The French retail megastore Carrefoure faced a public relations nightmare after three people were trampled to death during a cooking oil sale earlier this month at a Chongqing outlet. The five-liter bottles of oil were marked down 20% for a total savings of about $1.50 per bottle. People began to line up around 4AM and hastily swarmed the racks when the doors opened – three dead and 31 injured were left in the wake. The embarrassing incident prompted Chongqing officials to call for an immediate investigation into supermarket safety standards and their, “arrangement of product displays.” The Carrefoure sales pitch sunk the hook too deep into the consumer’s mouth.

While many pundits attribute this tragedy to substandard store design or base materialism, the heart of it lies in desperation. Over the past year the Chinese state singled out Chongqinq to be a frontrunner in a national campaign to urbanize the interior. Even though government subsidies abound, they do not trickle down to the lower rungs of the social ladder. Chongqinq remains a precarious place to make ends meet. Getting ahold of discounted cooking oil, a bare essential in any Chinese home, thus represents a wish to avoid the privations of winter and not low-minded greed.

In any case, retail outlets continue to attract shoppers in large droves. The economies of scale are too big to resist and dominate the increasingly consumer-oriented mentality of Chinese urbanites. Multinational corporations fall over themselves catering to this acquisitive upsurge. Ikea just built its largest store in the world in Beijing. The garagantun space boasts over four floors of housewares and furniture – everything a new homemaker could possibly imagine. Unfortunately I fall into this category and lined up with the rest to indulge the guilty pleasures of my nesting impulse.

This advertisement keeps popping up in various Beijing subway stations and continues to baffle me. I have no idea what to make of “Quiet + Sprints: In the Primeval Forest Movement.” A better translation might be “Tranquility + Running: Physical Recreation in a Primeval Forest,” but still doesn’t mesh with the enthusiastic boar slayer gloating over his kill. First of all, if companies in China continue to splurge on advertising, they need to start paying the extra cash to drag in some foreigner to see if their moniker MAKES ANY SENSE AT ALL FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Also, this is the first time that I have seen hunting as a leisure activity so prominently marketed. It might not be duck hunting in Alabama or an African shooting safari but certainly establishes financial clout amongst coworkers who can’t afford such an extravagant weekend. This poster will continue to haunt me. Hopefully I can convince a magazine to send me out for an adventurous weekend of quiet and sprinting.

There is no escaping the frigid winter silently creeping in under Beijing’s lofty autumnal skies. Dropping temperatures nip at pedestrians scurrying about in formidable layers of clothing. Aside from hardy members of the Houhai Polar Bear Club, exposing oneself to the elements for more than five consecutive minutes is anathema and, for many, the only solution is to hibernate. Thus the already crammed streets of Beijing bear witness to one of the great shopping frenzies of the year: the annual winter cabbage sale. Massive loads of cabbage are hauled in from the countryside and sold in bulk on streetcorners. For three weeks locals swarm the towering stacks of frayed vegetables to fill out their caches of winter edibles. Thirty heads of oversized cabbage in the cupboard guarantees that one can always cook up a tasty treat without venturing forth into the bitter cold.

The industrious purveyors of this cabbage deluge never rest during the peak purchasing period. After sunset they spread blankets on the ground and watch over their hulking mounds of produce through the night. My neighborhood cabbage dealer usually lives just north of Beijing where he runs a large market garden. A keen salesman, he is quick to offer a cigarette and always sports a billowing navy-blue suit. Apparently he doesn’t mind the three weeks spent on the street even though others complain about the “bitterness” of the whole entrerprise. “This is when I make all my money,” he explained, “it’s fun on the street and my girlfriend loves me when I get home.” Fortunately nearby residents can’t get enough cabbage – a perennial treat for any old hand in Beijing.

Oliver August submitted a great article to Wired on the Chinese state’s imprudent attempts to monitor and filter domestic Internet content. The impractical task continues to disconcert the central government as millions of new users chip away at the “Golden Shield” on a daily basis. Still, nothing can stem the burgeoning flow of digital traffic and desire for unadulterated information access. Adaptive technologies such as proxy servers and encryption constantly spoil attempts to seal outside media from online denizens. The problem will only expand as a younger, tech-savvy generation comes to age. Restricting the Internet only seems to create a stronger urge amongst adolescents to devour the forbidden fruits beyond the “Golden Shield.”

Although this does not mark the eminent demise of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) iron grip on the Chinese state, the CCP is scrambling to revamp their ministry of disinformation (aka The Central Propaganda Department - 中共中央宣传部) and methods of pacifying perturbed social groups. Puppet strings amongst the masses are growing taut and sometimes snapping as the Chinese state loses ground in an increasingly influential online world. Bloggers and journalists now regularly flout bans on reporting events blacklisted by the Chinese state. As the masses continue to grow wary of the Chinese state’s official mouthpieces, they actively seek out alternative media outlets both at home and abroad. Even though only a tenth of China’s massive 1.3 billion population consistently access the Internet, these numbers are rising just as fast as China’s breakneck GDP growth.

The greatest hope for this information revolution subsists in the Chinese state’s reliance on new communication technologies to drive economic expansion. They cannot simply unplug the masses. While Burma cut the Internet with ease during recent pro-democracy protests, the Chinese State would bring untold ruin to markets that increasingly depend on the Internet to drive business and communication. It would also represent a massive step backward in desperate attempts to present a polished facade for the world during the Olympics. In any case, the future political battlefield will certainly take place online where everyone can have an equal stake much to the CCP’s dismay.

Link: The Great Firewall: China’s Misguided — and Futile — Attempt to Control What Happens Online

Hedgehog is the band to trump in Beijing these days. Putting on raucous shows around the city, their energetic beats and skilled instrumental work attract larger and larger crowds every week. Atom, the petite but boisterous drummer for the outfit, stole the show at D-22 last Friday – she also walked off stage with a piece of my heart. Hopefully this wave of success can inspire them to new musical heights. Even as they fluidly move through sets and work crowds with increasing confidence, everyone is expecting bigger and better things. Their talent tickles the fancy of having an underground indie group break through the pop-dominated music mainstream in China and reach a broader fan base. Such a class act would be playing to packed venues across the country in the United States and deserves similar status here. Hedgehog may be one of the first in a wave of alternative rock to push the limits of China’s bland music taste.