David BK Tan’s Post

𝑨 𝒇𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒎𝒂𝒏'𝒔 𝒅𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎 𝒏𝒆𝒂𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒍𝒅 𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎 寒溪渔梦 Today's #ImagesOfChina takes a look at 武汉沙湖公园 i.e. Wuhan Sahu Park, and Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province. Sahu Park is located in the central activity area of Wuchang (武昌) district in Wuhan, between Zhongbei Road (中北路) and Youyi Avenue (友谊大道). It is the second largest "city lake" (城中湖) in Wuhan after its East Lake (东湖）, and an important node in the construction of the ecological water network of the "Great East Lake" （大东湖）. The total land area of Sahu Lake Park is about 377 hectares, of which the current land area is about 87 hectares and the water surface is about 290 hectares. The structure of Sahu Park could be outlined as “一桥、一堤、三片、十景” i.e. ⭐ 一桥 (One Bridge) - 沙湖大桥 (Sahu Bridge) ⭐一堤 (One Embarkment) - 琴堤 Qinti (Bowed-string instrument-Embarkment). This is because it looks like Huqin 胡琴，a traditional Chinese bow-string instrument from afar. ⭐三片 (Three stylish areas) - categorised as 原朴 (original) 、古典 (classical) and 现代 (modern). ⭐十景 (Ten Sceneries) - 泉亭松韵、琴堤水月、东山残碣、雁桥秋影、兰岭香风、石壁龙湫、雁山晨钟、寒溪渔梦、沙湖放棹、鸥岛浴波 The names of the sceneries are crafted in such a way that would evoke the reader's interest due to the interesting Chinese name chosen. For example, for 寒溪渔梦 i.e. "a fisherman's dream near the cold stream", there is a story behind this name as it involved the Deputy Prime Minister 副宰相 Feng Jing (冯京) during the time Northern Song dynasty. Feng was born in Wuhan and he was playful and did not study hard during his teenage years. One day, he drank some wine and fell asleep in the underbrush near a stream near Sahu. On that day, a fisherman had completed his arduous work and docked his boat in the stream, and started to fall sleep after a day's hard work, He then dreamt that a fierce soldier questioning him why he was sleeping there as he was disturbing the nobleman Feng. When the fisherman awakened, he decided to look around for nobleman Feng and he came across Feng Jing and told him the dream. Feng Jing was convinced that he had the blessing of some divine force and so decided to study hard, and he managed to score first during the Imperial Examination. Below are some beautiful pictures depicting Wuhan Sahu Park. Pics Credit : Pic 1 (see footer), Pic 2-6 (中新网） 🔗#david_tbk_china ➽ #China posts #chineseculture #translation #mandarin #chineselanguage

𝗧𝗼𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝗠𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗙𝗹𝗲𝗲 Yesterday (Jul 8) #Alipay announced the pilot launch of "碰一下“ (see pic1, which I would translate as Touch Once) function for its mobile payment at the checkout counter at six cities (Shanghai, Chengdu, Wuhan, Changsha, Hangzhou, Fuzhou) and so I thought of comparing such services btw China and #Singapore. I would regard this improvement as "incremental innovation" over the current "扫一下“ (Scan Once, pic 3) function and it shows that Chinese economy is market-oriented as competition is keen and so innovation is required to keep one ahead of its competitors. So if you think that China is a central planned economy by virtue that it is a communist country, think again. Singapore's common mode of mobile payment (pic 2) is to open up a payment app and scan the QR code of the merchant, and to key in the amount for payment. This is of course not a neat solution and there are times the payor keys in the wrong amount. It does highlight that Singapore lacks a super-app which allows a unique "Personal QR code" to denote the payor and not the merchant-centric approach now. Some e-wallets do generate "Personal QR code" but you need the platform of a super-app to generate the humongous volume so that it becomes cost effective for merchants to jump on board. In the case of Alipay, it charges abt 0.55% for merchant fee and it could do so because Alipay is a super-app which allows the Chinese consumer to pay for ride-hailing, food delivery, financial services etc, besides the payment at the checkout counters. The massive transaction volume arising from many services it is providing to its subscribers means that it could lower the transaction fees compared to the credit card companies. So what are the advantages of "碰一下“ when compared to "扫一下“ ? "扫一下“ reads the "Personal QR code" and so you do not need to key in the money amount like in the case of Singapore. In the case of "碰一下“ , it uses Near Field Communication (NFC) technology which is a set of short-range wireless technologies that typically requiring a distance of 4 cm or less to initiate a connection. So one just needs to touch the NFC region of the merchant's payment device with his mobile phone for payment purpose. There is an authentication step that locks the mobile phone before you can use "碰一下“. This compares to the three-step payment procedure using "扫一下“ ： i. Locate the Alipay icon on your mobile phone. ii. Open it and retrieve the "Personal QR Code". iii. Bring the mobile phone near to the merchant's payment device for it to scan the "Personal QR code" generated by Alipay.. So it is very convenient to use 碰一下 and also very secured since if you lose your mobile phone, then the person who picks up your phone would just use the "扫一下" function if there is no auto-lock function enabled. 🔗#david_tbk_china ➽ #China posts #chinesetech #epayment #alibaba

𝐓𝐚𝐢𝐰𝐚𝐧, 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐦𝐞 (𝟏) Recently China’s ambassador to France, Lu Shaye 卢沙野, openly referred to Taiwan as 叛乱政权 (pic 1) i.e. renegade regime during a speech in France, which caused a furore in Taiwan. I see that not many media (including Chinese media) are reporting on this matter, and even those who did translated 叛乱政权 as rebel regime, and so I would explain why I translated 叛乱 as renegade here. I think this is the first time a senior Chinese diplomat spoke so bluntly abt the current Taiwan issue by referring to the unfinished business of the civil war btw the communists & Kuomingtang (KMT), and thought of explaining the significance of his speech from my POV. Of course, if you have looked at #Taiwan's history, it was returned to Republic of China (ROC) after the defeat of Japan during WW2 in 1945. Thus Taiwan was part of ROC in 1948 as seen in the Chinese official map (pic 2) and the China map stored in the US Library of Congress (pic 3). Hence there is not an iota of doubt that during the civil war which ended in 1949, the communists could not proclaim as the victor without Taiwan returning to the fold and Ambassador Lu was stating a fact that Taiwan is an unsolved issue arising from the civil war. But one might wonder why would Lu bring up such a fact now? My take is that all the while PRC has emphasised the "1992 Consensus 九二共识" which de-emphasise the civil war as it opens to the possibility of peaceful reunification. What is 1992 Consensus? It was a 1992 consensus reached in a 1992 meeting held between PRC & Taiwan which created a diplomatic basis for semi-official cross-strait exchanges which began in the early 1990s, and a precondition set by the PRC for engaging in cross-strait dialogue. Both China and Taiwan agreed that there is a "One China" then but Taiwan had its own interpretation. China's take on "One China" is 海峡两岸均坚持同属一个中国，共同努力谋求国家统一 i.e. "Both sides of the Taiwan Strait insist on belonging to one China and work together to seek national reunification" but Taiwan has rejected this meaning even in the case of KMT which has always adopted "unification stand". IMO, 1992 Consensus gave PRC a breather to develop its economy and thus beef up its military over time by putting the Taiwan issue on the back-burner, and also allowed Taiwanese businesses to invest in China without worrying abt the reunification issue. But because all DPP govt have refused to accept the 1992 Consensus, so it means that the "One China" understanding in 1992 Consensus is no longer applicable to PRC, and so the Taiwan issue would have to return to its original root - Taiwan is occupied by the enemy of PRC as the civil war has not actually ended. So Taiwan is being viewed as a renegade regime by rejecting the "One China" principle agreed by both sides during the 1992 Consensus since a renegade is defined as a person who betrays a set of principles (One China in this case). 🔗#david_tbk_china ➽ #China posts

𝑾𝒂 𝒈𝒂 𝒍𝒊 𝒈𝒐𝒏 。。。 [Linguistically, dialects are variants of a single language, of which when spoken by different dialect speakers, would still be mutually intelligible. British, American and Australian English can be considered dialects of English, because speakers of these dialects would sound different, but still can comprehend one another. We certainly cannot say the same for Hokkien and Cantonese speakers. In fact, Hokkien and Cantonese belong to different language families. Labelling these languages “dialects” cements their status as a “non-language”.] Dr Tan Ying Ying, linguist at Nanyang Technological University, link to article in the comments) === I think there is a wrong classification of southern languages of China like Hokkien (which shd be southern Fujian language i.e. Minnanyu 闽南语) and Cantonese as Chinese #dialects because they are very different languages when compared to China's Putonghua. In fact, such languages are known as 方言 in Mandarin which is the abbreviation of 地方语言 i.e. language 语言 of a place 地方. Examples of dialects are Teochew & Taiwan's Taiyu (台语）as they belong to the Minnanyu language family. This is why most Teochew speakers could understand Hokkien speakers in general & vice versa. Because Qin Shi Huang standardised the written characters, so the ancient Chinese characters were developed not in synchronisation with the vernacular language (口语）, and this created problems for southern languages. This is because the written language was used mainly by the educated but the vernacular language was for the masses including the uneducated, & thus the May 4 movement sought to make the Chinese language more vernacular in its written form. But because the ancient written language (官话) was used by the Chinese residing in the most of northern and southwestern China, and so the non-synchronisation issue was not serious. But the vernacular languages of the southern Chinese have sounds that are different from 官话 , and so you might not find Chinese characters that would correspond to the sounds and so the written form of to capture 方言 faces challenges. An example is highlighted below. Below post is by popular Chinese actor Li Xian 李现 in promoting Quanzhou city of southern Fujian for domestic tourism by uttering the Minnanyu 哇嘎哩共，泉州甲水. And if you refer to its pinyin i.e. "wa ga li gong, quan zhou jia sui", there are problems with four characters 共泉州甲 as they shd be pronounced as "𝘸𝘢 𝘨𝘢 𝘭𝘪 𝘨𝘰𝘯, 𝘵𝘴𝘶𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘶 𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘬 𝘴𝘶𝘪" but you cannot find approximation of these four sounds in #Mandarin. This is why it is difficult for young Singaporeans to learn 方言 as they have to learn the written form since they do not communicate in it since young. I can speak Hokkien because it is my mother tongue, and so the sounds stay with me for life even though I was not taught the written form. Btw, what does 哇嘎哩共，泉州甲水 mean? Answer is in the comments. 🔗#david_tbk_china ➽ #China posts #Singapore

𝑨 𝒇𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒓 𝒃𝒐𝒓𝒏 𝒐𝒇 𝒂 𝒃𝒊𝒓𝒅'𝒔 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒅 Entering May in every year, Hubei's Shennongjia 神农架 would usher in the blooming period of alpine "azalea杜鹃花“ , which would add infinite vitality to the mountains, rivers and ravines. Shennongjia enjoys the reputation of ‘the hometown of azalea’, and based on the botany nomenclature classification, its azalea family has seven genera and 35 species, and has about 150 million plants. This makes Shennongjia the most concentrated azalea source in Central China, the most primitive status for its azalea, and the most native azalea forests in the region. Due to the difference in altitude, the azalea blooming period in Shennongjia area lasts for more than 3 months, and it opens most abundantly in May, which is the best time for tourists to enjoy the azalea. Below pictures (credited to 中新网） depict the enchanting flowers at Shennongjia. 🅓🅞 🅨🅞🅤 🅚🅝🅞🅦... There is a bird called 杜鹃鸟 i.e. cuckoo bird first before we had 杜鹃花. Hence there is a radical 鸟 (bird) in the Chinese character 鹃 in the name of the flower. Legend has it in ancient China, the cuckoo bird was wailing on a tree and only stopped when blood came out. The blood stained the flowers under the tree, and the flower became known as 杜鹃花. 🔗#david_tbk_china ➽ #China posts #chineseculture #translation #mandarin #chineselanguage #chinaplacesofinterest

𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗿𝘆 (𝗶𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮 𝗧𝗮𝗶𝘄𝗮𝗻𝗲𝘀𝗲)❟ 𝗕𝗲 𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝘆 Was a bit surprised when I came across the post on the Facebook page of a Singapore media as it screams "China tells Taiwanese to visit in high spirits, despite 𝒆𝒙𝒆𝒄𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒕". This is because if you have read the news and understood it, it is a 𝒋𝒖𝒅𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒂𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒐𝒏 意见 on why hardcore Taiwanese independence activist “台独”顽固分子" have to be prosecuted by China. What is a judiciary opinion? A judicial opinion is a “statement of reasons explaining why and how the decision was reached and providing the authorities upon which the decision relies". So in this case, the public notice is 《关于依法惩治“台独”顽固分子分裂国家、煽动分裂国家犯罪的意见》which I would translate as "Judicial Opinion on punishing the offences committed by hardcore Taiwan independence activists (HTIA) in accordance with the law on the offences of secession and incitement to secession". So it spells out clearly that HTIA are like "wanted criminals" and will be prosecuted when arrested, as previously the anti-secession laws are unclear on the prosecution part. Actually when it was announced, the committee involved explained that even though no TCIA was represented for trial that is usually required for judicial opinion to take place, but the opinion is still legal-binding. I think this is similar to the recent case of two Singapore ministers suing the brother of the ex-Prime Minister for defamation but because he was absent, the trial went ahead nevertheless and judicial opinion was meted out eventually. Actually there is a list of HTIA which has only 10 people (see comments), and the key issue is there are guidelines to define "hardcore" as a Taiwanese could proclaim himself as an independence activist, but if you are not very influential, then the Chinese authority is not interested in you at all. So it is safe for Taiwanese to travel to China as long as their names are not on the list. So trying to imply every Taiwanese faces "death threat" when visiting China is nonsensical. Current Taiwanese President is not on the list (yet), but the Vice President is. Actually I think the judicial opinion prepares for the quickened pace of reunification. Also, there seems a grey area whether the HTIA could be arrested if they visit the countries that have declared clearly that Taiwan is a part of China. Would probably write on these two topics later, so stay tuned. 🔗#david_tbk_china ➽ #China posts #chineseculture #translation #mandarin #chineselanguage #taiwan

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗮 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 (𝟭) I recently wrote abt the inspiring "Cinderella" story of how a vocational high school student, Jiang Ping, beat many of the best brains in maths in the qualifying round of 2024 Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition, and after the euphoria of her success, the doubters came rushing in. I was initially excited abt her because I had encounters with a maths genius when I was at the university, and I had come to admire people who could tackle pure maths problems like mathematical logic effortlessly. Hence I was glad that a maths genius could emerge from a vocational high school which is generally considered as a trope for students who are not smart, and thought that Jiang could prove people wrong as she could be a late bloomer. But when I read the brilliant analysis by Prof Yuan Xinyi 袁新意 of Peking University yesterday, I was convinced that her success was staged and thought of probing further. Alibaba had earlier interviewed her and in the video, she was seen to solve the maths problem by writing on the blackboard (see below). I took a look at it and to my horror, there are some very glaring errors even for me who was not a maths major. For e.g., ∑ (sigma which is a summation sign) was wrongly written as /2 in a few cases and it is a "cardinal sin" IMO if one is truly a maths genius. Also, you could see that ∑ has -1 value on top and 0 at the bottom, and this violates the principle that the top value must be bigger than the bottom. The only conclusion I have is that she does not know what it means and the answer was not hers as possibly the notebook belonged to someone, and the handwriting was bad and so she misread it. Actually I believe this fiasco (assuming the cheating is true) should not have happened as Alibaba could have got one of its judges to interview her first before releasing the results. This is because her school and age were incongruent with the others (prestigious universities, undergrad/grad students, PhD holders etc) and so it does appear to me that Alibaba is trying to create "eyeballs" as many people would not pay attention to a global maths competition that involve questions that they themselves do not even understand in the first place. At the end of the day, Alibaba could have feigned innocence as the rules do specify that cheating is forbidden. In the next post, I would highlight how the cheating could have happened as there are some loopholes in the qualifying round of the competition. 🔗#david_tbk_china ➽ #China posts #chineseculture #chineseinternet #alibaba #maths

𝓖𝓸𝓷𝓮 𝓣𝓸𝓸 𝓢𝓸𝓸𝓷 Today the name Zhang Yingying 章莹颖 became the top 2 searches on the Chinese weibo and I felt a tinge of sadness as I remember her tragic happening. She went to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) as a visiting scholar with an aim to do a PhD in 2017 but a white psychopath masqueraded as a policeman to help her by offering her transport as she was late to sign a leasing agreement, and she was very naïve to believe the words of a stranger in a foreign land. She was missing for a few weeks but finally we know that she was raped, killed and beheaded, and the body cut into a few parts and discarded as trash, and so the remains of her have not been found even now. The psychopath refused to disclose the whereabout of her remains initially during the investigation and so it is impossible to locate them without incurring large costs and also possible environmental impact as they were buried in a landfill. It came as a shock to me when I read the news initially as this psychopath was a master graduate in physics from UIUC, and so he not only destroyed his future but also the future of a Chinese woman who was born into a very ordinary family but would have helped her parents who are retired now. Because the parents spent a huge sum of money to search for her daughter when she was missing in the US initially, and so they are in dire straits in their retirement, and so the hashtag #章莹颖父母现状 i.e. "the current situation of Zhang Yingying's parents" is to highlight their plight now. Actually if you have studied this case, you would realise that the psychopath was doing drugs and so he yearned to be a serial killer as his mind had become unsound by consuming drugs. Actually Chinese have this saying 物必先���，而后虫生 i.e. the worms can only grow in something that is already rotten. Throughout Chinese history, the dynasties had their own domestic problems that led to its drastic decline first before invaders had the chance to annex China, and IMO it applies to the US too. I think China is not the danger the US is facing but its domestic problems like the serious drug problem which has destroyed many families and could even cause anguish to foreigners like Zhang Yingying's family, relatives and friends. Making China the bogeyman would not solve the domestic problems at all. 🔗#david_tbk_china ➽ #China posts #uschina

(𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥) 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐠𝐨 𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 Recently the news of the supposed expiry of "petrodollar deal" btw Saudi Arabia and the US was discussed actively on the social media, but IMO the real McCoy is Saudi Arabia joining mBridge, a cross border Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) project. Actually I am unsure whether a deal existed at all since Saudi Arabia signed a 50 billion yuan currency-swap agreement with China in Nov 2023, and so it could have sold oil to China since then and not wait till June this year which was reported as the end of the 50-year "petrodollar" deal. But because of the spotlight on this "petrodollar deal", mBridge was ignored largely but IMO this is very significant news. This is because Saudi Arabia did not join the project which started in 2021 initially, and so I believe there are some immediate needs for it to join mBridge. Actually based on my observations on China so far, there seems to be a quickened pace to reunify with Taiwan and so mBridge is more like a substitute for SWIFT, the main messaging network through which international payments are initiated. If there is no mBridge, there is a possibility that the US would ban some major Chinese banks from using SWIFT when reunification happens (some Russian banks were banned due to the Russo-Ukraine war), and so mBridge assures that oil transactions btw Saudi Arabia and China would still be conducted without SWIFT. Would the US kick China out from SWIFT network? Quite unlikely as US needs China to buy its agricultural produce like wheat and now with mBridge, it would quicken de-dollarisation if that happens. I actually did a study on mBridge in 2021 (see pic 3) due to my interest/background in e-commerce, and I concluded that Indirect CDBC model was adopted i.e. intermediaries like commercial banks would be required as Central Bank would not handle all the transactions. I took a look at the mBridge trial currently (pic 1) and indeed it confirms the Indirect CDBC model is adopted, and I did the translation of the operations in pic 2. IMO CDBC is another disruptive innovation for payment intermediaries and I highlighted why in the 2021 LI post, and its link could be found the comments. 🔗#david_tbk_china ➽ #China posts #chinesetechology #translation #mandarin #chineselanguage #cdbc #digitalcurrency

𝑻𝒉𝒆 "𝑫𝒊𝒔𝒓𝒖𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔" 𝒃𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒃𝒚 𝑯𝒂𝒓𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒚 𝑶𝑺 The news that Huawei's upgraded Harmony OS, which is named Harmony OS Next (HOSN), will go into commercial rollout in Q4 this year caught my attention. Huawei announced the news during Huawei Developer Conference yesterday (21 Jun). The significance of the news is that HOSN will cut ties with Android as it will not support Android anymore since HOS currently still support Android apps. The decision came about because Harmony has beaten iOS of Apple in the Chinese market share of OS (operating system) of the mobile phones i.e. 18% vs Apple's 15%. In other words, HOSN will compete head-on with Android for market share of the OS of the mobile phone. I took a look at the devices that will be installed with HOSN (see below pic) and it includes notebook PC as well. So Harmony OS has started to fulfil its promise of as an all-device ecology that connects multiple devices and multiple scenarios. Actually if we are talking about IoT (Internet of Things), then one major issue is how to connect different devices seamlessly and operate quickly which are running on different OS as interoperability, security etc are key challenges. So HOSN is just like the Chinese EV as it is very scalable since it could be deployed as an OS for mobile phones, PC etc. In other words, there is no legacy problem faced by Chinese companies (just like EV) as they are late movers to the markets. Of course, the rolling out of HOSN for notebook PC would also mean Windows OS would be cannibalised by it. Huawei has its own office suite that could read/convert MS office documents and so it does pose challenge to the market shares of MS Office in China too. How is IoT useful for Huawei OS? One example is that Huawei has also developed its Harmony OS for EV and so one could also use a mobile phone that is installed with Harmony OS to locate the whereabout of the vehicle in the carpark, lock the vehicle if you suspect it has been stolen etc. Of course, Huawei still faces the problems of getting users outside China to switch to its mobile phone given that the US has banned popular apps like Google suite to be installed on its phones. But IoT is really Huawei's future i.e. its prized asset which could bring strong revenues to the company globally as it is one step ahead of its peers. 🔗#david_tbk_china ➽ #China posts #chinesetech #iot #huawei