漂亮

A large contingent of migrant workers is constructing a new building near the law school. Every day, Katie gets more than a few stares from them, both because of her red hair and because of her looks. Today in particular some workers saw Katie as she biked by, and yelled, "漂亮！"( "Piao liang!", or Beautiful!) One would think that this event was symptomatic of an international behavioral standard among construction workers, that of cat-calling, but it's a bit more complicated than that.

We know this because about two weeks earlier, we got on the elevator with a neighbor and her seventy-something mother. Grandma took one look at Katie and said the same thing, "漂亮!" So, I like to think that our provincial friends near the law school were being complementary and not saucy, given the linguistic choices. And I whole-heartedly agree with them.

But I digress. In business news, the NYT once again uncovered safety problems in China, in particular some lagging concerns with regards to the manufacturing of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, or "APIs." To me, the discovery is notable not because of what it says about product safety standards in China, but more so because of the continuing role that the American media will play in forcing the Chinese government to "internalize the externalities." Indeed, it would seem that the continuing game of "hit 'em in the pocket book" may be having an effect, as this article, this article, and this article seem to demonstrate. I hope it's not just lip service, but we shall see.

In censorship news, Wired has a good article on the GFW, as well as some tips on how to defeat it. Also, Blogspot.com is once again inaccessible, but YouTube is back up. (So, I am pleased to once again be able to view videos of skateboarding bulldogs.) Some of the blocking tools have also become more sophisticated, in that a certain German website I use to access verboten content fails to work when I try to access certain URLs. I have a feeling that they're no longer just blocking website addresses, but also sniffing query variables that are appended to webpage requests.

Tomorrow, we have a midterm in Chinese language. 在见！