What a Target Rich Environment

Ok, so we've had a bunch of excitement over the weekend. First, and the most disastrous bit of excitement, the hard drive on my laptop crashed. And of course I hadn't done a back up in who knows how long, so a lot of company records, e-mails, etc are history. Not to mention a few photos, etc. Not sure what happened, tried several recovery programs, and was actually starting to get data off the hard drive when it started knocking, jumping around on the desk in it's final death throes.

Good news, I put a much larger hard drive in the laptop, upgraded some software etc. Thing about living where we live, these giant "computer centers" are all over the place, so it was kind of a go out for morning pastry and a hard drive type of deal.

Other news, the weekend typhoon that wasn't. Not sure what's with the weather here in Dongguan, but it's sure missing a lot of chances to rain. Usually by now you can set your watch by the 4:20 thunderstorm, but not this year. Any rain is welcome, lots of streams, lakes and ponds are pretty low.

Now for the commentary on the news.

While we were "down" with the hard drive crash, anti-French sentiment arose to a fever pitch, even in Dongguan. The local Carrefour was even a site of protests for a few days. We of course had to walk by to check it out, being careful not to get too close lest we meet the same fate as the American volunteer in ZhuZhou in Hunan province - News on that from Shanghaiist. In all fairness there seems a bit of a confusion on the whole subject, first the guy was attacked, then not attacked, etc. Either way, numbnutz, you don't go wandering into the middle of a protest in a foreign country.

Here, it seemed more like some bored folks milling around waiting for something to happen, and police running back and forth in front of the store. From our apartment about a block away from the store we could hear the occasional shouts and cheers, and the sirens of the police bus, but from what I can see, it was pretty much a peaceful affair.

Thing is, when you go about insulting the Chinese, and especially the Chinese government, it's a "face" thing. Chinese culture is not one to then get introspective and apologetic, it only drives the Chinese to be more nationalistic. There's an interesting article in The Age out of Australia, by Michael Backman, entitled "The West is Bear-Bating China"

As usual, things here are interesting for us China watchers.

Later

Uncle Bob