, and the rescue, relief and recovering process. It is not a news website; rather, it is focus on personal stories, direct experiences, and volunteers’ action and requests. A small team of volunteers are keeping contact with the front line, collecting news and stories, and translating messages from Chinese to English. The website is a joint efforts by charity Mother Bridge of Love (MBL), LinkChinese UK, and Chinese Young Professionals in Edinburgh. We also asked the public to donate money to MBL, who will use the fund to help children affected by the quake.

The website went alive on last Wednesday, quickly attracted about 400 daily visitors from the UK, but also from China, US, Singapore, Hong Kong and other places. In one week time, MBL’s online donation page has collected over 15,000 pounds. Reading the comments left by the donors is heart-warming. The sympathy and support shown by the public and fellow Chinese are tremendous.

I was reading this tale the other day, which has its origin in Buddhism literature. A mountain is on fire. A bird dives into a lake, then flies over the fire. The bird fluffs its feather to spread a few drops of water towards the fire. The God sees this and says to the bird, “Do you really think you can put out the fire with a few drops of water on your feather?” “No,” answers the bird, “but I once lived here. I must do something.”

Yes, we must do something.

One thing clear is that if the protesters wanted to ‘embarrass China into submission’, they are most likely to find their efforts totally counter-productive. Not only this forces China into a stand off confrontation, but also galvanises Chinese people into showing more support of the Beijing Olympics. Chinese students in Edinburgh are organising a show of support demonstration at city centre this Saturday, followed by a separate protest against the misreporting outside BBC headquarter in London on 19 April. Some may believe Chinese students are either blinded by Communist Party’s nationalistic propaganda or totally insulated from the outside world. However what it really shows is that, just like their counterparts in Britain, Chinese students are usually not into politics, but will rise up to express their views when the issue they really care about comes by.

It is interesting to compare the live broadcast of torch relay in London and San Francisco. The NBC presenters were upbeat and giggling, often indicating the torch relay is a fun thing (even the torch run, torch drive and the cat-and-mouse “where is the torch” thing is fun), positive for San Francisco’s image, including the display of rivalry between anti-China and pro-Olympics demonstrators. BBC News 24’s broadcast, fronted by Chris Eakin, however, gave the overall impression that the torch relay in London, and in San Francisco, were distasteful embarrassment or miserable disasters. I’m not suggesting any conspiracies. Perhaps Americans are not so ashamed of highly-visible, security-minded operation, or just the weather is better there. A serious point, though, is that if violent disruption of Olympic torch relay becomes a fair game to any protest groups, or even turns into a competition of who can, literally, grab the biggest prize, if attempts of grabbing the torch, extinguishing the torch, or worse physical violating the torch bearers can be justified if you happen to like the course, as some British columnists suggest, then the biggest victim will be the Olympic movement.

Those who use violence to disrupt the torch relay may enjoy the maximum media attention they are seeking for, but the consequences are going to be suffered by all of us who rather enjoy Olympic Games and all the festival atmosphere it brings, whatever one’s views on Tibet are.

A new website, anti-cnn.com, has been set up to expose the western media outlets like CNN, German N-TV, as well as BBC and The Times of “manipulation of evidence” and “biased reporting”. It looks many quite a few western news organisations, in the immediate aftermath of Lhasa riot, used the pictures of Indian and Nepalese police taking away demonstrators in their reports as the evidence of “Chinese army used brutal force to crack down protest”. One screenshot of BBC News website shows a picture of Chinese soldiers wearing medic arm band standing behind an ambulance with the caption of “a heavy military presence in Lhasa”. A YouTube video then shows a slideshow compilation of the materials.

In the UK, an open letter to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been circulated among Chinese students in which the author points out the biased reporting by western media and asks Gordon Brown “not to meet Dalai Lama” when he comes to the UK in May. After the disruption of Olympic flame-lighting ceremony and torch relay in Greece, there are also calls on the message boards to “support the Olympic torch” when it tours through the UK.

Those are highly-educated, well-informed, worldly young generation of Chinese. If even they are suspicious of west’s fairness and motivation, one can imagine the reaction from Chinese public if the west try to boycott or demonstrate publicly during Beijing Olympic to “send a message”. For many Chinese, those actions will be seen as unjust and unfair, a bullying tactics. Moreover, it underlines the mistrust and snobbery towards China among some members of the western activists who see Olympics as a reward given to China for the good behavior, which can be taken away at any time, solely on westerns’ judgment. The freedom and fairness of western media used to be what Chinese people look up to, however, in the recent years, in particularly among the younger generations, west’s sometimes automatic self-entitlement to the moral high ground when dealing with affairs related to China has been seriously questioned.

For many years in the last century, China lived in a sometimes forced, sometimes self-imposed ideological and economical isolation. Now with the rapid growth of economical power, China starts to feel the need to be loved and respected by the international community. What the west can do is to find an effective way to show China how to behave responsibly to order to gain respect and influence. If the western media and pressure groups fall into the old habit of bashing China with the morality stick (while the economy stick is no longer available) every time, it won’t help to convince the Chinese authority to leave their old habit of the siege mentality behind and learn to live under the international spotlight. The problem China has to resolve in Tibet, is a common issue faced by many countries, that is how to deal with the grievance of ethnic minorities and their fear of lose of cultural identity. The west can certainly share some lessons with China, but if they simply want to teach China a lesson, I’m afraid the message won’t be well received.

The problem is novel had not been a highly regarded form of art until the turn of twenty century. In the first half of the last century, when the country suffered never ending civil wars and foreign invasion, writers were often urged to come up with patriotic novels instead of romantic ones. Added into this is the less freedom women enjoyed than their counterparts in the west in this period. So it’s no surprise that there was no Jane Austen kind of figure in early Chinese literature.

But if you don’t mind the gender, Lin Yutang’s (林语堂) Moment in Peking (京华烟云), about a big family in early twenty century Peking (Beijing) is a good read, and it was written in English by the author.

For English readers, some of Eileen Chang’s novels have been translated into English, like Lust, Caution (色戒), Love in the Fallen City (倾城之恋), The Rouge of North (怨女), Written on Water (流言). She also wrote in English such as the novel The Rice Sprout Song. I haven’t seen any English translation of Qiong Yao, Yi Shu, and Zhang Xiaoxian’s novels.

Yiyun Li is at her best conveying the strange sense of alienation and liberation. In the two stories I like the most, Extra and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, the protagonists were all thrown into an unfamiliar situation. Unable to communicate with or without the language barrier, but still trying to understand, the characters at end all manage to find their way out, reaching some kind of inner peace and freedom while the outside world remains largely indifferent and incomprehensible.

What strikes me most in those stories is the freedom gained by using a new language. Being able to, or being forced to use a new language, looks to have the unexpected effect of making one be freed from the inhibitory restraint of the mother tongue, instead of just providing the possibility of make yourself understandable. The author herself once said that she feels using English to write gives her the freedom to better express herself. In A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, we witness Mr Shi’s daughter’s transformation from a distant, silent figure into a vivid, laughing, animated person once she’s on the phone, speaking English. We, as Mr Shi, are astonished.

However this is not uncommon. Many young Chinese who come to live in the west probably have experienced this change twice, first when they started to learn Putonghua (aka Mandarin) in the primary school, which for those not from the north of China is complete different from their local dialect, and then they had to start it all over again with English in the secondary school. For some, it’s restricting and tedious, but for others, it’s liberating to communicate in a new language, with both the fresh vocabulary offered and new social norms coming with the new language.

The scenes of ordinary people’s life in the stories are heartfelt and moving, the stories are often slow-paced yet gripping. The only fault I found is that when the author is too earnest in expressing a moral or political message, or too keen in employing a less subtle metaphor, the story lines sometimes become forced, the characters flat or even silly.

When I was reading the book, I frequently felt the stories perhaps reflect the author’s own experiences, as a person who has explored a different culture and language, gained a new perspective and felt empowered to read more about her previous life. I expect more good work to come from Yiyun Li. Two of the stories from this book, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and The Princess of Nebraska, have been adapted into two movies, both directed by the Chinese American director Wayne Wang. One of them, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers won the Golden Shell Best Film Award in Sen Sabastian Film Festival last year. I’m looking forward to watching those two films too.

But I feel it’s kind of lost the focus a bit at the beginning of the season. And gosh, MI5 is so seriously short of hands. Everyone in the section D has to do everything, even Harry has to kidnap someone, and a retired officer and a noisy journalist have to be called into action. They also seems spending a large amount of screen time trying to save each other. In such genre, it is most interesting and intense when the personal safety and integraty of the protagists are threatened. However when it happens too often, it loses the power of shock, only lookes careless.

Fortunately it’s back to form in episode 6, when Adam and Rose try and fail to stop the handing over of the nuclear bomb trigger on the plane. However in the next episode, when some white extremists hijack the stagged live Question Time type of show, it’s just a bit silly really. The plot has never quite recovered after that I’m afraid, although in the last episode, it comes back, albeit with the old trick - the personal destiny of our protagonists.

Having seen the stranger than fiction reality of the war on terror, and enjoyed many similar shows with twisted plot and morality, the audiences are almost immuned to any kind of horror. By turning to the establishment and to each other, Spooks managed to shock the unshockable once again.