I have promised to keep a close eye at the nonsense she likes to write for this renowned Dutch newspaper as long as she refuses to place my comments.

She tends to write her articles with placing some terms in them where she probably hopes that her readers think of her as a very intelligent human being who knows so much about China. Although the stories she writes can be nice for someone who would like to read a bit more background information about every-day-life in China, I am of the opinion that since those stories are published in a Dutch newspaper, they have to resemble the truth!

Yesterday Bettine Vriesekoop once again placed an article without really researching the details and I find this very disturbing. The article was about a visit to the harbor city of Qingdao where currently the 60 year anniversary of the Chinese navy is celebrated.

In a little bit of background information she writes that the name of the famous Qingdao beer – Tsingtao – is based upon the old Wade-Giles transcription system.

Well that is nice to know for the ignorant reader, however it is COMPLETELY WRONG!
As you can easily find out on Brittanica, according to the Wade-Giles system the qing-part of qingdao is not tsing but ch’ing and therefore the pinyin qingdao according to Wade-Giles is ch’ingtao.

Wikimedia Commons clearly says:

Qingdao is well-known to the West by its Postal System Pinyin transliteration Tsingtao.

Furthermore she states in her article that

De snelle modernisering van de marine is overduidelijk gericht op het beschermen van Chinese oliebelangen in de Stille Oceaan en de Golf van Aden waar zich belangrijke doorvoerroutes bevinden.

Translation: The rapid modernisation of the navy is clearly aimed at protecting Chinese oil interests in the Pacific and the Gulf of Aden where there are important transport routes.

Actually the Pacific is a very big pool of water where the Chinese do not have any oil interests en where there is hardly any transport of oil. That is not necessary because almost all oil is transported from The Persian Gulf via the other side of Yemen, rounding India to China.

Other routes of transport are from Venezuela over the Atlantic Ocean to Cape of Good Hope and then through the Indian Ocean to China.

Also the tankers seldom sail under the Chinese flag, the Chinese purchase the oil and the seller has to deliver it to China. The Chinese do not have a fleet of supertankers and they do not need one, because they do not export oil.

The trade routes of container ships to Europe and North Africa are important to the Chinese. Otherwise they have to sail around Cape of Good Hope, something that obviously cost a lot more money compared than the Suez Canal which in turn would have a negative effect on the competitive position. And then there is of course the whole issue with the Somalian pirates…

Something that Bettine forgets to mention is that the Chinese want a strong navy and a strong army and that the military will always try to maintain itself and argue for reasons for expansion and modernisation.

Bettine, how ignorant do you think your readers really are and how long do you plan to keep writing your nonsense?

Below my response to Bettine Vriesekoop’s article that once again has been censured.
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A couple of years ago I already written about an instance of blog censuring, but now it seems I am totally banned from her blog.

Last week part of the CCTV complex, the Televison Cultural Center Hotel, in Beijing designed by Rem Koolhaas of OMA caught fire and burnt out completely, probably due to an illegal fireworks show hosted by no one less than CCTV themselves.

Of course the story got some media attention and Bettine found it newsworthy enough to write about it on her blog. However the title she gave the article “Fire in Guo Mao” was remarkably weird in my eyes. After all the fire was in the building next to the CCTV Tower, which – although relatively close to Guo Mao (The World Trade Center) – is a complex by itself.

Therefore I decided to leave a short response to the article. My response was “Wat is precies de reden om dit artikel de titel ‚Äö√Ñ√∫Brand in Guo Mao‚Äö√Ñ√π te geven?”, translated into English: “What is the reason to give this article the title ‘fire in Guo Mao’?”

On the screenshot below you can see that my response still has to be approved, fat chance that that will ever happen…

I am really wondering why my responses are not published! I already once tried sending an email to the newspaper, but also on that I did not receive any reply. I know from a friend of mine in Beijing, that also his responses to her blog are not welcome.

And one thing Bettine (and NRC for that matter) can count on is that the longer she chooses to ignore my responses, the more closely I will watch the total bullshit she writes and I will use the other tools, such as my blog, to vent the reactions her articles bring up in me!

So in a couple of weeks the long wait is over and we can together start our life in Valencia!

The initial date of the start of her 20 week Spanish course has passed (planned originally for next Monday), but hopefully Babylon Idiomas has a spot for a week later orso.

It’s strange, earlier today we talked on Skype and said to each other that probably this round her visa would not be approved and we had to seriously prepare for a longer waiting period.

Now that has shrunk to merely two weeks, HURRAY!

In the Volvo Ocean Race Game, the leader is getting close to the finish line with only 382 nm to go. There are now more than 48,000 virtual boats participating in the game and I am happy that I finally made it back into the first 9,000. At the time of writing my position is 8,710.

After I left the Doldrums, crossed the equator and rounded the buoy at Ilha de Fernando de Noronha, which is an official scoring gate that cannot be missed, I arrived in strong winds that took me south and east in the fast lane! On the screenshot below you can see the distance I covered in the past 48 hours.

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Last night I crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and with a bit of luck I can stay in the current depression taking me further to the southeast, leading eventually to Cape Town, where I hope to arrive within the next 5 days orso.

Dutch companies who want to invite staff or business partners to the Netherlands face now new barriers to get visas, business people in China and Hong Kong complain.

Well actually the article is about Dutch businesses in Hong Kong and China applying for visas for their employees or business partners and finding more obstacles on their path.

The writer is asking for some feed-back.

Do you have seen a tightening of the visa rules also in other European countries? Do let me know.

Yes Sir, we have!
OK Mia is not applying for a business visa and not being sent/invited by a company, but we do know that since August 15 this year the criteria for a student visa application to Spain have doubled.

First 500 hours of Spanish was enough, now it has to be 1,000 hours. That is like asking people that want to visit China for their studies to first speak Chinese fluently!
Before 3 months of regular income on a bank account was enough, now it is 6 months. The last regulation that has been doubled is the money that has to be present on an account during the time of application. That amount is kept secretively vague, but it was around EUR 10-15K and now it has indeed been upped (is that a word?) to EUR 20-30K.

The writer of the article also says that the new “regulations” are not impossible to comply with.

True, but it does bring a lot of extra headaches and other “mafan” (trouble)!

This afternoon at around 14:30hr my desk and floor were not so stable anymore and instantly I knew that I was in the middle of an earthquake!

Now, since it was my first, I did not really know what to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, rationally you know, but when you’re on the 13th floor of a 5yr old building in Beijing, where in 1976 they had a biggie in Tangshan all rationality goes out of the window it seems and makes place for good ol’ panicky feelings.

So after the major waving of the floor and my desk was over, I walked indecisive into the livingroom to see that the lamps were swinging above the dining table. “Hmm not good, leave” was my initial reaction and I got ready to go out. Standing on the hallway, looking at the elevator and realizing that by doing this I probably would have to walk all the stairs both down and up, I went back inside and called Mia who also felt something and had labeled it “being dizzy”. That description I found later back in many of the online forums.

Within 20 minutes the news also hit the western media (read: the websites I can read) so I could read what had happened. Sichuan, not too far away from Chengdu, in a place called Wenchuan, magnitude 7.5-7.8 on Richter’s scale, 4 kids died (so far).

Full stories on:
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7395496.stm
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSPEK23117420080512
Channel News Asia
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/347154/1/.html
China Daily
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-05/12/content_6678227.htm
Xinhua
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-05/12/content_8151822.htm

There are many rumours that there will be aftershocks (that you can feel in Beijing again) between 22:00 and 0:00hr tonight, we’ll see what happens. Hopefully the Great Wall will survive the tremors as I have a day trip scheduled there tomorrow…

In August last year they already published an article where my initiative was mentioned and on February 9 this year they did a follow-up on that article. Homestay Beijing 2008 is mentioned as only alternative to (expensive and mostly full) hotels.

I have high hopes that this publication will again bring a rush from potential tenants, so I can fill the almost 400 available homestays!

The article states that evolution biologist Michael Worobey of the Arizona University discovered that 1 person is responsible for the arrival of the aids virus in the USA in 1969, much earlier than everyone had assumed.

One person and one alone, yeah right! Supposedly an immigrant from Haiti who traveled to either Miami or New York and from there the virus spread, first in the US and later through the rest of the world.
At the same time the biologist says that the immigrant is unknown, although he did ‘discover’ that he was single, uhuh.

He continues to say that around 1930 the virus was already transferred to humans in Africa who had been eating infected monkey meat. So they were not fucking with monkeys after all then?

Around 1966 the virus was brought to Haiti from Central Africa; the researchers (yup, plural all of a sudden) are almost 100% sure that it didn’t come directly to the States.

Well well well, blame the Haitians! Perhaps Bush needs some excuse to sanction them?

The comment I made was on an entry where Bettine described the October Holiday. She explained that the term Golden Week was used for that particular October Holiday, because the Mid-Autum Festival was taking place in that same week.
For people that are already for some time in China it is obvious that this is a grave mistake on the author’s behalf, because the term Golden Week is used for each weeklong National Holiday. The name comes from the fact that prices make a steep hike, enabling the hospitality and retail industry to reap enormous turnovers.

The correspondent obviously was unaware of this and made up some nice sounding story for her Dutch audience. I find that very disturbing, because the people from overseas already receive a one-sided view about China. Especially from a correspondent who lives here you can expect to read stories that are (closer to) the truth!

My comment however, was not shown in the blog. Censured. Deleted. For the sole reason that it’s content was the direct opposite of what she had written. I find this even more disturbing! Mind you, we are talking about the website of a Dutch well known newspaper and although I have left The Netherlands more than 9 years ago, last time I checked it was still a democratic country!

Now why do I write now about this subject? Well, on my previous blog I also dedicated some space on the subject but since I started off with a clean slate, that story is not available anymore.
[UPDATE April 28, 2009: the original article was re-published on Chinalyst.net]

The real reason I write (again) about the subject is that I met Bettine last night on the monthly Dutch drinks at Trio. Of course I did not immediately recognize her as I have a picture in my head from the time she was playing table tennis. She was talking with an acquaintance of mine and I introduced myself to her using my first name only, as we do most of the time in Beijing. She replied with her first name and the question what my surname was. I found this quite weird until it clicked and I saw a faint resemblance with the table tennis player picture I had in my head. After I stated that my surname is Bos, Bettine’s gaze immediately changed from being somewhat interested into a cold and hard look, obviously very displeased with something.

Seldom have I met such an arrogant person, not open for any discussion and still very much hurt by a little comment (which she deleted anyway) made almost one year ago!

Since Bettine is not open for any form of discussion, acts like a hurt child and won’t post any of my comments on her blog, I once again have to use my own snippets to ventilate these matters!

You are a famous Dutch table tennis player turned journalist. You have been sent to China by one of the most well known newspapers of The Netherlands. You write a blog for them, hosted on their site.
How is it possible and admissible by the newspaper that constructive criticism on an article with clear mistakes in it is censured???

I find this lacking professionalism, very unethical and it is my opinion that by only allowing positive comments and deleting the not so positive ones, both NRC Handelsblad and Bettine Vriesekoop are immediately putting themselves into a position unworthy of belief, unwilling (or deeming it unnecessary) to investigate “things you hear (of)” and of writing the truth!

[UPDATE: read now part 2, published on February 19, 2009]

[UPDATE: read now part 3, published on April 28, 2009]

About a year ago I started writing a blog. Obviously the start was enthusiastically, but within a couple of months I found less time and/or energy to write about stuff that happened in my life. This year March I decided to get rid of it altogether, because I hadn’t been writing for a couple of months.

And then, the moment I quit, all sorts of things were happening of which I thought “Wow, that would have been a nice story for my blog!”. And now even friends tell me that I should re-install it, because they liked to read about things happening here with me.

So here we are again. But I am not going to call it a blog though.

The name is Snippets with the description “irregular snippets of the life of Piet Bos in Beijing, China“. Therefore don’t expect daily content, I will add stuff when I feel like it and when I have something