At Nankai, the Best Teachers are all Administrators

Recently, Nankai University(南开大学) announced that they are honoring ten professors in the school as the best teachers of the year.

A curious netter took a look of the list and reported on New Thread that everyone on the list is either the Dean, Associated Dean, or head of their department. Apparently, administrators can really teach in this school.

Artistic License Running Amok

The biggest forgery committed during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was apparently with a direct order from a member of the Politburo.

Hijacking The Albert Einstein Award

A couple of weeks ago, a netter reported on New Thread that a suspiciously large number of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners are claiming themselves to be recipients of an "Albert Einstein World Award of Science". Indeed, a simple google search on the "Albert Einstein World Award of Science" in Chinese ("阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦世界科学奖") yielded many such claims:

1985: Zhu Renkan (朱仁康)
1987: Liu QiuFang (刘猷枋)
1987: Tu Youyou (屠呦呦)
1988: Yu Guiqing (余桂清)
1988: Tang Youzhi (唐由之)
1989: Xie Zongwan (谢宗万)
1989: Chen Keji (陈可冀)
1990: Cheng Xinnong (程莘农)

Among them, Chen Keji and Cheng Xinnong are academicians in the Chinese Academy of Science and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, respectively. There are also indications that more people had received this award, all of whom are TCM practioners in the Academy of TCM.

The Albert Einstein World Award of Science is a prestigous award given out annually by The World Cultural Council headquartered in Mexico. A list of its recipents are available on their web site. None of the above names existed.

Fang Zhouzi recently wrote to the World Cultural Council for an inquiry, and received the following reply from its General Secretary, which he posted on New Thread:

（Certainly, there is a misunderstanding regarding this situation. I have already checked, all these people were candidates nominated for the Albert Einstein Award in the respective mentioned years. But none of them got the Award.

I have checked our records and found that, the Council has sent them by post mail in those days, a diploma recognizing their participation as candidates to the Albert Einstein Award in the respective years. I would like to inform you that the winners must receive the Award in person at the Award Ceremony, the Award consist of a Medal a diploma and a cheque.）

Apparently, these distinguished TCM practitioners, including our Academicians, had mistaken a receipt of acknowledgment as an actual award, never mind that they had never received any medal or check.

Another Video of a Staged Donation

After the snuffle at CCTV, another video of a donation drive in a high school in Guangdong is circulating the internet. In the video, school officials were seen to repeatedly taking out cash that was just dropped in the donation box and distributing them to students who then took turns to donate the same cash:



As outrage mounted, officials from the school quickly issued a statement. They explained that the actual donation had already happened a day earlier, without the presence of any camera. When local reporters learned about the donation drive, they requested a repeat performance so they could get some footage. Thus born the "recycling" donation.

It appears that such staged-for-camera events are pretty common among journalists in China.

CCTV Stages Fake Donation

In a segment on CCTV, reporting Olympic torch bearers making donation for the earthquake disaster, it can be clearly seen that nobody made any actual donation:


It would be too cynical to think these people faking donation on their own. Most likely, it was a staged scene, very badly done.

The Making Of A Presidential Paper

The Journal of Shanghai Jiaotong University (上海交通大学学报) published an article titled "Reflections on Energy Issues in China" in its most recent issue. From the look of it, it is just like any other academic paper published in the journal, with an abstract (both in Chinese and English), key words, lots of data, figures, footnotes, and references. There was only one thing missing, however, the author only provided a name. There was neither a byline for the author's institute nor any contact information for the author.

The author's name was Jiang Zemin. It should be widely recognizable throughout the country. He is the ex-President of the People's Republic of China. The 81-year old Jiang is also a proud alumnus of the Shanghai Jiaotong University.

In an subsequent article, an editor of the Journal, Gong Hanzhong (龚汉忠), recalled how this "special" paper was published.

Near the end of 2007, at the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Jiang's graduation from the school, school leaders contacted Jiang and asked him to write something for the school journal. It would also make a special presentation to the 112nd anniversary of the school itself this April. Jiang agreed and submitted his paper to the Journal at the end of February.

According to Gong, the editors at the Journal immediately went into a frenzy of excitement. They worked past midnight the night they received the paper and thought the paper was extremely significant and special. In subsequent days, Gong said the editors burned midnight oil for many nights. They made many revisions and produced five or six versions of the manuscript.

There was also no mention of any peer-review process for this manuscript. Although Gong emphasized that the editors were strict and thorough and produced records showing their editorial marks, the only example he gave was that they changed the term "carbon-dioxide" from its Chinese name to the format of the Journal convention.

It is of course impossible to verify whether Jiang actually authored the paper itself. But Gong indicated that, during the revision process, they received galleys full of Jiang's own handwritings.

Meanwhile, immediately after the publication of the paper, the National Energy Bureau organized a study session for the paper. The attendants include all the "heavy weights" of the nation's energy community.

Beijing Olympics Steals Games

Well, not the Games.

The official Beijing Olympic web site is being accused of stealing fun Flash games. According to the author of the original game, who emphatically stated that "The Olympics stole my game":

They downloaded the swf file from my site, decompiled it, swapped out the little guy for the Fuwa characters, took my name off of it and republished it as their own. I can tell this is what happened because they are still using some of my original art from Snow Day (the clouds and the ice cube are exactly the same). I also took the liberty of decompiling their game and actually found it still contains the sound files from Snow Day, even though they aren’t being used in the Olympic version. It even still has the splash sound effect from The Lake (I used the engine from The Lake to make Snow Day and must have forgot to delete this file).

Two of the other games on the Olympic site are obvious rip-offs of Ferry Halim’s Orisinal games. Compare Obstacle Race on the Olympic site with Ferry’s adorable Arctic Blue, and Leap and Leap, a clumsy copy of Winter Bells. I can’t really tell if these are clones or reskinned versions of Ferry’s files, but those stars in Leap and Leap look pretty damn similar to me.

The author is sending cease and desist letters to Sohu, which created the site for Beijing Olympics, and the organization committee.

Potty-Mouth Professor Ends His Diatribe

Ji Guangmao (季广茂) is a Professor of Chinese at Beijing Normal University (北师大). Like any other professor, he publishes articles and books and writes a blog on his research and life. But for the past three months or so, he suddenly became very famous for reasons unlike any other.

It was in the November of 2007, the Literature & Art Studies (文艺批评) journal published a review article that was highly critical to one of Ji's books.

The criticism must have stricken a chord in Ji's heart. In an immediate response, Professor Ji published a provoking article in his blog on December 5. He characterized the review article as a vicious attack and the author a "beast" (畜生), an extremely degradative term in Chinese. What's more, he declared that he would become a beast himself, so that he could fight against the attacker at the same level!

And he was not kidding. From that day forward, he published numerous articles in his blog attacking the author of the review article, filled with juvenile dirty words. His behavior was so shocking and bizarre, he became known as the "A-hole Professor" on the internet.

It last for more than 80 days. On February 25, however, Professor Ji apparently came back to his senses. He deleted most of the offending articles from his blog and apologized for his behavior, which in his own words had tarnished the image of his profession and school. His school and department expressed relief. There was no word on any penalties he may face.

Xinhua Apologizes For Fake Photo

Thus reports the Wall Street Journal.

Farming Graduate Students for Personal Income?

It is reported on New Threads that the dean of the College of Bioengineering at East China University of Science and Technology (华东理工大学), Professor Wei Dongzhi (魏东芝), has been advising 47 Ph. D. students and 19.5 Masters students during the school year of 2005-2006. That is, during that school year, he is advising 66.5 graduate students at the same time.

Apparently his hard-working is well rewarded. This information is obtained from a listings of the college's compensation calculations. For guiding so many graduate students, Wei received 15.53 points in this job category, which translated to 45,037 RMB ($6,000) in personal income.

Other professors in the same college are not as proficient as Wei. The professor who had the second highest points in this category only received 5.73 points, for advising 13.5 Ph.D. students and 15 Masters students.

A Revival of Kowtow

In ancient China, the ultimate respect to one's superior is demonstrated by the protocol of Kowtow (磕头), whereupon one kneels down in front of the superior so that his feet, knees, and hands are all on the ground. He then touches his forehead to the ground multiple times. In extreme cases, how loud one can make the noise by smashing his forehead to the ground is a measurement of his respect, leading to many injuries. The practice was rigorously carried out by generations when men meet the emperors, parents/grandparents, and teachers.

Thankfully, this notorious protocol, along with many others, were abolished during the 1911 revolution and the subsequent modernization of China.

But things are changing these days and not all is for the better. Last Fall, hundreds of students practicing the "Crazy English" staged a public kowtow demonstration to thank their teacher.

Even more bizarre, though, is a display last week on the official television station, CCTV, in which a university professor performed a genuine kowtow to express his appreciation of his old teacher:


The one who did the kowtow is Qian WenZhong (钱文忠), a forty-one year old Professor of History at Fudan University. Qian is supposed to be the last student of Ji Xianlin (季羡林), the receiver of the kowtow. Professor Ji is close to 100 years old. He had spent his career, most of which in Peking University, studying ancient languages such as Sanskrit, as well as the religious and history aspects associated with the language.

In more recent years, Ji somehow gained the public title of a Master of Chinese Scholarship (国学大师) and became the figurehead of everything traditional Chinese. It's one thing to pay due respect to such a senior scholar. But do we need to go so far as to kowtow?