The LongBow Papers

Liberal-oriented columns, commentary and archived articles on national and international news, politics, and the communication arts--with emphasis on China--by Joseph Bosco, author, journalist, director and actor; Professor of Drama and Communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Monday, January 23, 2006

Faye Sander 1909 - 2006

8:55 AM

Faye Sander at her 96th birthday party.
Ellen's mother, Faye Sander, a little over two months shy of her 97th birthday, passed away in her sleep some time Saturday morning, January 21, in New York City. Words fail me at the moment, I loved her so. Therefore, I am going to let Alfred Lord Tennyson speak for me. Below is the poem Ellen and I read to each other several times yesterday:

Crossing The Bar

By Alfred Lord Tennyson

Sunset and evening star,
and one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

Ellen and I are flying out of Beijing at 2:00 p.m. today. We will be in New York for a week to ten days.

8:55 AM / Editor / permalink 1 comments

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Dying for 'Face' in the New China

7:08 PM

That's a dramatic photograph above, no doubt. Yet its impetus is so common in China today that total strangers from totally diverse cultures can joke about it and not feel like they're whistling past a graveyard.

A brief digression, please: Thursday, during the first really snowy day we've had in Beijing this winter, professor and author Russell Leigh Moses and I were having one of our best teach-Bosco strolls through Beijing's central hutongs when Russ, who is beyond just fluent in Mandarin--and other dialects--struck up a conversation with a bricklayer who along with a crew of four or five colleagues was meticulously putting up an outside addition wall on a fairly well preserved courtyard home.

Aside from the complex pleasantries that almost always occur in such encounters--a 6'5" New Englander who walks the talk and talks the walk is more than just an oddity to many Chinese--we learned that the bricklayer and his crew were trying to earn money quickly before returning to their hometowns to celebrate Spring Festival with the family and friends they'd left behind months before with a wish and a promise. Not surprisingly, we learned through jocular banter that he and his colleagues were not at all sure their part-time employer would actually pay them when the work was finished.

After a brief but lively discussion concerning why his photograph was taken, his reluctance to be photographed at all, and the politely deflected suggestion that some amount of RMB would mitigate that reluctance, Russ and I walked on discussing the phenomenon of migrant workers being suckered by opportunists who know how desperate many are for cash in the weeks before Spring Festival. Russ explained how great the loss of face would be if the workers returned home without money. Later that evening, Dr. Moses e-mailed the photograph above and the caption below, which he had translated from a Chinese publication.

Driven to despair: Rescuers haul a man to safety after he attempted to jump from a Chongqing rooftop in a suicide bid after claiming his employer refused to pay him. About 140 million migrant workers are owed back pay, which reached 33 billion yuan in 2003. Agence France-Presse photo

As explained, the article the photograph accompanied was in Chinese; the Reuters article excerpted and linked to below was not.

No new year cheer for Chinese migrant workers

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - Wei Zebo normally can't wait to go home for Chinese New Year at the end of January. Only this year he doesn't dare.

Like 60 of his construction worker colleagues, he is locked in a dispute with his former employer over back pay worth some 100,000 yuan ($12,390).

"I haven't plucked up the courage to tell my family. I can't go back without the money," said Wei, 35, sitting huddled in a tiny freezing room lit by a single, dim, bare bulb in a gritty, working class area of Beijing.

"Look -- I'm all packed," said the native of the northern province of Hebei, gesturing to a small pile of cheap-looking hold-alls sitting atop a bed covered with a filthy quilt. "I just need to be paid."

Wei's case is typical of a larger problem in China, where millions of migrant workers from poor rural areas have flocked to cities to find work, hoping to enjoy some of the fruits of an economy clocking near double-digit growth.

Continue reading at: Reuters

7:08 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Friday, January 13, 2006

A Winter's Moment in Beijing

8:40 PM

The ersatz Russian old dude notwithstanding, this photograph by Russ Moses captures a particular moment all but perfectly--I know, I was there. We are close to an important Confucian temple, and not far from one of the most significant Buddhist temples in Beijing -- so where are we?

If you are the first to answer correctly, you get to buy the piping hot platters of freshly made jiaozi on a day of your choice at surely the best restaurant you've never heard of--bring your big bucks, though, for three of us it will cost about 18 Yuan, total.

8:40 PM / Editor / permalink 2 comments

Monday, January 09, 2006

Bosco Finally Outed: He Is a "Fellow Traveler," and Probably Worse

5:52 PM

Whether you hate me and what I stand for, like me, or don't give a damn one way or the other (obviously, the larger category), I am certain you will enjoy an article I link to below. But, first, a bit of explanation is in order.

If you make your living in the public eye, Google has an invaluable service called Google Alert, which will notify you via e-mail when something is written about you and published on the Internet. It is quite handy. Sometimes it is an absolute hoot, which is the case in this instance.

Without much comment from me beforehand, I am going to excerpt and then link to a wild-eyed Cold Warrior's wonderfully scathing critique of this reporter's writing and politics.

An American 'Fellow-Traveler' of Chinese Dictatorship

Lev Navrozov

From time to time, I read on-line the People's Daily, the Chinese Communist Party's Pravda and from its Pravda-like propaganda. I often learn more than from studies published by Western scholars with strings of degrees.

Thus, the other day I saw in it an announcement: "Featured Articles," and one of these was entitled, "The Greatness of China," which I clicked.

It was authored not by a top member of the Chinese Communist Party, but by Joseph Bosco, introduced by the People's Daily as a "widely published American nonfiction book writer, novelist, poet, and veteran journalist."

As far as his income in China is concerned, the dictators of China pay Bosco as a professor of a Chinese university and probably for his articles in their People's Daily.

Please continue reading at NewsMax.com:

There are a few amazing aspects to this phenomenon, one of the most salient is that I had no idea that People's Daily was grabbing stuff off of my site, and perhaps elsewhere, and publishing it on theirs. I am certainly not offended, mind you, but a modest payment would be appreciated.

Also, I am not sure if I am prouder of this distinction or being named Italian-American of the Year, 1997 in Los Angeles; L.A. Weekly's award as Muckraker of the Year, 1996; or establishing new law that book authors are journalists and protected by Reporter's Shield Laws, 1994; directing David Sheffield's play "Cenna Cycle" as an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans, 1976; being a New York cab driver, on and off from 1969 to 1973; or losing only one football game in three years as an Ocean Springs Greyhound from 1963 to 1965...or being the son of Frank A. Bosco, who some 50 year's ago was attacked in much the same manner by McCarthyites for simply stating the reality that the world's most populous nation should be in the U.N., etc., ...

5:52 PM / Editor / permalink 3 comments

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Happy Birthday to Ellen

1:28 PM

Above is my favorite current photograph of my beautiful, loving wife, Ellen Sander Bosco (I couldn't crop out the old dude next to her); and below is my favorite picture of Ellen from decades ago, when she was one of the most famous young writers in America, doing a bit of proud gardening in Marin County, California, circa 1970.

Today is her birthday. You can plainly see she is as gorgeous today as she was way back when. In all of the truly wonderful and important ways she hasn't changed a bit.

Happy Birthday Darling!

1:28 PM / Editor / permalink 1 comments