I found this great picture and a translation of the story behind it, by taking a tip from Virtual China today. I became a member of the chinesecontent space at Wikispaces. While this is a space mainly for a translators, there are many connections to a community of “bridge bloggers.” For example, Rebecca Mackinnon’s blog has a great list of some of the most famous Chinese-English “bridge bloggers,” bringing articles, blog posts, conversations, and debates from the Chinese-language Internet to the attention of the English-speaking world, particularly stuff that might “help the English-speaking world to understand China better.” They include LfC, Danwei, Interlocals, the China Media Project, and China Digital Times for starters.
I found the story listed on ESWN, a great bridge blog with many translations and interesting stories. The translation of this story is in Peering.Into.The.Interior. PITI writes “é’‰å户 ï¼ literally means ‘a slug house’ but it means someone who refuses to move out from their house. I have translated it as a ‘holdout,’ there might be a better translation but its all I could think of.” The whole story of “China’s Most Incredible Holdout,” is an interesting investigation of how this picture that first appeared on the web Feb 26th went viral, and how the original story was lost, elaborated on, and then pieced together and rediscovered by Chinese netizens. The original can be found here.
To check out “bridge blogs” from around the world go to Global Voices’ daily “Global Links†section. (â€Bridge blogs†are blogs from a country or region that speak to a global audience).
March 10th, 2007 at 4:15 am
Now that’s a great picture! That’s one effective way of making a statement heh.
March 10th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
I really am enjoying your content. Please keep blogging! Thanks.
March 14th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Thanks for the link and comment, Tish. interesting indeed….
March 14th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Fascinating story on how this story evolved and spread. Thanks for bridge blogging!
March 15th, 2007 at 7:06 am
Hey UgoTrade, thanks so much for the clarification of this story that you posted on Scoopit. I lived in Asia for nearly 20 years, and saw a lot of crazy things, but this takes the cake. Nice bit of detective work you’ve done in piecing together the background.
March 22nd, 2007 at 1:21 am
I have done a translation of an interview with the homeowner, really interesting.
http://venture160.wordpress.com/2007/03/22/interview-with-chinas-most-incredible-holdout/
March 22nd, 2007 at 12:13 pm
That is one remarkable story, and definitely not the kind of piece you’d normally hear about in today’s bite-sized journalism atmosphere, where foreign bureaus are being sliced and diced down to maybe one reporter and a tapedeck.
This is the kind of stuff that will keep me coming back.