In Chinatown, Sound of the Future Is Mandarin
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Published: October 21, 2009
He grew up playing in the narrow, crowded streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown. He has lived and worked there for all his 61 years. But as Wee Wong walks the neighborhood these days, he cannot understand half the Chinese conversations he hears.
Cantonese, a dialect from southern China that has dominated the Chinatowns of North America for decades, is being rapidly swept aside by Mandarin, the national language of China and the lingua franca of most of the latest Chinese immigrants.
The change can be heard in the neighborhood’s lively restaurants and solemn church services, in parks, street markets and language schools. It has been accelerated by Chinese-American parents, including many who speak Cantonese at home, as they press their children to learn Mandarin for the advantages it could bring as China’s influence grows in the world.
But the eclipse of Cantonese — in New York, China and around the world — has become a challenge for older people who speak only that dialect and face increasing isolation unless they learn Mandarin or English. Though Cantonese and Mandarin share nearly all the same written characters, the pronunciations are vastly different; when spoken, Mandarin may be incomprehensible to a Cantonese speaker, and vice versa.
Mr. Wong, a retired sign maker who speaks English, can still get by with his Cantonese, which remains the preferred language in his circle of friends and in Chinatown’s historic core. A bit defiantly, he said that if he enters a shop and finds the staff does not speak his dialect, “I go to another store.”
Like many others, however, he is resigned to the likelihood that Cantonese — and the people who speak it — will soon become just another facet of a polyglot neighborhood. “In 10 years,” Mr. Wong said, “it will be totally different.”
With Mandarin’s ascent has come a realignment of power in Chinese-American communities, where the recent immigrants are gaining economic and political clout, said Peter Kwong, a professor of Asian-American studies at Hunter College.
“The fact of the matter is that you have a whole generation switch, with very few people speaking only Cantonese,” he said. The Cantonese-speaking populace, he added, “is not the player anymore.”
The switch mirrors a sea change under way in China, where Mandarin, as the official language, is becoming the default tongue everywhere.
In North America, its rise also reflects a major shift in immigration. For much of the last century, most Chinese living in the United States and Canada traced their ancestry to a region in the Pearl River Delta that included the district of Taishan. They spoke the Taishanese dialect, which is derived from and somewhat similar to Cantonese.
Immigration reform in 1965 opened the door to a huge influx of Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong, and Cantonese became the dominant tongue. But since the 1990s, the vast majority of new Chinese immigrants have come from mainland China, especially Fujian Province, and tend to speak Mandarin along with their regional dialects.
In New York, many Mandarin speakers have flocked to Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and Flushing, Queens, which now rivals Chinatown as a center of Chinese-American business and political might, as well as culture and cuisine. In Chinatown, most of the newer immigrants have settled outside the historic core west of the Bowery, clustering instead around East Broadway.
“I can’t even order food on East Broadway,” said Jan Lee, 44, a furniture designer who has lived all his life in Chinatown and speaks Cantonese. “They don’t speak English; I don’t speak Mandarin. I’m just as lost as everyone else.”
Now Mandarin is pushing into Chinatown’s heart.
For most of the 100 years that the New York Chinese School, on Mott Street, has offered language classes, nearly all have taught Cantonese. Last year, the numbers of Cantonese and Mandarin classes were roughly equal. And this year, Mandarin classes outnumber Cantonese three to one, even though most students are from homes where Cantonese is spoken, said the principal, Kin S. Wong.
Some Cantonese-speaking parents are deciding it is more important to point their children toward the future than the past — their family’s native dialect — even if that leaves them unable to communicate well with relatives in China.
“I figure if they have to acquire a language, I wanted them to have Mandarin because it makes it easier when they go into the workplace,” said Jennifer Ng, whose 5-year-old daughter studies Mandarin at the language school of the Church of the Transfiguration, a Roman Catholic parish on Mott Street where nearly half the classes are devoted to Mandarin. Her 8-year-old son takes Cantonese, but only because there is no English-speaking Mandarin teacher for his age group.
“Can I tell you the truth?” she said. “They hate it! But it’s important for the future.” Until recently, Sunday Masses at Transfiguration were said in Cantonese. The church now offers two in Mandarin and only one in Cantonese. And as the arrivals from mainland China become old-timers, “we are beginning to have Mandarin funerals,” said the Rev. Raymond Nobiletti, the Cantonese-speaking pastor.
At the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, which has been the unofficial government of Chinatown for generations and conducts its business in Cantonese, the president, Justin Yu, said he is the first whose mother tongue is Mandarin to lead the 126-year-old organization. Though he has been taking Cantonese lessons in order to keep up at association meetings, his pronunciation is sometimes a source of hilarity for his colleagues, he said.
“No matter what,” he added, laughing, “you have to admire my courage.”
But even his association is being surpassed in influence by Fujianese organizations, said Professor Kwong of Hunter College.
Longtime residents seem less threatened than wistful. Though he is known around Chinatown for what he calls his “legendarily bad” Cantonese, Paul Lee, 59, said it pained him that the dialect was disappearing from the place where his family has lived for more than a century.
“It may be a dying language,” he acknowledged. “I just hate to say that.”
But he pointed out that the changes were a natural part of an evolving immigrant neighborhood: Just as Cantonese sidelined Taishanese, so, too, is Mandarin replacing Cantonese.
Mr. Wong, the principal of the New York Chinese School, said he had tried to adjust to the subtle shifts during his 40 years in Chinatown. When he arrived in 1969, he walked into a coffee shop and placed his order in Cantonese. Other patrons looked at him oddly.
“They said, ‘Where you from?’ “ he recalled. “ ‘Why you speak Cantonese?’ ” They were from Taishan, he said, so he switched to Taishanese and everyone was happy.
“And now I speak Mandarin better than Cantonese,” he added with a chuckle. “So, Chinatown — it’s always changing.”
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Schools a battleground over dueling Chinese scripts
Schools a battleground over dueling Chinese scripts
Los Angeles Times
October 18, 2009
For nine years, Sutoyo Lim's son studied Chinese with private tutors and at language schools. He learned to write in “simplified script,” characters with thinly spread strokes commonly used in mainland China.
But that all changed when Lim's 15-year-old son began taking Chinese classes at Arcadia High School this year. He was given two months to make the transition from “simplified” to the more intricate “traditional” script used in Taiwan.
Once the grace period is over, homework and exam answers written in simplified script will be disqualified -- regardless of accuracy. “To me, it does not seem right,” Lim said. “I'm not happy with being forced to choose the language that's going to be obsolete.”
When Chinese classes were introduced at Arcadia in the mid-1990s, Taiwanese parents pushed administrators to adopt the use of traditional script used in Taiwan and pre-communist China. The traditional form is distinguished by a series of complex and intersecting strokes.
But with the large influx of Chinese immigrants into the San Gabriel Valley over the last decade, there is increasing demand to adopt the simplified form, which Taiwanese parents and others see as a threat to an ancient tradition. The change is occurring at private and public schools in California and across the country.
The language dispute is part of a larger and politically charged debate that stems in part from changing immigration patterns in the United States and China's increasing influence as a world economic power. Schools such as Arcadia High have become a battleground over this issue.
In a 2007 national survey by the Chinese Language Assn. of Secondary-Elementary Schools, nearly half of 263 schools included in the sample taught only the simplified form and 11% only traditional. The remaining taught a mix of the two. In 1994, by comparison, 17% of 139 schools taught simplified and 40% traditional.
“China is opening up a huge market worldwide,” said Yu-Lan Lin, executive director of the association. “It's better to know the customer's language.”
For the last four years, Arcadia High Principal David Vannasdall has been lobbied by both sides of the debate.
Last April, the school held a meeting with parents to discuss the issue. Parents were urged to “focus on interests, not positions.”
Because of what he deemed a “hostile” attitude toward his support of simplified script, Lim didn't want his son's name used for this story.
“The reaction to eliminating traditional has been overwhelming,” Vannasdall said. “It's a really controversial issue.”
Two years ago, when Christine Lee was president of the Arcadia Chinese parents club, some parents pushing for the simplified form tried to draw the group into the debate. But Lee said the club resisted taking sides.
Still, Lee, who came to the U.S. from Taiwan in the 1980s, said she resented Lim's characterization of traditional script as obsolete. “Chinese characters are so beautiful, why would you give that up?” she said. “How could 5,000 years of history go away that easily?”
Simplified characters were introduced in the 1950s by the Chinese communist regime to improve literacy rates among the country's mostly rural population.
At the time, anti-communist politicians and refugees fled and settled in Taiwan, where they continued the use of traditional script.
Before diplomatic relations were established between the United States and China in the 1970s, the traditional form was commonly taught here. To switch to the simplified form says something about Taiwan's place in the world and who speaks on behalf of Chinese culture, said David Lee, past president of the Arcadia Chinese Assn.
“In the heart of Taiwan, it's a crisis because the Taiwanese feel they are so small, there's nothing they can compete with China, not militarily, not with population,” Lee said. “But if there's something they can . . . insist upon, it's culture and the language. And script is part of the culture.”
Others worry that changing school curriculum is only the beginning and that the rest of the community would soon follow with store signs, restaurant menus and newspapers. In August, the Sing Tao Daily newspaper in the Bay Area changed its free weekly publication to simplified script.
“There are more and more Chinese from mainland,” said Tim Lau, chief executive of the paper's San Francisco operation. “We want to tap a different market, the new immigrant market.”
In June, Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou caused a stir during a meeting with visiting Taiwanese community leaders from the U.S. when he said students should learn to read in traditional script and write in the simplified form. After he was publicly criticized, he clarified that his statement was directed at mainland China.
“It became a very ideological thing,” David Lee said. “As the Chinese say, 'Save face.' Sometimes save face is more important than anything else.”
When creating its Chinese language curriculum three years ago, Palo Alto High School in the Bay Area considered the practical use of the language before deciding on the simplified form, said Norman Masuda, instructional supervisor for languages. Parents who continue to promote the traditional form are not acting in the best interest of their children, he said.
“For the future, they need to learn something that they can use right away, and most students want to go to China, not Taiwan,” Masuda said. “You have to keep up with the wave.”
Soon after she was hired as principal of Meyerholz Elementary School in San Jose last spring, Anita Alfonso said, parents were complaining about the teaching of the simplified form. The school has an 8-year-old Chinese immersion program taught mostly in the traditional form, but it introduces simplified script in the fourth grade.
Of the 350 students in the program, Alfonso said, about half have parents from Taiwan. “I've already had a lot of parents come talk to me that they don't like the simplified,” she said.
At Westside Chinese School in Mar Vista, the administration was forced into a compromise about five years ago after some Chinese parents took their children out of the school to protest the traditional-only curriculum.
Since its founding in 1967 by Taiwanese immigrants, the parent-run Saturday school had taught only the traditional form until enrollment dipped, and the school began teaching in both Chinese scripts, said Joan Kung, the school's past dean of academic studies.
“We ask the teachers if they can teach both to meet the demands of both parents,” Kung said. “We want to attract these parents from China.”
In classrooms and textbooks at the school, traditional script is presented side by side with simplified, and students are allowed to choose which they prefer. In his classroom at Westside, 10-year-old Jacob Graves writes in simplified form using big, broad pencil strokes. He said he could read traditional script, but he still became flustered when he looked at the school's newsletter.
“I can't read this word and this word and this word,” he said. “Actually, I can't read a lot of these words.”
Jacob's mother, Joanna Graves, who grew up in Shanghai, said the traditional form takes up too much study time. “I like simplified because it's a little easier for the children to write,” she said.
Most state and national Chinese groups have avoided promoting one script over the other, said Gay Yuen, a Cal State L.A. language professor.
For academic organizations, debating traditional versus simplified is a no-win situation. It not only distracts from other issues but can also alienate some members.
In June, Yuen met with other academic leaders from across California in a two-day conference held in Burbank to establish state Chinese language standards. They avoided any talk of scripts.
“If that question had come up at the meeting, we wouldn't have been able to get through our agenda,” Yuen said. “It's like politics. Don't talk about it.”
Los Angeles Times
October 18, 2009
For nine years, Sutoyo Lim's son studied Chinese with private tutors and at language schools. He learned to write in “simplified script,” characters with thinly spread strokes commonly used in mainland China.
But that all changed when Lim's 15-year-old son began taking Chinese classes at Arcadia High School this year. He was given two months to make the transition from “simplified” to the more intricate “traditional” script used in Taiwan.
Once the grace period is over, homework and exam answers written in simplified script will be disqualified -- regardless of accuracy. “To me, it does not seem right,” Lim said. “I'm not happy with being forced to choose the language that's going to be obsolete.”
When Chinese classes were introduced at Arcadia in the mid-1990s, Taiwanese parents pushed administrators to adopt the use of traditional script used in Taiwan and pre-communist China. The traditional form is distinguished by a series of complex and intersecting strokes.
But with the large influx of Chinese immigrants into the San Gabriel Valley over the last decade, there is increasing demand to adopt the simplified form, which Taiwanese parents and others see as a threat to an ancient tradition. The change is occurring at private and public schools in California and across the country.
The language dispute is part of a larger and politically charged debate that stems in part from changing immigration patterns in the United States and China's increasing influence as a world economic power. Schools such as Arcadia High have become a battleground over this issue.
In a 2007 national survey by the Chinese Language Assn. of Secondary-Elementary Schools, nearly half of 263 schools included in the sample taught only the simplified form and 11% only traditional. The remaining taught a mix of the two. In 1994, by comparison, 17% of 139 schools taught simplified and 40% traditional.
“China is opening up a huge market worldwide,” said Yu-Lan Lin, executive director of the association. “It's better to know the customer's language.”
For the last four years, Arcadia High Principal David Vannasdall has been lobbied by both sides of the debate.
Last April, the school held a meeting with parents to discuss the issue. Parents were urged to “focus on interests, not positions.”
Because of what he deemed a “hostile” attitude toward his support of simplified script, Lim didn't want his son's name used for this story.
“The reaction to eliminating traditional has been overwhelming,” Vannasdall said. “It's a really controversial issue.”
Two years ago, when Christine Lee was president of the Arcadia Chinese parents club, some parents pushing for the simplified form tried to draw the group into the debate. But Lee said the club resisted taking sides.
Still, Lee, who came to the U.S. from Taiwan in the 1980s, said she resented Lim's characterization of traditional script as obsolete. “Chinese characters are so beautiful, why would you give that up?” she said. “How could 5,000 years of history go away that easily?”
Simplified characters were introduced in the 1950s by the Chinese communist regime to improve literacy rates among the country's mostly rural population.
At the time, anti-communist politicians and refugees fled and settled in Taiwan, where they continued the use of traditional script.
Before diplomatic relations were established between the United States and China in the 1970s, the traditional form was commonly taught here. To switch to the simplified form says something about Taiwan's place in the world and who speaks on behalf of Chinese culture, said David Lee, past president of the Arcadia Chinese Assn.
“In the heart of Taiwan, it's a crisis because the Taiwanese feel they are so small, there's nothing they can compete with China, not militarily, not with population,” Lee said. “But if there's something they can . . . insist upon, it's culture and the language. And script is part of the culture.”
Others worry that changing school curriculum is only the beginning and that the rest of the community would soon follow with store signs, restaurant menus and newspapers. In August, the Sing Tao Daily newspaper in the Bay Area changed its free weekly publication to simplified script.
“There are more and more Chinese from mainland,” said Tim Lau, chief executive of the paper's San Francisco operation. “We want to tap a different market, the new immigrant market.”
In June, Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou caused a stir during a meeting with visiting Taiwanese community leaders from the U.S. when he said students should learn to read in traditional script and write in the simplified form. After he was publicly criticized, he clarified that his statement was directed at mainland China.
“It became a very ideological thing,” David Lee said. “As the Chinese say, 'Save face.' Sometimes save face is more important than anything else.”
When creating its Chinese language curriculum three years ago, Palo Alto High School in the Bay Area considered the practical use of the language before deciding on the simplified form, said Norman Masuda, instructional supervisor for languages. Parents who continue to promote the traditional form are not acting in the best interest of their children, he said.
“For the future, they need to learn something that they can use right away, and most students want to go to China, not Taiwan,” Masuda said. “You have to keep up with the wave.”
Soon after she was hired as principal of Meyerholz Elementary School in San Jose last spring, Anita Alfonso said, parents were complaining about the teaching of the simplified form. The school has an 8-year-old Chinese immersion program taught mostly in the traditional form, but it introduces simplified script in the fourth grade.
Of the 350 students in the program, Alfonso said, about half have parents from Taiwan. “I've already had a lot of parents come talk to me that they don't like the simplified,” she said.
At Westside Chinese School in Mar Vista, the administration was forced into a compromise about five years ago after some Chinese parents took their children out of the school to protest the traditional-only curriculum.
Since its founding in 1967 by Taiwanese immigrants, the parent-run Saturday school had taught only the traditional form until enrollment dipped, and the school began teaching in both Chinese scripts, said Joan Kung, the school's past dean of academic studies.
“We ask the teachers if they can teach both to meet the demands of both parents,” Kung said. “We want to attract these parents from China.”
In classrooms and textbooks at the school, traditional script is presented side by side with simplified, and students are allowed to choose which they prefer. In his classroom at Westside, 10-year-old Jacob Graves writes in simplified form using big, broad pencil strokes. He said he could read traditional script, but he still became flustered when he looked at the school's newsletter.
“I can't read this word and this word and this word,” he said. “Actually, I can't read a lot of these words.”
Jacob's mother, Joanna Graves, who grew up in Shanghai, said the traditional form takes up too much study time. “I like simplified because it's a little easier for the children to write,” she said.
Most state and national Chinese groups have avoided promoting one script over the other, said Gay Yuen, a Cal State L.A. language professor.
For academic organizations, debating traditional versus simplified is a no-win situation. It not only distracts from other issues but can also alienate some members.
In June, Yuen met with other academic leaders from across California in a two-day conference held in Burbank to establish state Chinese language standards. They avoided any talk of scripts.
“If that question had come up at the meeting, we wouldn't have been able to get through our agenda,” Yuen said. “It's like politics. Don't talk about it.”
Monday, October 12, 2009
Girls sell sex in Hong Kong to earn shopping money
Girls sell sex in Hong Kong to earn shopping money
October 13, 2009 By Pauline Chiou
CNN
HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- She doesn't want to be identified, except by her nickname "Sze," and she has a secret past. Her father doesn't know what she did as a 16-year-old, and she hopes he never finds out. But Sze, now 19, wants young girls to hear her story so they never make the same mistake.
"My first customer was an ordinary man in his 40s. We skipped the dinner part and went straight to the guest house for sex," Sze recalled. "Actually, I was a bit scared, but I knew this was the only way I could get money. This customer wasn't bad, though. We just had sex, he paid, and then he left. I thought this was easy money, and that's why I continued doing this kind of thing."
For a year and a half, Sze was part of a growing social phenomenon among teens in Hong Kong called "compensated dating," a practice in which a young woman agrees to go on a date with a man for a fee. More often than not, the date involves sex.
Sze said she started compensated dating because many of her classmates at an all-girls school were doing it. She says she became jealous when she saw the designer clothes, bags and cosmetics they bought with the money they earned through compensated dating. Sze wanted the same for herself, so her classmates introduced her to Internet chat forums where she met male customers.
The practice can have deadly consequences. Last year, a 16-year-old Hong Kong girl was killed in a gruesome murder after she went to a 24-year-old man's apartment for a compensated date. The man, Ting Kai-Tai, killed the teenager, dismembered her body and flushed the remains down the toilet. A jury convicted him of murder and sentenced him to life in prison.
Sze told CNN she knew a compensated date could go horribly wrong. She would set ground rules with clients on the phone first. She charged them $350 for a date and clarified how many times she would have sex with them.
She said sometimes the customers would stray from the rules, asking for more sex or refusing to wear a condom.
"Sometimes, I did feel shame. I kept asking myself why I had to do this kind of thing to make money. But the feeling didn't stay long. I would relax when I wanted to buy something. I just thought I could always quit after a short time or whenever I wanted," Sze said.
Most girls who engage in compensated dating don't view themselves as prostitutes, said social worker Chiu Tak-Choi.
"For the girls, they don't think so because they think they can quit anytime. The girls -- even though they post their details on the Internet -- they think they can quit. Even if they encounter the guys, if he is not good-looking, she can quit and say 'I don't do it.' They think they have a lot of power to control whether they do it or not, so they think of it very differently from prostitution."
Chiu, the social worker, is currently working with about 20 girls who are trying to leave the world of compensated dating. It is hard to quantify how big the problem is in Hong Kong because the business is conducted under the radar, he said.
Chiu believes the problem is getting worse because his caseload has doubled in the past two years.
Prostitution is illegal in Hong Kong, and legal experts say that compensated dating is a form of prostitution. "The law prohibits soliciting for immoral purpose," said Stephen Hung, a criminal litigator with Pang, Wan & Choi. "When a court looks at sentencing, the greater the age difference, the more serious it (the sentence) is."
Why do young girls get involved in compensated dating? The reasons vary from an unstable home life to a desire for material goods, Chiu said.
One 14-year-old girl told him she started compensated dating when she lost her cell phone. She said her parents wouldn't buy her a new one, so she thought she could earn some fast money with paid sex. She had her eye on an expensive cell phone. When the money from the first compensated date didn't cover the cost for the new phone, she went on a second paid date.
Girls involved in compensated dating don't necessarily come from poor families, Chiu said. They are from all levels of socioeconomic classes, he said. Improved family communication is one solution to preventing girls from becoming involved in compensated dating, Chiu said.
"The family has to do its part. I think caring for children is very important. Whenever they have problems, they can ask someone for help."
Sze said she was saved by a social worker who stepped in on her behalf. After a pregnancy scare and a number of unpredictable customers, Sze said her self-esteem plummeted. The social worker helped her get back on track.
"She helped me understand that making money respectably is actually not that hard in Hong Kong. I finally realized that it was wrong to make money by selling my body. It just wasn't worth it."
Sze now works at a hair salon to earn a living. She has tried to talk her old friends out of compensated dating, but they are not listening, she said.
"They felt annoyed when I talked to them about this. I'm now reluctant to get in touch with them. They just tell me they're different. Maybe they have more serious family problems or some other burdens. I know I can't control their thinking, so I just stopped trying to help them."
October 13, 2009 By Pauline Chiou
CNN
HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- She doesn't want to be identified, except by her nickname "Sze," and she has a secret past. Her father doesn't know what she did as a 16-year-old, and she hopes he never finds out. But Sze, now 19, wants young girls to hear her story so they never make the same mistake.
"My first customer was an ordinary man in his 40s. We skipped the dinner part and went straight to the guest house for sex," Sze recalled. "Actually, I was a bit scared, but I knew this was the only way I could get money. This customer wasn't bad, though. We just had sex, he paid, and then he left. I thought this was easy money, and that's why I continued doing this kind of thing."
For a year and a half, Sze was part of a growing social phenomenon among teens in Hong Kong called "compensated dating," a practice in which a young woman agrees to go on a date with a man for a fee. More often than not, the date involves sex.
Sze said she started compensated dating because many of her classmates at an all-girls school were doing it. She says she became jealous when she saw the designer clothes, bags and cosmetics they bought with the money they earned through compensated dating. Sze wanted the same for herself, so her classmates introduced her to Internet chat forums where she met male customers.
The practice can have deadly consequences. Last year, a 16-year-old Hong Kong girl was killed in a gruesome murder after she went to a 24-year-old man's apartment for a compensated date. The man, Ting Kai-Tai, killed the teenager, dismembered her body and flushed the remains down the toilet. A jury convicted him of murder and sentenced him to life in prison.
Sze told CNN she knew a compensated date could go horribly wrong. She would set ground rules with clients on the phone first. She charged them $350 for a date and clarified how many times she would have sex with them.
She said sometimes the customers would stray from the rules, asking for more sex or refusing to wear a condom.
"Sometimes, I did feel shame. I kept asking myself why I had to do this kind of thing to make money. But the feeling didn't stay long. I would relax when I wanted to buy something. I just thought I could always quit after a short time or whenever I wanted," Sze said.
Most girls who engage in compensated dating don't view themselves as prostitutes, said social worker Chiu Tak-Choi.
"For the girls, they don't think so because they think they can quit anytime. The girls -- even though they post their details on the Internet -- they think they can quit. Even if they encounter the guys, if he is not good-looking, she can quit and say 'I don't do it.' They think they have a lot of power to control whether they do it or not, so they think of it very differently from prostitution."
Chiu, the social worker, is currently working with about 20 girls who are trying to leave the world of compensated dating. It is hard to quantify how big the problem is in Hong Kong because the business is conducted under the radar, he said.
Chiu believes the problem is getting worse because his caseload has doubled in the past two years.
Prostitution is illegal in Hong Kong, and legal experts say that compensated dating is a form of prostitution. "The law prohibits soliciting for immoral purpose," said Stephen Hung, a criminal litigator with Pang, Wan & Choi. "When a court looks at sentencing, the greater the age difference, the more serious it (the sentence) is."
Why do young girls get involved in compensated dating? The reasons vary from an unstable home life to a desire for material goods, Chiu said.
One 14-year-old girl told him she started compensated dating when she lost her cell phone. She said her parents wouldn't buy her a new one, so she thought she could earn some fast money with paid sex. She had her eye on an expensive cell phone. When the money from the first compensated date didn't cover the cost for the new phone, she went on a second paid date.
Girls involved in compensated dating don't necessarily come from poor families, Chiu said. They are from all levels of socioeconomic classes, he said. Improved family communication is one solution to preventing girls from becoming involved in compensated dating, Chiu said.
"The family has to do its part. I think caring for children is very important. Whenever they have problems, they can ask someone for help."
Sze said she was saved by a social worker who stepped in on her behalf. After a pregnancy scare and a number of unpredictable customers, Sze said her self-esteem plummeted. The social worker helped her get back on track.
"She helped me understand that making money respectably is actually not that hard in Hong Kong. I finally realized that it was wrong to make money by selling my body. It just wasn't worth it."
Sze now works at a hair salon to earn a living. She has tried to talk her old friends out of compensated dating, but they are not listening, she said.
"They felt annoyed when I talked to them about this. I'm now reluctant to get in touch with them. They just tell me they're different. Maybe they have more serious family problems or some other burdens. I know I can't control their thinking, so I just stopped trying to help them."
Monday, August 3, 2009
Hong Kong youth caught in wave of ketamine addiction
Hong Kong youth caught in wave of ketamine addiction
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/07/31/hongkong.ketamine/index.html
August 1, 2009
By Pauline Chiou
CNN
HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- A 16-year-old Hong Kong boy makes two phone calls for delivery: one for pizza, the other for the drug ketamine. Two teenage girls are found semi-conscious in a car park in the southern Chinese enclave after overdosing on ketamine. A 13-year-old boy joins a gang and is given free ketamine.
These are anecdotes told to CNN by police, a family doctor and the former gang member. Ketamine has become the top drug of choice among young people as the number of people under 21 taking drugs has surged 57 percent in the last four years in Hong Kong, said Commissioner for Narcotics, Sally Wong.
“We started off with a very small number of young people taking drugs. We are now more worried about the trend,” Wong said. “We don't want a runaway trend, that's why we are stepping up action.”
Ketamine, an animal tranquilizer, puts youth in a dazed stupor for about two hours.
An oversupply of the drug in Hong Kong and the fact that it is cheaper than other narcotics makes ketamine popular with young people, said Superintendent Wilson Fok of the Hong Kong Police Narcotics Bureau.
One gram of ketamine sells on the street here for $13 and is enough to be shared with two other people, while cocaine, for example, sells for $103 a gram, Fok said.
The drug is trafficked into Hong Kong from other parts of Asia, such as India and mainland China, Fok said.
Police have recently stepped up their efforts to crack down on drug use at clubs and bars in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, a city in mainland China just across the border. Nearly 120 alleged drug users from Hong Kong, mostly under the age of 30, were arrested at entertainment venues in Shenzhen in July and held for 15 days in sweeps that made headlines for days here, according to the South China Morning Post.
However, narcotics police have detected a trend away from entertainment venues.
“Forty percent of young people abuse drugs in public toilets and playgrounds. That's what our recent data from last year shows,” Fok said. “They want to find some other places to take drugs.”
The problem has gotten so bad that authorities have decided to do something never done here before: random school drug tests.
Beginning in September, some two dozen schools will conduct tests. Officials say the drug screening will most likely be in the form of urine tests, though they are still working out the details. Ketamine can be detected in urine for at least three days.
Alman Chan, principal of Hong Kong's only drug rehab center for youth, the privately-run Christian Zheng Sheng School, said it was clear more young people were taking drugs.
“Just look at our school development. I was here 14 years ago. At that time, I was the only teacher. I had 18 kids. I only had one student who was 15,” he said. “But now, I have one third -- about 40 of them -- who are 15 years old or younger. That shows you the number of students getting into drugs is bigger and also getting younger and younger.”
There were a few reasons why children were getting involved with drugs, such as troubled homes and difficulties at school, he said.
“People are more concerned about material things and they are getting lost,” he added.
Hong Kong Police have arrested kids as young as age 10 for serious drug offenses.
Police said last week they had busted a network that allegedly recruited teenagers to sell illegal drugs, and one of those arrested -- a 14-year-old school dropout -- was found with 28 grams of ketamine, according to the South China Morning Post.
Dr. Cheng Chi Man, a family practice doctor, runs a seminar that trains doctors to detect the signs of drug abuse in young patients: drowsiness, skin problems, frequent urination (ketamine can affect bladder function) and frequent sick leave.
“When we were 10 years old, we were still in primary school watching TV and eating candy. But they are now taking drugs.”
Tai Ming Hung said she learned her son Keith was using ketamine after he had been treated at a hospital for taking it at a karaoke bar.
“I was in denial. I just didn't believe it was true. When I first heard about it, we all didn't know how to react, because we hadn't heard of those drugs before,” she said. “I didn't really understand why we have these harmful drugs in the world. And I was so afraid that it would kill my son.”
Keith, who said he began using ketamine at the age of 13 when he joined a gang, has recovered and is now living at Alman's school.
“I have a feeling that he's really growing up, he keeps improving,” Tai Ming Hung said.
Ketamine abuse is not limited to young people -- it is the second most popular drug among all age groups in Hong Kong, Fok said.
A 24-year-old man in Hong Kong was just convicted of killing a girl, whose dismembered remains were found by authorities. His lawyer said he was high on ketamine and Ecstasy, and did not know how the girl had died.
For the worst young offenders in Hong Kong, the court ships them off to Chan's school in a remote part of Lantau Island. The closest road is a three-hour hike through the woods.
Chan calls the school “the last stop before jail” for drug abusers.
CNN visited the campus on an old pig farm, where 99 boys and 24 girls live. Their curriculum involves regular school subjects and chores. The goal is for each student to finish their court probation and either sit the university exam or continue on to a vocational school.
Many of the students have become interested in video editing and photography. There is a video lab on campus and the students showed CNN some video projects they have done for clients.
Other students run a pizza parlor and tea shop on a neighboring island.
The average stay is three years and students are encouraged to plan for life after rehab.
“We have vocational training. We help them get some marketable skills; therefore, they may get a job or continue training afterward,” Chan said. “I believe everyone deserves a second chance.”
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/07/31/hongkong.ketamine/index.html
August 1, 2009
By Pauline Chiou
CNN
HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- A 16-year-old Hong Kong boy makes two phone calls for delivery: one for pizza, the other for the drug ketamine. Two teenage girls are found semi-conscious in a car park in the southern Chinese enclave after overdosing on ketamine. A 13-year-old boy joins a gang and is given free ketamine.
These are anecdotes told to CNN by police, a family doctor and the former gang member. Ketamine has become the top drug of choice among young people as the number of people under 21 taking drugs has surged 57 percent in the last four years in Hong Kong, said Commissioner for Narcotics, Sally Wong.
“We started off with a very small number of young people taking drugs. We are now more worried about the trend,” Wong said. “We don't want a runaway trend, that's why we are stepping up action.”
Ketamine, an animal tranquilizer, puts youth in a dazed stupor for about two hours.
An oversupply of the drug in Hong Kong and the fact that it is cheaper than other narcotics makes ketamine popular with young people, said Superintendent Wilson Fok of the Hong Kong Police Narcotics Bureau.
One gram of ketamine sells on the street here for $13 and is enough to be shared with two other people, while cocaine, for example, sells for $103 a gram, Fok said.
The drug is trafficked into Hong Kong from other parts of Asia, such as India and mainland China, Fok said.
Police have recently stepped up their efforts to crack down on drug use at clubs and bars in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, a city in mainland China just across the border. Nearly 120 alleged drug users from Hong Kong, mostly under the age of 30, were arrested at entertainment venues in Shenzhen in July and held for 15 days in sweeps that made headlines for days here, according to the South China Morning Post.
However, narcotics police have detected a trend away from entertainment venues.
“Forty percent of young people abuse drugs in public toilets and playgrounds. That's what our recent data from last year shows,” Fok said. “They want to find some other places to take drugs.”
The problem has gotten so bad that authorities have decided to do something never done here before: random school drug tests.
Beginning in September, some two dozen schools will conduct tests. Officials say the drug screening will most likely be in the form of urine tests, though they are still working out the details. Ketamine can be detected in urine for at least three days.
Alman Chan, principal of Hong Kong's only drug rehab center for youth, the privately-run Christian Zheng Sheng School, said it was clear more young people were taking drugs.
“Just look at our school development. I was here 14 years ago. At that time, I was the only teacher. I had 18 kids. I only had one student who was 15,” he said. “But now, I have one third -- about 40 of them -- who are 15 years old or younger. That shows you the number of students getting into drugs is bigger and also getting younger and younger.”
There were a few reasons why children were getting involved with drugs, such as troubled homes and difficulties at school, he said.
“People are more concerned about material things and they are getting lost,” he added.
Hong Kong Police have arrested kids as young as age 10 for serious drug offenses.
Police said last week they had busted a network that allegedly recruited teenagers to sell illegal drugs, and one of those arrested -- a 14-year-old school dropout -- was found with 28 grams of ketamine, according to the South China Morning Post.
Dr. Cheng Chi Man, a family practice doctor, runs a seminar that trains doctors to detect the signs of drug abuse in young patients: drowsiness, skin problems, frequent urination (ketamine can affect bladder function) and frequent sick leave.
“When we were 10 years old, we were still in primary school watching TV and eating candy. But they are now taking drugs.”
Tai Ming Hung said she learned her son Keith was using ketamine after he had been treated at a hospital for taking it at a karaoke bar.
“I was in denial. I just didn't believe it was true. When I first heard about it, we all didn't know how to react, because we hadn't heard of those drugs before,” she said. “I didn't really understand why we have these harmful drugs in the world. And I was so afraid that it would kill my son.”
Keith, who said he began using ketamine at the age of 13 when he joined a gang, has recovered and is now living at Alman's school.
“I have a feeling that he's really growing up, he keeps improving,” Tai Ming Hung said.
Ketamine abuse is not limited to young people -- it is the second most popular drug among all age groups in Hong Kong, Fok said.
A 24-year-old man in Hong Kong was just convicted of killing a girl, whose dismembered remains were found by authorities. His lawyer said he was high on ketamine and Ecstasy, and did not know how the girl had died.
For the worst young offenders in Hong Kong, the court ships them off to Chan's school in a remote part of Lantau Island. The closest road is a three-hour hike through the woods.
Chan calls the school “the last stop before jail” for drug abusers.
CNN visited the campus on an old pig farm, where 99 boys and 24 girls live. Their curriculum involves regular school subjects and chores. The goal is for each student to finish their court probation and either sit the university exam or continue on to a vocational school.
Many of the students have become interested in video editing and photography. There is a video lab on campus and the students showed CNN some video projects they have done for clients.
Other students run a pizza parlor and tea shop on a neighboring island.
The average stay is three years and students are encouraged to plan for life after rehab.
“We have vocational training. We help them get some marketable skills; therefore, they may get a job or continue training afterward,” Chan said. “I believe everyone deserves a second chance.”
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Malaysia Dilutes Its System of Ethnic Preferences
Malaysia Dilutes Its System of Ethnic Preferences
By THOMAS FULLER
Published: New York Times, June 30, 2009
BANGKOK — Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, announced Tuesday a major rollback in the system of ethnic preferences that has defined the country’s political system for almost four decades.
The new policy would severely weaken a requirement that companies reserve 30 percent of their shares for ethnic Malays, the country’s dominant ethnic group.
The 30-percent rule was once considered politically untouchable, and Mr. Najib described the change in policy as a “tricky balancing act.”
Malaysia has long given ethnic Malays and members of other indigenous ethnic groups — known as bumiputra, or sons of the soil — political and economic privileges. But that system has come under strain amid growing resentment by minority groups and poorer Malays.
The government offers bumiputra discounts on houses, scholarships and other perks. But some benefits, like government contracts and stock-market allocations, have been beyond the reach of working-class Malays.
Anger among Chinese and Indians, the country’s main minority groups, over the ethnic preferences was perhaps the main reason that the opposition made large gains in elections last year that nearly dismantled the governing coalition led by Mr. Najib’s party, the United Malays National Organization.
“We want to be fair to all communities,” Mr. Najib said in a speech in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. “No one must feel marginalized.”
Mr. Najib’s success in rolling back the ethnic preferences will depend in large part on his ability to hold together his coalition and fend off a resurgent opposition led by Anwar Ibrahim, a former finance minister.
Mr. Anwar, who leads a diverse group of opposition parties, has promised to undo the system of ethnic preferences.
By positioning himself as a reformer, Mr. Najib, who came to power in April, appears to be calculating that he can stave off opposition advances and be seen as an agent of change.
“The world is changing quickly, and we must be ready to change with it or risk being left behind,” he said Tuesday.
The change would leave some ethnic preferences intact and come with caveats. But it would dilute one of the most important components of what is known as the New Economic Policy, introduced in 1971: the requirement that companies listing on the stock exchange sell 30 percent of their shares to ethnic Malays.
That requirement was scrapped for companies already listed on the stock exchange and reduced to 12.5 percent for initial public offerings. The requirement will remain in place for “strategic industries” like telecommunications, water, ports and energy.
Mr. Najib also said he would lower barriers for foreign investors. The government would eliminate a special vetting process for foreign companies wanting to invest in, merge or take over a Malaysian company, he said.
“The global economic crisis is amplifying the need to be a preferred investment destination,” he added.
Malaysia’s trade-dependent economy is expected to contract by 5 percent this year.
By THOMAS FULLER
Published: New York Times, June 30, 2009
BANGKOK — Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, announced Tuesday a major rollback in the system of ethnic preferences that has defined the country’s political system for almost four decades.
The new policy would severely weaken a requirement that companies reserve 30 percent of their shares for ethnic Malays, the country’s dominant ethnic group.
The 30-percent rule was once considered politically untouchable, and Mr. Najib described the change in policy as a “tricky balancing act.”
Malaysia has long given ethnic Malays and members of other indigenous ethnic groups — known as bumiputra, or sons of the soil — political and economic privileges. But that system has come under strain amid growing resentment by minority groups and poorer Malays.
The government offers bumiputra discounts on houses, scholarships and other perks. But some benefits, like government contracts and stock-market allocations, have been beyond the reach of working-class Malays.
Anger among Chinese and Indians, the country’s main minority groups, over the ethnic preferences was perhaps the main reason that the opposition made large gains in elections last year that nearly dismantled the governing coalition led by Mr. Najib’s party, the United Malays National Organization.
“We want to be fair to all communities,” Mr. Najib said in a speech in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. “No one must feel marginalized.”
Mr. Najib’s success in rolling back the ethnic preferences will depend in large part on his ability to hold together his coalition and fend off a resurgent opposition led by Anwar Ibrahim, a former finance minister.
Mr. Anwar, who leads a diverse group of opposition parties, has promised to undo the system of ethnic preferences.
By positioning himself as a reformer, Mr. Najib, who came to power in April, appears to be calculating that he can stave off opposition advances and be seen as an agent of change.
“The world is changing quickly, and we must be ready to change with it or risk being left behind,” he said Tuesday.
The change would leave some ethnic preferences intact and come with caveats. But it would dilute one of the most important components of what is known as the New Economic Policy, introduced in 1971: the requirement that companies listing on the stock exchange sell 30 percent of their shares to ethnic Malays.
That requirement was scrapped for companies already listed on the stock exchange and reduced to 12.5 percent for initial public offerings. The requirement will remain in place for “strategic industries” like telecommunications, water, ports and energy.
Mr. Najib also said he would lower barriers for foreign investors. The government would eliminate a special vetting process for foreign companies wanting to invest in, merge or take over a Malaysian company, he said.
“The global economic crisis is amplifying the need to be a preferred investment destination,” he added.
Malaysia’s trade-dependent economy is expected to contract by 5 percent this year.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Hong Kong holds on to money-giving tradition
Hong Kong holds on to money-giving tradition
By Kari Lipschutz
Published: International Herald Tribune, January 26, 2009
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/26/asia/packet.1-413354.php
HONG KONG: Edith and Kenneth Chung look around their upscale restaurant in Hong Kong and see empty chairs.
These are lean times, but the Chungs will not cut back on the Lunar New Year tradition of giving red and gold envelopes containing small amounts of money, called “lai see” in Cantonese or “hong bao” in Mandarin, to family and friends who are less fortunate.
“People will not compromise lai see,” Edith Chung said. “It is good luck.”
With some trepidation, as bankers lose their jobs and manufacturers close factories, Hong Kongers are continuing the practice as they always have, considering the luck they hope to gain from giving to outweigh the financial cost.
This is a practice rooted in the ages. Before envelopes there were other tokens believed to be auspicious gifts. The exact origins of the red packets are not clear, but over time they have come to be an iconic symbol of luck and prosperity.
The Lunar New Year is a time to celebrate with family and the tradition of giving is an integral part of that, but the steadfast practice may only briefly mask problems that are expected to surface after the envelopes have been thrown away.
Simon Lam, professor of management at the University of Hong Kong, says businesses traditionally wait to announce bad news like layoffs and cutbacks until after the New Year celebrations have ended.
“The sentiment is that the worst is still to come in the first and second quarters of 2009,” he said. The Hong Kong economy entered a recession in early 2008.
It may be the Lunar New Year bonus, a holiday perk that is not associated with the envelopes and something not tied to tradition, that turns out to be a harbinger of what is to come for China's economy in the Year of the Ox.
Samuel Kam, chief executive of PowerNetix, a small IT company in Hong Kong, says the financial problems of the outside world have already started to affect his business.
“Customers were already cutting back the services they ordered at the end of last year,” he said. “Some of them have just disappeared altogether.”
For Kam, the financial burden is creating a situation where giving bonuses will not be guaranteed, but anyone receiving lai see from Kam might not know that his company is having problems.
“I will probably give the same amount in lai see, because the people I usually give to know me,” he said. He added that he would rather spend less on himself so he can maintain the same amount of lai see to people like his doorman.
A survey in Ming Pao, a Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong, found that more people will be giving out 10 Hong Kong-dollar notes, or $1.28, this year, the lowest socially acceptable amount to give.
The survey suggests that people are not necessarily giving out fewer envelopes, but may be putting less money in each one.
Whatever the survey's findings, many people like the Chungs say they are spending as they always have.
“We will give the same amount this year,” Chung said. “Giving money is lucky.”
By Kari Lipschutz
Published: International Herald Tribune, January 26, 2009
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/26/asia/packet.1-413354.php
HONG KONG: Edith and Kenneth Chung look around their upscale restaurant in Hong Kong and see empty chairs.
These are lean times, but the Chungs will not cut back on the Lunar New Year tradition of giving red and gold envelopes containing small amounts of money, called “lai see” in Cantonese or “hong bao” in Mandarin, to family and friends who are less fortunate.
“People will not compromise lai see,” Edith Chung said. “It is good luck.”
With some trepidation, as bankers lose their jobs and manufacturers close factories, Hong Kongers are continuing the practice as they always have, considering the luck they hope to gain from giving to outweigh the financial cost.
This is a practice rooted in the ages. Before envelopes there were other tokens believed to be auspicious gifts. The exact origins of the red packets are not clear, but over time they have come to be an iconic symbol of luck and prosperity.
The Lunar New Year is a time to celebrate with family and the tradition of giving is an integral part of that, but the steadfast practice may only briefly mask problems that are expected to surface after the envelopes have been thrown away.
Simon Lam, professor of management at the University of Hong Kong, says businesses traditionally wait to announce bad news like layoffs and cutbacks until after the New Year celebrations have ended.
“The sentiment is that the worst is still to come in the first and second quarters of 2009,” he said. The Hong Kong economy entered a recession in early 2008.
It may be the Lunar New Year bonus, a holiday perk that is not associated with the envelopes and something not tied to tradition, that turns out to be a harbinger of what is to come for China's economy in the Year of the Ox.
Samuel Kam, chief executive of PowerNetix, a small IT company in Hong Kong, says the financial problems of the outside world have already started to affect his business.
“Customers were already cutting back the services they ordered at the end of last year,” he said. “Some of them have just disappeared altogether.”
For Kam, the financial burden is creating a situation where giving bonuses will not be guaranteed, but anyone receiving lai see from Kam might not know that his company is having problems.
“I will probably give the same amount in lai see, because the people I usually give to know me,” he said. He added that he would rather spend less on himself so he can maintain the same amount of lai see to people like his doorman.
A survey in Ming Pao, a Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong, found that more people will be giving out 10 Hong Kong-dollar notes, or $1.28, this year, the lowest socially acceptable amount to give.
The survey suggests that people are not necessarily giving out fewer envelopes, but may be putting less money in each one.
Whatever the survey's findings, many people like the Chungs say they are spending as they always have.
“We will give the same amount this year,” Chung said. “Giving money is lucky.”
Saturday, January 10, 2009
In once-booming tea region, a bitter reality
EMBARGO: In once-booming tea region, a bitter reality
By Andrew Jacobs Published: International Herald Tribune, January 9, 2009
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/09/asia/tea.php
MENGHAI, China: Before American real estate prices deflated, before the stock market nose-dived and before the Ponzi-madness of Bernard Madoff, there was the Pu'er Tea Debacle of Menghai County.
Pu'er tea, a pleasantly aromatic beverage that boosters claim reduces cholesterol and cures hangovers, became the darling of the sipping classes in recent years as this nation's nouveaux riches embraced a distinctly Chinese way to display their wealth, and invest their savings. Between 1999 and 2007, the value of Pu'er, a fermented brew invented by Tang Dynasty traders, increased tenfold.
In mid-2007 the finest aged Pu'er changed hands for $150 a pound, or $330 a kilogram. Now it can be had for a tenth that price.
For tens of thousands of wholesalers, farmers and ordinary Chinese who poured their money into discs of compressed tea leaves, the crash of the Pu'er market has been nothing short of disastrous. Many investors had been led to believe that Pu'er prices could only go up.
“The saying around here was 'It's better to save Pu'er than to save money,”' said Wang Ruoyu, a longtime dealer in Xishuangbanna, the lush, tea-growing region of Yunnan Province that abuts the Burmese border. “Everyone thought they were going to get rich.”
Today in Asia & Pacific
Thailand already bouncing back with tourismBiden in Afghanistan for talksAt least 14 killed in Afghanistan violenceFermented tea was hardly the only caffeinated investment frenzy that swept China during its boom years. The urban middle class speculated mainly in stock and real estate, pushing prices to stratospheric levels before exports slumped, growth slowed and hundreds of billions of dollars in paper profits disappeared over the past year.
In the Pu'er belt of mountainous Yunnan Province, a cabal of manipulative buyers cornered the Pu'er market and drove the price to record levels, giving some ordinary farmers and traders a taste of the country's bubble - and its still bitter aftermath.
At least a third of the 3,000 tea manufacturers and merchants have called it quits in recent months. Farmers have begun replacing newly planted tea trees with more nourishing - and now, more lucrative - staples like corn and rice. Here in Menghai, the newly opened six-story emporium built to house hundreds of buyers and bundlers is a very lonely place.
“Most of us are ruined,” said Fu Wei, 43, one of the only tea traders brave enough to open a business in the empty complex. He sat in the cement hull of his shop - he cannot afford to finish the space - and cobwebs covered his shelf of treasured Pu'er cakes.
All around him, sitting on unsold sacks of tea, were idled farmers and merchants who bided their time playing cards, chain smoking and, of course, drinking endless cups of tea. “A lot of people behaved like idiots,” Fu said as he poured another round.
The pop of the Pu'er bubble is a cautionary tale of modern China, where a dearth of investment opportunities, an abundance of cash and a lack of government oversight allowed buyers to drive the price of Pu'er to obscene levels.
Wu Xiduan, secretary general of the Chinese Tea Circulation Association, said many naïve investors were taken in by the frenzied atmosphere, largely whipped up by out-of-town wholesalers who promoted Pu'er as drinkable gold and then bought up as much as they could, sometimes paying up to 30 percent more than the previous year. He said that as farmers planted more tea, production doubled from 2006 to 2007, to 100,000 tons. In the final, free-for-all months, some producers would ship their tea to Yunnan from other provinces, label it as Pu'er and then enjoy huge markups.
When values hit absurd levels last spring, the buyers unloaded their stocks and disappeared.
“The market was sensationalized on purpose,” Wu said, speaking in an interview from Beijing.
With its near-mythic aura, Pu'er is well-suited for hucksterism. The darling of emperors and imbued with vague medicinal powers, Pu'er was supposedly invented by eighth-century horseback traders who compressed the tea leaves into cakes for easier transport. Unlike other types of tea, which are consumed not long after harvest, Pu'er grows better with age. Prized vintages from the 19th century have sold for thousands of dollars a wedge.
Over the past decade, the industry has been shaped in ways that mirror the Western fetishization of wine. Sellers charge a premium for batches picked from older plants or, even better, “wild tea” trees that have survived the deforestation that scars much of the region. Connoisseurs talk about oxidation levels, loose-leaf versus compacted and whether the tea was harvested in the spring or the summer (spring tea, many believe, is more flavorful).
But with no empirical way to establish a tea's provenance, many buyers are easily duped.
“If you study Pu'er your whole life, you still can't recognize the differences in the teas,” said Wang, the tea buyer. “I tell people to just buy what tastes good and don't worry about anything else.”
Among those most bruised by the crash are the farmers of Menghai County, many of whom had never experienced the kind of prosperity common in China's cities. Villagers built two-story brick homes, filled them with televisions and refrigerators and sent their children to schools in the district capital. Flush with cash, scores of elderly residents made their first trips to Beijing.
“Everyone was wearing designer labels,” said Zhelu, a 22-year-old farmer, who is a member of the region's Hani minority and uses only one name. “A lot of people bought cars, but now we can't afford gas so we just park them.”
Last week, dozens of vibrantly dressed women from Xinlu sat on the side of the highway hawking their excess tea. There were few takers. The going rate, about $3 a pound, was less than a tenth of the peak price. The woman said that during the boom years, tea traders from Guangdong Province would come to their village and buy up everyone's harvest. This year, they simply didn't show.
Back at Menghai's forlorn “tea city,” Chen Li sat surrounded by what he said was $580,000 worth of product he bought before the crash. As he served an amber-hued seven-year-old variety, he described the manic days before Pu'er went bust. Hotels and restaurants were packed with out-of-town buyers and local banks, besieged by customers, were forced to halve the maximum withdrawal limit.
“People had to stand in line for four or five hours to get the money from the bank and you could often see people quarreling,” he said. “Even pedicab drivers were carrying tea samples and looking for clients on the street.”
A trader who jumped into the business three years ago, Chen survives by offsetting his losses with profits from a restaurant his family owns in Alabama. He also happens to be one of the few optimists in town. Now that so many farmers have stopped picking tea, he is confident that prices will rebound next year. As for the mounds of unsold tea that nearly enveloped him?
“The best thing about Pu'er,” he said with a showman's smile, “is that the longer you keep it, the more valuable it gets.”
By Andrew Jacobs Published: International Herald Tribune, January 9, 2009
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/09/asia/tea.php
MENGHAI, China: Before American real estate prices deflated, before the stock market nose-dived and before the Ponzi-madness of Bernard Madoff, there was the Pu'er Tea Debacle of Menghai County.
Pu'er tea, a pleasantly aromatic beverage that boosters claim reduces cholesterol and cures hangovers, became the darling of the sipping classes in recent years as this nation's nouveaux riches embraced a distinctly Chinese way to display their wealth, and invest their savings. Between 1999 and 2007, the value of Pu'er, a fermented brew invented by Tang Dynasty traders, increased tenfold.
In mid-2007 the finest aged Pu'er changed hands for $150 a pound, or $330 a kilogram. Now it can be had for a tenth that price.
For tens of thousands of wholesalers, farmers and ordinary Chinese who poured their money into discs of compressed tea leaves, the crash of the Pu'er market has been nothing short of disastrous. Many investors had been led to believe that Pu'er prices could only go up.
“The saying around here was 'It's better to save Pu'er than to save money,”' said Wang Ruoyu, a longtime dealer in Xishuangbanna, the lush, tea-growing region of Yunnan Province that abuts the Burmese border. “Everyone thought they were going to get rich.”
Today in Asia & Pacific
Thailand already bouncing back with tourismBiden in Afghanistan for talksAt least 14 killed in Afghanistan violenceFermented tea was hardly the only caffeinated investment frenzy that swept China during its boom years. The urban middle class speculated mainly in stock and real estate, pushing prices to stratospheric levels before exports slumped, growth slowed and hundreds of billions of dollars in paper profits disappeared over the past year.
In the Pu'er belt of mountainous Yunnan Province, a cabal of manipulative buyers cornered the Pu'er market and drove the price to record levels, giving some ordinary farmers and traders a taste of the country's bubble - and its still bitter aftermath.
At least a third of the 3,000 tea manufacturers and merchants have called it quits in recent months. Farmers have begun replacing newly planted tea trees with more nourishing - and now, more lucrative - staples like corn and rice. Here in Menghai, the newly opened six-story emporium built to house hundreds of buyers and bundlers is a very lonely place.
“Most of us are ruined,” said Fu Wei, 43, one of the only tea traders brave enough to open a business in the empty complex. He sat in the cement hull of his shop - he cannot afford to finish the space - and cobwebs covered his shelf of treasured Pu'er cakes.
All around him, sitting on unsold sacks of tea, were idled farmers and merchants who bided their time playing cards, chain smoking and, of course, drinking endless cups of tea. “A lot of people behaved like idiots,” Fu said as he poured another round.
The pop of the Pu'er bubble is a cautionary tale of modern China, where a dearth of investment opportunities, an abundance of cash and a lack of government oversight allowed buyers to drive the price of Pu'er to obscene levels.
Wu Xiduan, secretary general of the Chinese Tea Circulation Association, said many naïve investors were taken in by the frenzied atmosphere, largely whipped up by out-of-town wholesalers who promoted Pu'er as drinkable gold and then bought up as much as they could, sometimes paying up to 30 percent more than the previous year. He said that as farmers planted more tea, production doubled from 2006 to 2007, to 100,000 tons. In the final, free-for-all months, some producers would ship their tea to Yunnan from other provinces, label it as Pu'er and then enjoy huge markups.
When values hit absurd levels last spring, the buyers unloaded their stocks and disappeared.
“The market was sensationalized on purpose,” Wu said, speaking in an interview from Beijing.
With its near-mythic aura, Pu'er is well-suited for hucksterism. The darling of emperors and imbued with vague medicinal powers, Pu'er was supposedly invented by eighth-century horseback traders who compressed the tea leaves into cakes for easier transport. Unlike other types of tea, which are consumed not long after harvest, Pu'er grows better with age. Prized vintages from the 19th century have sold for thousands of dollars a wedge.
Over the past decade, the industry has been shaped in ways that mirror the Western fetishization of wine. Sellers charge a premium for batches picked from older plants or, even better, “wild tea” trees that have survived the deforestation that scars much of the region. Connoisseurs talk about oxidation levels, loose-leaf versus compacted and whether the tea was harvested in the spring or the summer (spring tea, many believe, is more flavorful).
But with no empirical way to establish a tea's provenance, many buyers are easily duped.
“If you study Pu'er your whole life, you still can't recognize the differences in the teas,” said Wang, the tea buyer. “I tell people to just buy what tastes good and don't worry about anything else.”
Among those most bruised by the crash are the farmers of Menghai County, many of whom had never experienced the kind of prosperity common in China's cities. Villagers built two-story brick homes, filled them with televisions and refrigerators and sent their children to schools in the district capital. Flush with cash, scores of elderly residents made their first trips to Beijing.
“Everyone was wearing designer labels,” said Zhelu, a 22-year-old farmer, who is a member of the region's Hani minority and uses only one name. “A lot of people bought cars, but now we can't afford gas so we just park them.”
Last week, dozens of vibrantly dressed women from Xinlu sat on the side of the highway hawking their excess tea. There were few takers. The going rate, about $3 a pound, was less than a tenth of the peak price. The woman said that during the boom years, tea traders from Guangdong Province would come to their village and buy up everyone's harvest. This year, they simply didn't show.
Back at Menghai's forlorn “tea city,” Chen Li sat surrounded by what he said was $580,000 worth of product he bought before the crash. As he served an amber-hued seven-year-old variety, he described the manic days before Pu'er went bust. Hotels and restaurants were packed with out-of-town buyers and local banks, besieged by customers, were forced to halve the maximum withdrawal limit.
“People had to stand in line for four or five hours to get the money from the bank and you could often see people quarreling,” he said. “Even pedicab drivers were carrying tea samples and looking for clients on the street.”
A trader who jumped into the business three years ago, Chen survives by offsetting his losses with profits from a restaurant his family owns in Alabama. He also happens to be one of the few optimists in town. Now that so many farmers have stopped picking tea, he is confident that prices will rebound next year. As for the mounds of unsold tea that nearly enveloped him?
“The best thing about Pu'er,” he said with a showman's smile, “is that the longer you keep it, the more valuable it gets.”
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