Chris Trotman / Getty Images

Fans cheer on Jeremy Lin against the Sacramento Kings at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday.

BEIJING — He means something to many people: Asian Americans, underdogs, geeks, Ivy Leaguers, sports fans, Christians, anyone who loves a great story.

But Jeremy Lin — the Harvard graduate of Chinese descent born in Palo Alto, California, to Taiwan parents — is not the same thing to all Chinese.

If ever there were one event that has the potential to show how fractured Chinese communities can be, "Linsanity" — or linfengkuang in Chinese — might be it.

For days now, we in Beijing have been fielding emails from our U.S. colleagues: “Hey, we hear Lin’s big in China now?  He’s on the cover of the New York Post!”  “The NY Knicks player is having a Cinderella week… he’s being noticed/watched in China….”

For the record, yes, he’s big in mainland China. 

It’s been widely reported that his Sina Weibo account (a popular Chinese version of Twitter) clocked more than a million followers as he led the Knicks to victory over the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday — more than doubling the number he had the night he faced off with Kobe Bryant and the Lakers last Friday.

Perfect storm continues for Jeremy Lin

On Taobao, China’s leading e-commerce site, shoppers can buy copies of Lin’s Knicks jersey and t-shirts and sweatshirts bearing his number “17.”  A quick look suggests the merchandise isn’t moving as briskly as Weibo messages about the athlete, but it’s an impressive range of goods nonetheless.  In the brick and mortar world, however, his jersey — even counterfeit versions — is said to be selling out.

But mainland China is also very big.

Let’s go back to Weibo.  Lin’s following, large as it sounds, is still just a fraction of some high-profile mainland Chinese.  Pan Shiyi — a Beijing-based property mogul some people liken to Donald Trump — has 8.6 million followers.  Hong Huang — a publisher and commentator who is often described as the "Oprah of China" — has four million.  Lee Kai-fu, the former head of Google China, has 11 million.

The comparisons may be unfair since none of these Chinese are athletes and all have had profiles on Weibo for longer.  But high-profile mainland athletes like Yao Ming, Guo Jingjing (the glamorous Olympic gold-medallist female diver), Liu Xiang (the Olympic gold-medallist hurdler) don’t have a presence on Weibo.  Only Yi Jianlian has a profile; the mainland Chinese NBA athlete who plays for the Dallas Mavericks has 6.5 million followers.

In the offline world, Lin’s name is not on everyone’s lips the way it seems in the U.S.  It’s not perfect evidence, but a random sampling of Beijing taxi drivers, normally glued to radio news, this morning came up blank.  “We only know Yao Ming,” said one cabbie.

PhotoBlog: Lin leads Knicks to 7th win in a row

There’s been steady speculation about why China’s state-run media has been muted with its reporting on the Lin phenomenon and why CCTV — normally awash with NBA coverage — has not been broadcasting his games.  (New York City Time Warner subscribers, we share your pain.)

 “Mr Lin is a trickier fit for Beijing’s propagandists,” one Western report noted.  “His Christianity is perhaps more awkward for China’s atheist Communist rulers. While Beijing officially sanctions some churches, it frowns on the spontaneous professions of love for God that pepper Mr Lin’s postgame comments.”

Lin’s success has also raised the inevitable and perhaps unwelcome question (at least in the mainland) “Could China, an Olympic powerhouse and homeland of Yao Ming, produce such a gifted, confident point guard?”  As the journalist pointed out, not for now.  Not given the state-run sports industry or its rigid approach to training and talent-spotting. 

China's president-in-waiting returns to Iowa

Then, of course, there’s the fact Lin’s parents come from Taiwan, which has engaged in a fractious rivalry with mainland China for nearly 70 years.  Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province while the latter regards itself an independent nation.

Tug o’ war over the favorite son
Over the weekend, folks in China’s Zhejiang Province, the ancestral home of the athlete’s maternal grandmother, laid claim to him.   And today, a local newspaper re-posted photos from Lin’s visit to his mother’s hometown last May. 

The accompanying article opens with the following lines: “Lin Shuhao became famous overnight.  But what we here are more proud of is his roots here in Pinghu.”  It concludes with a quote from Lin’s mother saying the family might return to Pinghu again this summer.

The media in Taiwan — which has hailed Lin as one of their own — have taken notice.  Local newspapers on the island today went on a blitzkrieg to assert Lin’s Taiwan identity, quoting family relatives, and also claimed Lin might visit the island this summer.  The coverage followed a report in the New York Times, which quoted Lin’s uncle in Taiwan as saying about the Knicks player and his parents, “For sure, they are Taiwanese.”

Sam Yeh / AFP - Getty Images

Jeremy Lin featured on the front page of many newspapers in Taipei, Taiwan, on Sunday.

Since Lin’s debut for the Knicks on February 4^th, Taiwan’s local media have given the overnight sensation blanket coverage, and there has been no problem catching any of his games live on television.  “They’re broadcast live in the morning,” one of my uncles who has spent the past month in Taipei told me.  “And then they’re shown twice again later in the day.  And every newscast has packaged highlights of every game.”

And, yet, something still seems to ring hollow about the mainland's or Taiwan's scramble to call Lin one of their own.  One of the mainland Chinese readers who responded to the local Zhejiang newspaper report put it succinctly: "He's American.  You should be ashamed of yourself trying to dig up his maternal ancestral grave."  In fact, many Chinese--in dismissing comparisons between Lin and Yao Ming--have argued that Lin is distinctly American, has nothing to do with China, and didn't experience the cultural and language adjustment that Yao underwent when he moved to the U.S. to play in the NBA.

But then there are the American-born Chinese (ABCs).

'A watershed moment'
Judging by the flood of columns by Chinese-American commentators, Lin’s success means more to this cohort than any other community:

Eric Liu: “[The Knicks fans’] embrace of Lin has made millions of Asian Americans feel vicariously, thrillingly embraced. Not invisible. Not presumed foreign. Just part of the team, belonging in the game. It’s felt like a breakout moment: for Lin, for Asian America and, thus, for America.”

Jeff Yang: “It’s hard not to feel like this isn’t a watershed moment. Hard not to feel like this is historic. Hard not to think that we’re at the cusp of an actual tectonic shift in the culture, when an Asian American “kid” could be the unquestioned king of one of the most storied franchises in sports, the guy that every guy in the room wishes he could meet and every kid in the room wants to group up to be.”

Ling Woo Liu: “For those who've been following the campaign ad controversies as well as the [Harry] Lew and [Danny] Chen cases, Lin's meteoric rise has been a much-needed sign of hope.

Bryan Chu: “Some might say, why didn’t Yao Ming evoke this type of emotion in you?  The difference is that Jeremy is one of us. He was born in the U.S. He was that kid who got straight A’s in school. He was the one that worked at his high school student newspaper. He has a bit of an Americanized accent when he speaks Mandarin. He had a pipe dream of making it to the NBA. He’s humble and sometimes misperceived as a shy, Asian kid who shows flashes of brilliance and then finally explodes on the scene when he’s given a chance. He’s the guy friend who, if he needs a place to crash, will be thankful for a couch.”

With additional reporting by Bo Gu.

A photo from August 2011 shows an aerial view of Central District in Hong Kong, China.

Hong Kong means “fragrant harbor” in Cantonese, but to me as a young girl in the 1980s it meant “mysterious dream.”  

My family, like millions of others in mainland China, didn’t own a television at the time. But the most enjoyable after-school activity for me and my friends was to go to the home of our one neighbor who actually had a TV to watch Hong Kong kung-fu series.

He had a black-and-white TV, but managed to make it look like a colored one by gluing a few translucent colored plastic straps on the screen. We were happy enough with a fake colored TV. We were also all fascinated by the Hong Kong soap operas. None of us could speak a word of Cantonese (the dialect spoken in Hong Kong), but we all could sing a few songs in perfect Cantonese; the shows’ themes songs played repeatedly on TV.

People talked about Hong Kong like it was a paradise of milk and honey: “Mr. Li got a new watch from his relative in Hong Kong! Look at him!”

We also heard stories of mainlanders swimming across the sea between neighboring Guangdong province to sneak into Hong Kong, seeking asylum or a free life.   

In those old days, Hong Kong was a land of “capitalist” treasure, closed off to mainlanders like me, but open to the rest of world. Hong Kong was a lofty faraway dream that none of us thought would ever come true for us.
 
Just a few years later, every family in my hometown could afford to buy a TV, a refrigerator, and a telephone. Some richer ones even got themselves video cassette players.  

Then on July 1, 1997, we were told that Hong Kong was finally handed back to China after 100 years of British colonial rule. We were told to be proud of the return of the lost land cut off from its mother ship for a century.

It’s true that since Hong Kong’s handover it is no longer such a mystery – but in many ways it is still a world away for many mainland Chinese.

Not so open for mainlanders
For instance, on a recent trip, I left Beijing one hour earlier than my American colleague – but she arrived in Hong Kong several hours before me. She was able to hop a flight directly from Beijing to Hong Kong, but because I’m from a small city in mainland China, I was denied that privilege.

Not every mainlander can go to Hong Kong anytime they wish. For starters, they need a special blue pass that is issued only for trips to Hong Kong and nearby Macau. Like a regular China passport, this special pass is only given out by local police in the person’s hometown.

Take me, for example. Even though I have been living in Beijing for many years, I have to fly back to my hometown to apply for that blue pass. (I could apply for one in Beijing if I had Beijing residency, but I don’t and it is extremely hard to obtain.)
 
And – unlike my American colleague or most visitors other countries – I need a visa to go to Hong Kong.

Someone like me, who doesn’t have relatives or a business in Hong Kong, can only get a seven-day group tourist visa to visit. Individual tourist visas are only available to residents of many Guangdong province cities, such as nearby Shenzhen, and big cities in other provinces.

So to get there for our recent assignment, I had to fly to Shenzhen, known for its cheap labor and numerous factories. From there I took a bus from Shenzhen airport to the Shenzhen side of the Hong Kong border, where I met a travel agent.

The agent filled out a form to show the company had organized a “tour group” for me. Then he took me to the border inspection, where the officer stamped the form and my blue pass.

The border officer, the agent and I all knew I wasn’t joining any “tour group.” Everyone knew I was going to Hong Kong on my own. But I had to detour first through Shenzhen, with its population of 15 million, because I’m from a smaller faraway city (population of 3 million), not Beijing or Shanghai or Guangzhou.

Anchor baby battle: Hong Kong vs. China

Biggest surprise: bookstores
Hong Kong didn’t strike me as anything special when I first saw it in person. I had seen the city so many times on TV.

But certain things did surprise me. I was stunned by its bookstores: biographies of Chinese politicians, memoirs of dissidents, books about corruption and power struggles between Chinese officials were openly available. I could find any of the books normally banned in China.

I also noticed Hong Kong has the fastest escalators I’ve ever seen. There, everyone walks fast. Nobody would stop for me and my colleague when we tried to interview people on the street. In fact they didn’t even look at us. They were always rushing as if they had very important business to take care of.
 
The variety of food and drink in Hong Kong is also amazing, but it’s much more expensive than in Beijing and Shanghai. That doesn’t stop tons of mainlanders from buying it though. They come here to buy iPhones, computers, high-end cosmetics and expensive clothes.  The mainland might have been Hong Kong’s poor cousin for decades, but with mainlanders’ new-found wealth things have completely changed – almost.

There is still an impression in Hong Kong that their nouveau riche cousins have a bit of impolite country bumpkin in them.

Once when I entered Hong Kong I was struck by a sign on the wall: “Please cover your mouth when you sneeze.”  This is a sign I have never seen in the mainland.

In fact, during all my 16 years of mainland education, not a single teacher or parent ever told students, “don’t spit in public” or “wait in line.” There was no such thing as etiquette education back then.

I don’t know what’s going on in schools now, but I certainly hope the children in kindergarten these days are told to cover their mouths when they sneeze. (And I find it funny when I hear that Hong Kongers criticize mainlanders for being “loud.” I have the impression that the Cantonese are the loudest people in the world.)

Some friends tell me the recent tension between Hong Kong people and mainlanders – over issues like birth rights – is exaggerated by the media. Some other mainland friends say they clearly feel the hostility expressed by the locals. Some scholars say it is actually a conflict between Western and Eastern cultures, due to Hong Kong’s colonial past and international flavor.

Exaggerated or not, I sure don’t want to be called a “locust,” an insult currently being hurled at mainlanders by their Hong Kong brethren.  

Many mainlanders yearn to have the same lifestyle as Hong Kong people have –just like the one Hong Kongers pursued all those decades when they left mainland China.

Bobby Yip / Reuters

A villager shows off his ballot before dropping it into the ballot box beside an election worker at a polling station at a school in Wukan village in Guangdong province on Feb. 1.

BEIJING – Wukan, a village in Guangdong province in southern China, is making headlines again – this time for taking the first steps toward open and transparent elections, which 7,688 villagers participated in on Wednesday.

Wukan was in the spotlight late last year for a high-profile protest by villagers against local officials believed to be illegally selling public land to developers. 

The 11-day rebellion was defused peacefully in late December after senior Communist Party officials reached an agreement with Wukan’s protest leaders – promising free elections and an investigation into the murky real-estate deals. They also promised to investigate the death of a protester who had died in police custody.

In another surprise, the local Communist Party appointed Lin Zuluan, one of the well-respected leaders of the defiant revolt, as the village party secretary. So Lin served as the chief in command for the first balloting that took place in the Wukan Elementary School Wednesday.

Villagers gathered in a festive scene to cast votes, for many the first time ever, to select an independent election committee to oversee upcoming ballots.  

Initial steps
Dozens of aluminum ballot boxes were placed around classrooms at the elementary school and students were mobilized to help count the ballots before they were distributed. Teachers helped elderly villagers who could not read or write.  A media counter was set up outside the school, and journalists were allowed in after registration.

“My biggest impression here at Wukan is that the atmosphere here is very different from any other Chinese villages,” one Chinese reporter at the scene wrote on Sina Weibo, the Chinese microblog. “The people here are very used to foreign journalists walking around filming. The village committee is open to everyone. Every family invites you to go to their house to stay, to eat or to drink tea. Brave and lucky Wukan villagers made their home different than any other Chinese villages with the same problems.”

Str / AFP - Getty Images

Residents register before casting their votes during the first-ever open democratic elections for the village committee in Wukan, in China's Guangdong province, on Feb. 1.

The election lasted nine hours (with a two-hour break). It began at 9 a.m. with the national anthem playing and fireworks being set off – a Chinese tradition during the new lunar year.

The final results came at 11 p.m.: Out of the 50 candidates, 11 (including one woman) were elected to be on the election committee.

The new members will be responsible for organizing an upcoming election for the Wukan Village Committee. They will devise a plan for the election process; mobilize and familiarize the villagers with the new plan; scrutinize and publish the candidate list; and, most importantly, organize the villagers to vote. The election is due to start in early March.

Not a new idea
Village-level elections are not a new concept to Chinese people, but seldom are they transparent or democratic. The Communist Party still maintains single-party authority across the government – from Beijing to the smallest village – and has absolute control.

There have been experiments with grassroots elections since the 1980s – the outcome is usually just pre-determined from above. Representatives are often appointed by higher-level government officials and the process is usually murky or manipulated.

In Wukan, the former village head had been in power for 40 years without ever being properly elected. He was accused of misappropriating public land and embezzling compensation money that belonged to villagers.

So many are hopeful Wukan’s experiment will spread.

“Wukan is a start of China’s local political reform! I hope to see a real self-rule in the countryside,” wrote a Weibo user going by the name “Orient leaping towards wealth."

Str / AFP - Getty Images

A Chinese man fills out his voting form as residents cast their votes during the first-ever open democratic elections for the village committee in Wukan, China on Feb. 1.

The user added, “Villagers that have both traditional legal culture and modern citizen spirit, they are the hope of China’s democracy.”
‘An experiment in democracy’
But others are not so sure about declaring a democratic victory in Wukan.

Chang Ping, a veteran journalist based in Hong Kong who has been closely following events in Wukan, is not so optimistic about its future.

“Their path is not going to be very smooth. The Guangdong government was smart about not cracking down with violence like other local governments, but that doesn’t mean they agree with complete self-rule. They will try to absorb Wukan into their old system, which they can still control. If that happens, the election will be the same election happening everywhere else,” Chang told NBC News in a phone interview. “Wukan’s protest has no end. Democracy doesn’t arrive just because you had three months of protest.”

However, Chang agreed that the event is revolutionary – if only as an exercise in how elections are supposed to work.

“Most of the elections we see are usually manipulated or the villagers don’t really know what their vote means. But Wukan villagers have their own understanding of voting, after their protest to finally obtain this right,” said Chang.  “It is an experiment in democracy, and it will affect other places in China.”

Related stories on Wukan:

Photo Blog: Chinese village takes halting democratic step

Rebellious Chinese village under siege by police

Villagers defiant as government creates new narrative

A contagion of conflict in China?

Adrienne Mong

Dozens of police barricaded a highway entrance ramp in Haimen, where protests broke out on Tuesday.

By Adrienne Mong and Bo Gu

HAIMEN, Guangdong Province—It wouldn’t have been fair or accurate to call it a China Spring, but for a moment it was worth wondering: Was this the beginning of a Guangdong Spring?

Since September, residents in a fishing village called Wukan, in the southern coastal province of Guangdong, had been protesting against their local government over, specifically, illegal land grabs and, more generally, corruption.  This was a town where one man had held sway as the Communist Party chief for four decades.

The situation grew explosive two weekends ago when one of the protest organizers died in police custody, triggering a widespread and cohesive revolt that saw thousands of people run the local officials and police out of town—the first time the Communist Party appeared to have lost total control of a town.

The authorities responded by laying siege on Wukan, preventing food and other supplies from reaching the 20,000-strong population, and censoring all mention of the latest developments in Chinese media or on the Internet.  In turn, the residents welcomed foreign and Hong Kong journalists to cover their plight.

Negotiations between the two sides kicked into high gear even as the situation escalated. The villagers threatened to march to the government offices of a nearby town unless their demands were met, potentially pitting them against thousands of riot and paramilitary police deployed along the main road leading in and out of Wukan.

In the end, cooler tempers prevailed amidst government compromises, but just as the Wukan standoff appeared to ease, reports of more protests nearby surfaced on Tuesday on the Internet.

Suddenly, the province in which its Communist Party head had promoted a “Happy Guangdong” campaign no longer seemed so happy.  At least not in this southeastern coastal corner.

Adrienne Mong

Residents in Haimen say the power plant built in 2009 has dramatically increased pollution and caused a rise in cancer cases.

At least three other pockets of unrest had flared up in districts of a large city near Wukan:  two of the groups were protesting similar examples of illegal land seizures and a third, the largest outbreak of demonstrations, was over government plans to build a coal-fired power plant in Haimen.

Though difficult to confirm, the initial reports described thousands of residents converging on the main local government office and organizing a sit-in on a key highway entrance to protest the development plans.  Local residents were quoted as saying they hoped foreign journalists would cover their story.

Before long, photographs emerged on Sina Weibo and other Chinese microblogs showing large numbers of paramilitary police in riot gear lining up against civilians in Haimen, a large town about 70 miles away from Wukan.  Tear gas was fired and clashes ensued.  Rumors also circulated that at least two boys had been killed in the confrontations; the government denied them.

Protests are not unusual in China.  In fact, according to the most recent official statistics, 2009 saw more than 90,000 “mass incidents,” as the Chinese government calls protests, across the country.  Land grabs and pollution concerns are among the top grievances.

Although the protests in Wukan and Haimen appear unrelated, it seemed a remarkable coincidence that two demonstrations adopting similar tactics would spring up within several dozen miles of one another. 

Heavy-handed police tactics
On Thursday, the streets of Haimen looked like those of any other comparable-sized Chinese town: food stalls, shops, sleepy government buildings, a high school, and a population that relies mostly on motorbikes to get around.

Mid-morning, dozens of those motorbikes were massed near the Haimen highway entrance.  In the distance, scores of black-and blue-uniformed police wearing helmets were standing behind barricades that had been pulled across the toll gate to the highway.

A large gas station on the corner looked open, but was in fact not.  The station's attendants in bright yellow jackets were lazing around, directing traffic to the next station.  The only energy came from a discussion about the power plant taking place among some of motorbike riders.

Adrienne Mong

Dozens of police vehicles, fire engines, and water canon trucks lined the side of a highway running through Haimen.

A short excursion on the highway itself revealed a sizeable police presence.  Police vans lined up against the side, interspersed with ambulances, fire engines, and water cannon trucks.  Dozens of police in riot gear sat on the ground.  Near several other highway entrance ramps, police vehicles could be spotted behind the gates of nearby compounds.

A little over an hour later, the crowd around the main entrance ramp had grown.  Motorbikes whizzed back and forth a couple of hundred feet away from the police barricade.  Many of the riders were young.

Suddenly, a pop rang into the air and a group of young teenagers were scrambling back away from the highway barriers—a plume of smoke rose above them.  The teens had tried to sidle up along the side.  A murmur of “tear gas” arose in the crowd as people began rushing away, covering their faces.  Nostrils burned.

“They don’t have the right to treat people like this,” said a 24-year old local resident who only offered his surname, Li.  “Using tear gas?  It’s wrong.”

Rumors of cancer
A few miles away, a large power plant with two smokestacks sat under the hazy sun.  It was not in operation; local reports said the government had suspended it as well as the plans to build the second plant until further notice. 

Haimen residents called Hongdong — the hamlet of one-storey homes nearest the power plant —“Cancer Village.”  But inside Hongdong, a man working in a local medical clinic denied that cancer patients were on the rise.

Back in front of the highway entrance, a young man named Chen and his two friends on motorbikes watched the police.  They had joined in the protests on Wednesday, because they, too, were angry about the health hazards posed by the power plant.

“The ocean is polluted [because of the run-off from the plant],” said Chen, also 24 years old.  “You can’t fish in it any more.”

He and others in the crowd said the number of cancer cases in Haimen had grown since the power plant was constructed in 2009 and quoted local papers as saying 80 percent of the cancer patients at a major regional hospital came from their township.

Chen said news of the protest had spread by QQ, a popular instant messaging service, until it was blocked on Tuesday evening.  Then they relied on word of mouth.

On the following day, the protesters were demonstrating peacefully, without weapons, said Chen, but the police rushed out from behind the blockade into the crowd and began beating up people—including women. 

Many of the participants on Wednesday, according to residents, were young Chinese.  Several were injured, and countless others arrested—just as was the case on Tuesday.

They had picked the highway entrance, said Chen, because it would attract the greatest attention.  Unlike the existing power plant itself or the land where the second plant has been designated—both of which are removed from the main roads.

Hearing about Wukan
“Were you in Wukan?” was a question that crept up a few times in conversation with Haimen’s residents.  In the past couple of days, Chinese media had begun publishing reports on the dispute next door.  Moreover, many had heard through friends or acquaintances or on the Internet about the months-long confrontation in Wukan.

But no one said Wukan had inspired them to take action. 

“This [environment issue] has been a problem for us for a while,” said Li.

There appears to be another difference between Wukan and Haimen.  Local officials from Haimen have promised to come up with some sort of resolution in five days, according to Chen.  But later on Thursday evening, he said that many more young Chinese had been rounded up and detained.

Courtesy Rebel Pepper

A cartoon mocking Christian Bale's confrontation with Chinese security was posted on Weibo, China's Twitter-like service, on Friday.

BEIJING – Just days after Christian Bale made a red carpet appearance in Beijing for the premiere of his blockbuster new movie, “The Flowers of War,” about the 1937 Japanese sacking of Nanking, he made even bigger headlines in China off-screen on Friday.

Bale invited CNN’s Beijing bureau crew to accompany him Thursday as he attempted to visit Chen Guangcheng, an activist who has been under house arrest since his release from a four-year-long jail sentence last year.

The 40-year-old Chen, a blind self-taught lawyer became a persecuted dissident after he filed a lawsuit in 2006 on behalf of residents of his hometown, Linyi, over the city’s practice of forced abortions and sterilizations, a municipal policy that runs counter to national regulations.

He was thrown in prison on what human rights activists say were trumped-up charges of “intentional damage of public property” and “gathering people to block traffic.”

Related link: Video reveals blind Chinese activist's plight

Since Chen’s release in September 2010, dozens of Chinese and foreign reporters, as well as supporters, have gone to Dongshigu village, in Shandong Province, to try to visit him, but all have blocked from even entering the town. Some were even violently manhandled and beaten up by unidentified thugs, and some TV crews had their equipment damaged or confiscated.

Bale was no exception.  

He and the crew were stopped at a road checkpoint when government security guards wearing green army coats asked what they were doing and punched the camera. When Bale took out his flip camera to record, he was punched and shoved, exactly the same treatment the CNN crew received just a few months earlier when they tried to visit.

After the scuffle, the crew got back into their vehicle and drove off, but they were followed by a security van for about 40 minutes.

"I'm not brave doing this," Bale said on camera. "The local people who are standing up to the authorities, who are visiting Chen and his family and getting beaten or detained, I want to support them."

In a later interview on CNN, Bale said, “It’s amazing a superpower like China is actually terrified of this man. It shows such an intrinsic weakness within the fabric of the country.”

China's human rights detainees 2010

He also stressed that he did not inform any members of the movie crew in order not to implicate them with his own actions.

‘Pandaman vs. Batman!’
Bale’s confrontation with the security guards soon made headlines on Twitter and Weibo, China’s most popular Twitter-like, but government-controlled, social media forum. Posts about the encounter spread rapidly on Friday morning with some joking headlines like “Pandaman vs. Batman!”

Andy Wong / AP

English actor Christian Bale speaks to journalists on the red carpet as he arrives for the debut of the Zhang Yimou-directed movie.

The cartoonist known as “Rebel Pepper” who posted the Pandaman vs. Batman cartoon on Weibo said he was somewhat surprised that Bale was treated exactly the same as everyone else.

“Dongshigu village is the only place in China that everyone is treated the same [and roughed up] no matter where you are from,” Rebel Pepper said during a phone interview with NBC News.

Some cynics noted it could be a publicity stunt for Bale's new movie, but most expressed their respect and appreciation.

A Weibo user named Shenan wrote, “You could pretend not to see or hear. That blind man is not your relative or friend in a faraway foreign country. Even if the whole 1.3 billion people were jailed, it’s not your business. You really didn’t have to ask for the roughing up, Batman.” 

By Friday afternoon, Weibo administrators censored all the posts related to Bale’s attempted visit. Steven Jiang, the CNN producer who was with Bale, found all his Weibo posts on their journey could not be forwarded.

It is a common practice for social media censors to jump in and try to put out the fire online before the flames get out of control. But determined Weibo users still spread the news with puns or pictures too difficult to censor. 

A post on Weibo joked that Zhang’s movie “Flowers of the War," would be pulled from Chinese cinemas. But another user said, “No, the movie will be there, only all the parts Christian Bale is in will be deleted!”

Bale left China today for the U.S., but Chen still remains off-limit to all his visitors.

Christian Bale scuffles with Chinese guards

Afp Photo / AFP - Getty Images

Residents of Wukan, a fishing village in the southern province of Guangdong march to demand the government take action over illegal land grabs and the death in custody of a local leader on Thursday. Click on the photo to see more images from the village.

BEIJING – As the Chinese village of Wukan entered its fifth day besieged by a police cordon cutting off food and water from entering the village, reports from inside the cordon suggest villagers have continued to resist government overtures to end their protest.

What’s going on outside the cordon, though, is a very different story.

Even as Chinese and foreign press have begun sneaking around the security cordon into town – likely assuring at least temporarily that no draconian, military-style raid on the villagers occurs – Chinese state media have started to create an alternative and unverifiable storyline about what triggered the hostilities.

‘Official’ version of events
The China Media Project at Hong Kong University noted Thursday that late last night, the state-run China News Service reported on a press conference that allegedly confirmed that “preliminary investigations have ruled out external force as the cause of death” in the case of Xue Jinbo.

Xue, a village representative who was detained along with several other local leaders by police last Friday during a raid on Wukan, died in custody – alleged of a heart attack.

But his family was permitted to see the body and reported seeing fractures and bruising all over his body. And they were not permitted to take his remains home for burial.

However, the China News Service report said the town’s medical expert had shared photographic evidence of Xue’s body which refuted the family’s accusations that police beatings caused his death. The reporter was allegedly not permitted copies of the photos for publication.

Xue’s death and its suspicious circumstances sparked the mass protests in Wukan that eventually drove village officials and police out of the area earlier this week.

Another report from the China News Service said various Wukan village officials had been detained for discipline violations.

Afp Photo / AFP - Getty Images

Residents prepare for the funeral of Xue Jinbo, a local leader who died in police custody, in the fishing village of Wukan in the southern province of Guangdong on Thursday.

That no other local Chinese media – and certainly no foreign press – had reported on the press conference suggests that local government officials are engaging in what the China Media Project dubbed, “public opinion channeling” tactics.

In layman’s terms: they are dictating the narrative by creating only one plausible sequence of events.

The two separate reports are intended to get the following results:
1) Absolve local police of brutality and murder accusations – eliminating at least one of the reasons for unrest in Wukan.
2) “Detaining” – as opposed to arresting – Wukan’s senior officials demonstrate that the government is being pro-active against corruption, without officially conceding guilt. And it obfuscates the other central reason behind the villagers’ anger – illegal land seizures.

PHOTO BLOG: Chinese villagers defy government in standoff over land rights

Scapegoat a few
Another piece of the local government’s strategy to quell the unrest has emerged: scapegoat a few to spare the majority.

The Shanwei County government Thursday named two village leaders it claims are ringleaders behind the revolt and vowed harsh punishments for them and other protest leaders.

Wu Zili, the acting mayor of Shanwei County, accused two village leaders, Lin Zulian and Yang Semao, of actively spreading rumors and encouraging villagers to build barricades around the city. The mayor gravely warned that “the authorities will firmly crack down on anyone who organizes and incites the villagers,” according to Telegraph reporter Malcolm Moore.    
 
For longtime China watchers, the combination of the earlier local media reports, news that the government is attempting to negotiate a peaceful end to the standoff and Mayor Wu’s threat toward the supposed ringleaders are clear signals that the government is eager to bring an end to the conflict by providing an exit plan for the majority of Wukan’s citizens.

However, taking that path will come with a price: selling out the people the government has branded as ringleaders of the rebellion.

For at least one person, this is unacceptable. “Everything they said at the press conference [about Lin and Yang] is a lie!” said one villager NBC News reached by phone Thursday afternoon. “We simply elected those two to be our representatives.”

Villagers’ side of the story: Beijing will come to the rescue
Villagers in Wukan Thursday were actively working the phones, talking to the media who called in or slipped into town. However, as the world’s attention has started to focus on the events in Guangdong, they appeared anxious to push their own storyline, which is full of condemnation for corrupt local officials and deep-rooted respect for the central government, which they seem confident will come to their rescue.

“We don’t want any foreign press here! We expect the central government to come here and rescue us,” said another villager by phone, “We have great leaders in [President] Hu Jintao and [Prime Minister] Wen Jiabao!”

However, that sentiment is not shared by all. As one Wukan native told NBC, “If the press was not here, the police would come into the village and harass us.”

National implications
Whatever tact the local government takes in Wukan, the results could have serious implications for one man in particular: Wang Yang, the Communist Party chief of Guangdong Province.

With China poised to complete a rare leadership change next year, Wang had in recent years been positioning himself to compete for a promotion to the Politburo Standing Committee, which serves effectively as the nation’s top political body.

Having championed a “Happy Guangdong” campaign that he claimed would focus on improving the living standards in the province, Wang has instead found himself dealing with labor protests that have coincided with the economic slowdown in China. Public anger over rising inflation and fewer jobs has led to factory strikes and violence throughout Guangdong, which has been dubbed “The Workshop of the World.”

Now with open rebellion in what was once proudly referred to as a “model village,” Wang finds himself struggling to peacefully and definitively end the uprising – before it kills his chances of being elevated to the standing committee.

Until that elusive win-win resolution appears, expect the siege of Wukan to continue.

NBC News Producer Bo Gu contributed to this report.

Related link: Rebellious Chinese village under siege by police

BEIJING – Zhang Bingjian’s art studio in the northern suburb of Beijing looks like a simple one. Spiral stairs lead to a small penthouse where he stores his books and makes tea for guests, a big wooden desk sits downstairs, and a huge map of China hangs on the wall. 

But something catches your attention when you walk in: Dozens of huge portraits on the wall, all in bright pink, all of Chinese government officials convicted of corruption charges.

Most of the officials are in prison, some have been executed, and others have been sentenced to “death with reprieve” – which in China means a life sentence.

Zhang came up with the idea of creating his “hall of shame” as early as March 2009, during China’s National People’s Congress, the annual meeting of Communist Party officials.  It was then that he learned that 3,000 officials had been convicted for corruption in the previous year alone. 

“I was shocked at the numbers, I did not realize there were so many,” Zhang told NBC News during a recent visit to his studio.  “China is in such a transition period, those corruption issues also should be witnessed in a historic context.”

The artist decided to depict the history of China’s shame as part of an ongoing project. But he is not the actual painter – the portraits are mass-produced just like other “made-in-China” commodities. 

Zhang picks a publicly prosecuted government official, finds his age, crime, and most importantly, a photo of him – then he sends it to Dafen village in southern China, a place famous for churning out cheap, Wal-Mart-quality oil paintings for the whole world.  Through an assistant, Zhang finds artists in Dafen village to paint the portraits in a deliberately tacky and assembly-line style to reflect China’s 30 years as the world’s leading exporter of low-end, mass manufacturing. Their rosy hue is the same bright pink color as the Chinese currency.

Zhang doesn’t remember all the names of the officials portrayed and says he doesn’t want to play the role of a judge or prosecutor. “For me, I see the project as a whole instead of each individual portion,” he said.

Widespread corruption
Critics say corruption has long been one of China’s most chronic problems. Chinese presidents and premiers, including the current leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, have publicly denounced rampant corruption for years, but standards of conduct only seem to deteriorate. 

Out of 178 countries in Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perception Index – which measures the perceived levels of corruption in public sectors – China ranked 78th.

That’s lower than most other developed countries, as well as many developing countries such as Brazil and Cuba.
According to a Beijing News report last May, 24,406 government officials were jailed in 2010 for corruption, up 9.4 percent from 2009.  Almost 6,000 of them were sentenced to more than five years in prison.  

China is also one of the few countries in the world that executes its citizens on corruption charges.  Some of the officials captured in Zhang’s portraits have already been executed, including the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration and the former governor of Guangxi province.

As of today, Zhang has produced about 1,600 portraits.  Some hang on his studio wall; others are stacked in wooden crates, waiting to be displayed either in China or overseas. 

Zhang joked about ideas for his next exhibition.

“Maybe we can do another project for the U.S. America also has corrupt officials so the painting would be green, the color of U.S. dollars,” he said.

When asked whether or when he will ever finish the project, Zhang admitted one day he might have to stop producing the portraits if he cannot continue to finance himself and the 20-plus painters he employs.  Still, he doesn’t really know when he’ll move on.
 “It could end soon, probably within the next five years.  It could also be the next 15 years.  Part of the beauty of this piece is it’s open-ended,” he said with a smile. 

(Celeste Ho contributed to the story.)

By Adrienne Mong and Bo Gu

BEIJING — If there were one place that is living proof that global carbon dioxide emissions in 2010 jumped the largest amount on record, it’s got to be the Middle Kingdom.

Emissions leapt 5.9 per cent last year, according to the Global Carbon Project.

And the world’s biggest emitter —yes, China — was a big contributor.  It pumped 2.2 billion tons of carbon into the air, compared to the 1.5 billion tons of carbon by the U.S.

On days like Monday — and there have been way too many this year — it feels like Beijing is the receptacle.

'Hazardous' days
We’ve already written about it, but this time returning to the Chinese capital after a break, I found my hardy NBC News colleagues ordering air filter machines for their homes and air filter masks for cycling (to get around the traffic).

Adrienne Mong/NBC News

The NBC News Beijing bureau invests in air filter masks to combat the pollution.

Monday, while the @BeijingAir index — which comes from an air quality monitor housed atop the U.S. embassy in Beijing — tweeted hourly “hazardous” readings all day, we took a peek at readings back home to see how levels of air pollution were faring across the Pacific.

Across a map of the United States, it was a depressing monochromatic “green” color signifying “good” quality air — with only a few slashes of “yellow,” meaning “moderate.” 

Bear in mind, according to the chart developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “hazardous” is the highest alert level, which would trigger “health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected,” according to the site.

There were no readings from the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau’s (EPB) own air monitor until mid-afternoon Monday, when it acknowledged “slight pollution.” 

Last month, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection suggested it was finally heeding growing concerns among Beijing residents’ about air pollution.

The ministry said it would begin publishing measurements for the smallest particulate matter or PM2.5, also considered the most dangerous to human health because they’re tiny enough to enter the lungs and cause damage to the respiratory system.

Courtesy of Daxian/Weibo

"I thought I was looking at a mirage!" said a Weibo user by the name of Daxian after posting a photo from Beijing Monday morning.

On Thursday, however, the Beijing EPB emphatically announced PM2.5 readings for the city would not be made public.

A 'mirage'
To add insult to health injury, officials have been quoted in local newspapers as saying they will set up a new air monitoring system for Beijing in … Tianjin — a metropolis 80 miles away from the capital.

Mind you, photos posted on the Shanghaiist blogsite suggest we in Beijing are not the only ones suffering.

(There’s been plenty of supporting visual evidence coming out of Beijing all day.  One user of Weibo, the popular Chinese microblog, posted a photo of high-rises apparently floating above a cloud of pollution, calling it a “mirage.”  And YouKu, a Chinese version of YouTube, posted a video of this morning’s commute.)

Soho property mogul Pan Shiyi, who led an online petition to get PM2.5 readings published by the EPB, has begun posting on his Weibo account screen shots from an iPhone app that compiles the U.S. embassy’s BeijingAir index.   

In the meantime, Chinese authorities are still determined to call the smog by any other name.

Flight after flight on the Beijing Capital International airport website was shown to be cancelled — owing to “fog.” A Xinhua news agency report described it as “heavy fog.”

But an AFP report called it “smog,” tallying the airport casualties: 213 domestic and 15 international cancelled flights.

See Shanghaiist for more photos of the smog in Beijing and China

Update: Since this posting, a state-run newspaper, The Global Times, quoted meteorological officials as saying the “dense fog” enveloping Beijing and parts of the northeast will persist until Friday. One official described it as a “normal climate condition in Beijing.” Good thing we got our masks.

Courtesy of Xiao Baiyou

Xiao Baiyou, the self-proclaimed "Wolf Daddy" with his four children.

BEIJING – Just as the “Tiger Mom” controversy started simmering down in China, the “Wolf Daddy,” a self-proclaimed expert on strict parenting, is sparking a new round of fervent discussion on child-raising methodologies among anxious Chinese parents.

The “Wolf Daddy” is actually Xiao Baiyou, a 47-year-old Chinese businessman who deals in real estate and luxury goods. This past June, he published a book on parenting that featured an eye-catching photo on the cover of a graduation cap with a wooden ruler underneath, a device commonly used by old-time Chinese teachers and parents to spank their children when they misbehaved.

The message was clear and straightforward: Children need to be disciplined, ruthlessly. His favored method is the rattan cane, which his own mother used on him.

Strict rules
Reasons for spanking vary from sneaking visits with friends to lying to diminishing academic achievement. In the book, Xiao recounts a time when Xiao Jun, his eldest daughter, could not complete a new song on her piano. Her calf was spanked 10 times while others watched, including her mom, who applied medicine on her bloody bruises afterwards.

Xiao lays out his spanking instructions in the book:
Before the kids go to junior high school, spank them every time they make mistakes, but greatly reduce the frequency after junior high since the children form their own personalities by that age;
The spanking tool is confined to the rattan cane only, which causes minor bruises;
Only hands and calves are spanked, other body parts are spared;
Mistakes are pointed out every time before the whack so children know why they are punished;
Sisters and brothers must watch when one of them is smacked so they learn;
The punished one has to count the number of spanking during each admonishment;
The punished one cannot try to avoid the punishment, otherwise he/she gets more.

Unlike many of his fellow citizens who are only allowed to have one child, Xiao has four children. Two of them were born in Hong Kong and two in the U.S., following a new trend in which middle-class Chinese citizens have children overseas to avoid the one-child family planning policy. Xiao originally had hoped for six children, but stopped at four when his company tumbled into financial problems.

“I persist on my own belief that has never changed: I use the oldest, the most traditional methods to educate my children,” writes Xiao in his 200-plus-page book.

Xiao’s list of banned activities is no shorter than those of the “Tiger Mom,” Amy Chua:

No TV, except a limited amount of news and cartoons (teen soap opera dramas are absolutely prohibited);
No unmonitored Internet surfing;
No Coca-Cola (but tea is allowed);
No opening the refrigerator (so no unscheduled snacks);
No air-conditioning, to train the spirit of tenacity (ouch, summer in Guangzhou is brutally humid and hot);
No visiting friends unless a written application is filled out, providing information on the friend’s academic grades and their parents’ names and phone numbers;
No pocket money at all;
And written self-criticism when mistakes are made.

Social life is severely controlled by the Wolf Father. Traveling is strictly monitored in case “bad influences” affect the kids’ academic grades. Once, when Xiao Baiyou sensed his son’s classmates were “bad boys” and the school didn’t respond to his request to separate them, Xiao made a quick decision to move and forbad his son to contact any of his former classmates. Dating is utterly out of the question, but Xiao told NBC News in a recent phone interview that he told his kids once they were enrolled at Peking University to “go find your true love now!”

Extra curriculum activities are considered frivolous. Xiao forced his son to give up basketball because it was taking up too much time.

Outraged reaction  
Xiao got widespread attention after he registered with China’s Twitter-like micro blogging site Weibo under the name of “China Wolf Father” three months ago.

The Weibo account, with its short introduction, says “one scolding every day sends your children to Peking University,” one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in China, and it quickly attracted over 2,400 followers. His book is called, “Therefore, Peking University Brothers and Sisters,” and it has sold over 20,000 copies. If you search “Wolf Daddy” on China’s local search engine Baidu, you get over 1 million results.

But the attention he’s gotten doesn’t mean every Chinese parent believes his is the best parenting approach. In a recent online chat with chinanews.com, many readers left disapproving or even angry comments. One reader called “og_wfny” said, “you are building your vanity on your children’s pain.”

Shi Shusi, an editor at a national newspaper “Worker’s Daily,” commented: “Wolf daddy can only train wolf cubs. This story has nothing to do with human beings.”

Xiao argues that all those critical voices are from the people who either do not have parenting experience or do not truly understand him. He’s extremely proud of his three children who got into Peking University, but denies that was his ultimate goal (the fourth is still in high school).

“This is only a goal during their study times, a finishing point of their high school, but a beginning to new life. Their ultimate goal is to bring glory to my family, and I believe they will achieve that goal by being decent, capable, healthy and honest people,” Xiao told NBC News.

Without a doubt, Xiao’s four children are impressive: the son is a chess pro and loves Chinese ink painting, the eldest daughter is good at writing and plays piano, the second daughter is a calligraphy master and the third daughter is a professional guzheng (a traditional 21-stringed musical instrument) player.

NBC News tried to interview Xiao’s children but was told they do not wish to be disturbed while they are focusing on their college studies.

Xiao Yao, the son, said in the book that he believes he and his sisters have “much stronger self-control” than other children thanks to their father’s strict parenting. 

But the boy also wrote about his self-pity in another article included in the book: “Although daddy’s parenting gave us many traits other children don’t have, there are regrets in my childhood. I remember one summer some relatives came to visit and we children jumped and laughed on the bed, I was so happy. This only happened once in my childhood and it will never happen again. That was the only moment I thought childhood could actually be worry-free! I wish I had a few more such moments!”

When asked if he ever has any regrets in his parenting, Xiao Baiyou said “no” without any hesitation. But he said he regrets not buying his wife a ring or flowers after they got married. He says his wife, who he calls “the queen” in the family, never used make-up after she married Xiao, since every penny was spent on their children’s education, like expensive piano classes.

Xiao does has one question that he wishes could reach the president of the United States: “Dear Mr. Obama, I’m really curious to know, were you spanked when you were a child?”

BEIJING – When news emerged that a vehicle carrying 64 people but designed for only nine had collided with a truck on Wednesday morning in the northwestern province of Gansu, it was hard not to wonder, "How in the world did they fit all those passengers into a tiny vehicle??"

Well, wonder no more.  Apparently, it is common practice in the countryside.  This video – which Ed Flanagan posted two months ago – is worth putting up again as it shows just how they do it in rural China.

In the video, 66 really cute children are jammed into a van that normally only holds six.  

Fortunately, their vehicle gets stopped by police, who proceed to unload the van in the middle of traffic.  The children are then bundled into police vans in much smaller groups and driven home.  In one scene, towards the end, a policeman looks as though he's berating a parent for allowing the child to travel in such unsafe conditions.

Despite the video, Wednesday's accident was no laughing matter.  The collision killed 18 children and two adults on board.  Most of the students were only 5 or 6 years old.

The accident has triggered an outcry among many ordinary Chinese, who have criticized the government for failing to provide better care for students in the countryside.  Parents of Wednesday's victims were quoted in local media as saying they'd worried about safety every time their children boarded the makeshift school bus, but that they had no choice if they wanted to send them to school.

Ng Han Guan / AP

A Chinese man takes a photo of flowers and tributes to Steve Jobs placed outside the Apple retail store in Beijing, China on Thursday. Click on the photo to see a slideshow of world reactions to Jobs death.

By NBC News’ Bo Gu

BEIJING – Within a day of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ death, over 63 million tribute messages had already been published on China’s Twitter-like, government-controlled, micro-blogging site Weibo.  

The huge outpouring reflects the mutual admiration between the tech pioneer and China’s 1.3 billion people.

China has become Apple’s fastest growing market, with revenue from the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan reaching $3.8 billion in the third quarter of 2011 – six times the amount from the same period last year.  In an earnings report speech in July, new Apple CEO Time Cook acknowledged “China was very key” to the company’s bottom line.

Fans of Jobs flocked to the Apple store in Beijing’s Sanlitun neighborhood on Thursday, leaving flowers, cards and a poster-sized photo of the computer titan as customers continued to browse the shop inside.

The popular Sanlitun Apple attracts not just customers, but dozens of illegal vendors trying to hawk Apple-related products outside as well.  The products are so popular and the vendors are so brazen that when iPads were officially launched, some of them went inside the store, bought dozens of iPads, and then tried to sell them right outside the shop for a higher price. 

Kuang Hao, a 21-year-old Beijing student who said he has been saving up to buy an iPod touch, told NBC News that he was sad about Jobs’ death, but didn’t believe the loss would affect Apple’s development. “It’s not one person’s career, but rather teamwork,” said Kuang.
 
Away from the shop, the tributes flooded in online.

“I’m not being pretentious or showing off here, but I started with a Shuffle three years ago, and now I’m using a Mac Pro,” Apple user “Xu Yanlin” wrote on his Weibo page.  “Apple products keep me company each night when I study or go to the library....Farewell, Qiao Bangzhu!” 

Stringer/china / Reuters

A woman reacts as she mourns the death of Apple co-founder and former CEO, Steve Jobs, at Sanlitun Apple store in Beijing on Thursday.

“Qiao Bangzhu,” meaning “Master Jobs” in English, is an affectionate nickname Chinese Apple fans bestowed on Jobs. It’s the title of a hero taken from a novel written by China’s most renowned martial arts fiction writer Jin Yong. 
 
Another user on Weibo, “Xiaoyu-meow,” expressed his admiration by saying, “I miss you, Jobs.  Please also make heaven this cool since we are all going there one day.”
 
Sina.com.cn, one of China’s leading Web portals, put up a special black-and-white front-page report to remember Jobs.  “[You] lived to change the world,” read the big headline on the site’s front page. The special tribute coverage included stories of his life, mourning and condolence messages from celebrities, reports translated from Western media, a video of Jobs and surveys of Apple users’ expectations for the future of the company.  

Apple just opened its newest store in Shanghai, its fifth in mainland China, on Sept. 23. The store is the largest in Asia and attracted over 100,000 customers in its first week of business. 

Young Chinese are keen to own Apple products – the whole country was shocked in June by the news that a 17-year-old boy from Anhui province sold one of his kidneys for $3,000 to buy an iPad, according to local reports. 
 
Outside the Apple store, next to the long line of fans waiting to spend some cash, a young man selling anti-scratch plastic covers for iPhones said he learned the news this morning when he “came to work” in front of the store.  The vendor, who preferred to stay anonymous, said his business had not been affected by the death of Master Jobs.