MCLC: Chinese comment on US carp problem

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: han meng (hanmeng at gmail.com)
Subject: Chinese comment on US carp problem
***********************************************************

Source: Bloomberg New (3/15/12):
ttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-15/chinese-fish-for-meaning-in-u-s-car
p-rampage-adam-minter.html

Chinese Fish for Meaning in U.S. Carp Rampage: Adam Minter
By Adam Minter

Sometimes, Chinese netizens pay more attention to a U.S. news story than
Americans do. President Barack Obama¹s Feb. 23 decision to allocate $51.5
million to eradicate an invasive species known as the Asian carp is a
prime example.

Outside of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins, news of this
carp-control strategy barely registered with the U.S. public. But on March
6, it hit China and, like a jazz trio riffing for an hour on just a few
notes, microbloggers took to the minor news topic with gusto, using it to
explore issues ranging from corrupt civil servants to U.S. sovereign debt.
Soon it even had its own hash tag, roughly translated as #Asian Carp on an
American Rampage#.

Within a week, netizens posted more than 85,000 tweets, comments on tweets
and re-tweets on the carp rampage. By Chinese microblogging standards,
that's actually quite modest. More popular topics can easily generate
millions of posts. But such a large amount of commentary regarding an
essentially American story is significant.

American catfish farmers first imported four species of Asian carp in the
1970s. Known to be voracious eaters, they were set loose in catfish pens
with the hope that they¹d eat the algae -- which they did. But in the
1980s, floods washed over these contained pens, allowing the carp to enter
the Mississippi River where -- for three decades -- they¹ve been eating
their way up American watersheds, disrupting every ecosystem in their path.

But the worst of this plague may be yet to come: Recently, Asian carp has
been caught close to the Great Lakes, causing White House-level concern
that the lakes¹ delicate ecosystems could be forever altered by these
slow-moving bottom feeders. So regional scientists and policymakers are
desperately seeking a means of stopping the Asian carp¹s American
expansion.

To understand why Chinese netizens have taken such an interest in the
story, it¹s absolutely essential to know that the most popular
dinner-table fish in seafood-crazy China is carp, bar none. Thus, news of
America¹s carp problem doesn¹t set off alarm -- it makes Chinese mouths
water. Add the fact that Chinese covet wild carp -- an expensive treat
compared to cheaper, more common farmed carp -- and poetry ensues.

A Bunch of Beautiful Flowers, the handle of a young microblogger in
Shandong Province, summarized the feelings of many when she offered up
this wistful tweet on Sina Weibo, China's most popular microblog:

We can eat your carp if you have too much: braised carp in brown sauce,
roast carp with scallions Š Sweet and sour carp is great and it¹s a famous
dish in Shandong cuisine, though I haven¹t eaten sweet and sour carp in a
long time.

The dominant thread in the ongoing discussion is this: The Chinese people,
and their voracious appetites, are the solution to America¹s carp woes.
This can be expressed comically, as Accidental VIP, the handle for a
Beijing media executive, tweeted: ³Chinese Œfoodies¹ must join battle and
rescue the Americans! The Obama Administration will reimburse you for
eating steamed fish head with chopped peppers.² It can also be expressed
simply, as in this enthusiastic tweet from Shanghai : ³Eat eat. Eat all of
it. Immediately resolved.²

Or it can be expressed cynically. Le Ning, a disk jockey in Hainan
Province touched on one of China¹s most sensitive and censored subjects --
the gluttonous habits of Chinese bureaucrats -- in his tweet: ³Save that
$50 million and toss one million civil servants over to America and let
them eat fish for two years. Nothing will be left.²

For some Chinese netizens, there¹s a much deeper issue at stake. Namely,
why do Asian carp thrive in the U.S., but not in China?

Last month, China¹s Ministry of Water Resources conceded that 40 percent
of the nation¹s rivers failed to meet its minimum quality standards. Fish
don¹t thrive in polluted waters, and those that survive aren¹t the ones
that you¹d want to eat.

A video, widely circulated online, shows an American family riding in a
motorboat through a pristine creek that passes carp jumping in and out of
the water. A netizen in Henan Province wrote about it: ³In China the wild
carp are very expensive. But in the United States they jump right into the
boat.²

China¹s continuing failure to protect its environment, especially compared
to U.S. efforts, is the focus of the most cutting tweets. Yu Rongjian, a
poet and documentary filmmaker, tweeted a photo of Lake Ontario to make a
poignant point:

   How could I use the word ³lake² when I saw Ontario? As splendid as the
sea! You could hold the water in your hands; drink it directly -- how
sweet! I told my colleagues that I want to take Lake Ontario to China! But
then my colleagues and I felt really bad: Are there any clean lakes or
rivers in our country? It¹s no surprise why Asian carp reproduce so
mightily over there.

Wang Yuezheng, a Sina Weibo user in Sichuan Province, mixed in some black
humor to express much the same idea:

   I never thought that carp would have an easy time surviving over there.
So can this prove that the quality of water in America is great? If
Americans transport and pour our water into the Great Lakes, I suspect
that all of their fish would then be barren. Rest assured, American people
and people of the world, this measure will work.

Still, not every microblogger looks upon the Asian carp rampage as a net
failure for China and its environmental regulators. Indeed, the vast
majority see it as a failure of American stomachs and -- it must be said
-- American business sense. ³They should open a cannery,² tweeted a
netizen in Guangdong Province. ³And export to China.²

Following this line of thinking, at least one microblogger, also based in
Sichuan, jokingly viewed the carp revenue as a potential solution to
American fiscal imbalances:

If the United States does not eat the carp they can export it to China to
pay for their national debt. This kills two birds with one stone: They no
longer suffer from fish, and they pay their debts.

In fact, despite a surfeit of negative comparisons between China and the
U.S., the Asian carp problem is, above all, an opportunity for Chinese
netizens to do what they do best: laugh at misfortune. In this case, of
course, the misfortune is America¹s, and that¹s a welcome relief. A
microblogger in Shanghai, using the handle 2012lthy, mused: ³Some fish go
abroad and a superpower panics. Strong fish.²

(Adam Minter is the Shanghai correspondent for the World View blog. The
opinions expressed are his own.)