Tell it to Steven Hawking. A person's physical stature does not limit his/her potential for work that does not rely on his/her physical stature (e.g., English teaching, as well as physics). The cultural attitude that those who are discriminated against because they do not fit the culturally desired norm should be outcast or should be provided for by special environments that can be sold as entertainment venues to those who will not deal with their own prejudices is a cultural attitude that perpetuates discrimination against all who are 'different'. The problem here, as elsewhere, is a matter of dehumanizing those who are 'different' - prejudicial culture that regiments anything that deviates from its standards, rather than dealing with the prejudice itself. Why not have a theme park within which 'foreigners', with all their funny habits, can be kept, so that they do not disturb the 'normality' of cultural prejudices? Actually, there could be many: one for 'black people', one for Tibetans, one for Japanese, one for gay people, one for Han Chinese people who have given up their 'traditional' clothing for 'western-style' clothing (e.g., the great majority of Chinese, over the past century or so) - in fact we could subdivide and subdivide until nothing was left but mutual nonrecognition. All these would help to maintain the narrow identities of 'normality' that can be relied upon to advance support the cultural attitudes that promote the continuing inability of people to recognize each other as human, and to celebrate and accept their differences - not as entertainment items, no matter how 'cute', but as full human beings. How different is all this from apartheid?
This effort to maintain prejudice can, of course, be profitable to those who invest in it, and convenient for social engineers and political elites who want to maintain an elite power status by reliance on it.
The place is an insult to our common humanity and a spotlight on cultural attitudes of exclusion. Those who find that they enjoy such displays should take a good look at the nature of the culture that has formed them so narrowly. Cultures change; cultures have always changed; cultures are presently changing and will continue to do so; there is nothing sacred about cultural attitudes. Our common humanity is an ongoing project, and those who imagine they are not part of such a project are simply contributing their own blindness to it, and limiting themselves in the process. It's not the 'dwarves' who are the problem, its the people who will not accept them as within the boundaries of 'us'.
Yunnan could hold model for China's labor camp reforms
发布者A move in the right direction: disallow the cops from sending people who have not been tried for any crime to up to 4 years of forced labor. I wonder why they didn't think of that before.
Report: Yunnan drug war "extremely dangerous"
发布者I wish journalists would stop using the category 'drugs', or even 'illegal drugs', as if it explained what the substances are and what they do (are we talking about weed or smack? or perhaps whiskey, in some countries?) - it instills a very ambiguous category into the human brain, so that it can't think clearly (ie., similar to many 'drugs' which have the advantage of wearing off after awhile, besides the fact that the 'drug' user KNOWS that he's inflicted weirdness upon himself). And at any rate, there's no excuse for the state in which we live to go about executing people, China has plenty of prisons, and my thought would be to decrease the number of killings, intentional or otherwise, not increase them.
Yuxi university working to preserve minority languages
发布者I agree with szbruce - the idea of using hanyu pinyin would, however, perhaps encourage any non-mother-tongue users of the language (such as most Chinese, and non-Chinese who don't go to IPA (as most won't)) to pronounce it in a similar manner to the pronunciation of Chinese, and so in this way to move in the direction of a 'sinicization' of the languages (essentially, to make Han Chinese a sort of standard for these languages). This sounds suspiciously like a nationalist move, and perhaps that is what is intended.
Jianshui: southern Yunnan's cultural gem
发布者Some years ago (maybe 4) one could/couldn't actually stay at Zhu Family Gdns (unless you were some kinda government bigshot), but it is perhaps a hotel now?
Kunming Environmental Court toiling in obscurity
发布者If the 6 people on this court's staff are indeed serious about what they are trying to do, I really feel for them, as the priorities for 'development' run straight counter to them. Keep up the good work, and perhaps it might be best if these folks didn't keep too much booze around the house, especially if they live alone.