1. I do not understand the relevance of what does or doesn't go on in the U.S. to this discussion.
2. 'Voluntarily' traveling to work and live in the Dwarf Empire is not entirely voluntary, as an above message itself: the message mentions how poorly small people are treated when applying for other jobs - i.e., the problem is one of establishing a level playing field in the society itself - dwarf kingdoms etc. are merely escapes, which increase the public attitude that these people are a globally 'special' group who can perform cuddly roles, etc., for tourist amusement, and can't do anything else.
Yunnan could hold model for China's labor camp reforms
Posted byA 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"
Posted byI 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
Posted byI 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
Posted bySome 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
Posted byIf 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.