MCLC: dinner auctions

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: dinner auctions
***********************************************************

This is one of the more interesting--and surprising--articles that I've
read in a while. 

Paul

==========================================================

Source: Bloomberg News (8/1/3/13):
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2013-08-13/buffett-style-dinner-auction
s-lure-chinese-seeking-just-society.html

Buffett-Style Dinner Auctions Lure Chinese Seeking Just Society
By Tom Holland

Wei Qian perked up at work on a Monday in May when she stumbled across an
ad for an online auction offering dinner in Beijing with her favorite
political-science author.

She decided to dump her long-planned beach holiday in Thailand with her
three best friends and use the money to make a bid instead. The
29-year-old bank employee was determined to finally meet her idol, Liu Yu,
a Columbia University PhD graduate she calls the Goddess of Democracy.

That afternoon Wei logged into the site, called the Meat Shop
<http://go.bloomberg.com/multimedia/the-meat-shop/>, and waited until 26
minutes were left before placing her first bid. The price jumped rapidly
as 17 people sparred for the dinner. With 58 seconds to go, Wei put up
11,300 yuan ($1,846) -- more than two months’ salary and her whole summer
travel budget. Her heart raced until the clock ticked down and she won.

With that last click, Wei joined a novel online cause in China, known as
the “meal delivery” program. Proceeds from the Meat Shop
<http://songfandang.taobao.com/> go to support human rights activists and
the families of jailed political dissidents, a gesture that could be
considered an affront to the ruling Communist Party.

Wei says she wasn’t deterred when she noticed the shop’s goals, especially
given Liu Yu’s participation.

“It’s a very expensive dinner, even if it was with Warren Buffett,” the
pony-tailed Wei says in an interview at a cafe in Ningbo, eastern China,
referring to the billionaire investor’s annual charity lunch auction. “But
for Liu Yu, it’s worth it.”

Fighting Injustice

More than 8,000 people have shopped at the site since it opened on March
28 and it has attracted 1.3 million hits. Many customers are upwardly
mobile urbanites like Wei who say they are fed up by injustice. Their
reasons for taking part range from simple charity to wanting to build a
freer society, according to interviews by Bloomberg News.

The site’s following means a growing number of Chinese may be willing to
take small actions that together pose a challenge to China’s Communist
one-party rulers, says Wu Qiang, a political scientist at Tsinghua
University in Beijing.

“This shows the public may be passionate to play a role in civil society
and a transition to more democracy, even though they don’t explicitly say
so,” says Wu, who studies social movements. Some participants even
describe themselves as members of the “meal-delivery party,” indicating
they see the Meat Shop as having a political dimension, Wu said.

In its first four months, the Meat Shop raised more than 1 million yuan
from selling donated goods, including a Bulgari bag, home-brewed beer and
paintings, as well as auctioning several Warren Buffett-like meals. People
can also participate by paying as little as 1 yuan to purchase a raffle
ticket or an online article spelling out the Meat Shop’s goals.

120,000 Yuan

The Meat Shop is hosted inside Taobao Marketplace, run by
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., China’s largest e-commerce company. A notice
to buyers says, “This Taobao shop is different!” It explains that every
penny will go to humanitarian aid, followed by names of dissidents or
activists who have received assistance in earlier meal delivery
fund-raising efforts.

Each 120,000 yuan raised is distributed. A randomly selected committee of
nine Meat Shop customers chooses the recipient from a shortlist put
forward by a citizens’ rights advocate. The money is enough to support a
typical Beijing family for about one year. So far, three people have
received aid, with enough left to help at least six more.

The effort is one way in which people are coming together in China today
to try to make a difference in a society where they see people mistreated,
says Guo Yuhua 
<http://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/publish/Socen/2749/2010/20101224015502330585062
/20101224015502330585062_.html>, a Tsinghua sociologist who presented the
candidates for one of the rounds.

“They cannot stand watching things like this anymore,” she says. “It’s not
politics but morality.”

Risky Cause

That the Meat Shop is hosted on such a popular electronic
commerce site makes people feel it’s safe to participate, according to Wu.
“It’s difficult to imagine another way that allows ordinary people to
participate in such a risky cause,” he says.

The program has spawned heated public debates on Weibo, China’s version of
Twitter, on such sensitive subjects as how dissidents are treated and how
best to bring about change in a country ruled by the Communist Party since
1949 -- through reform or revolution.

Meaty Monk

The Meat Shop was founded by Xu Zhirong, better known by his
Chinese pen name that translates as Meaty Monk. A former doctor and
Internet executive, he became an online personality dispensing advice
about sex and relationships after writing a well-reviewed book on marriage.

Xu is no stranger to testing the limits of China’s political system. In
2011, he sold T-shirts online for an independent candidate running in
district elections in Beijing. He says he also leveraged his online
popularity to start the meal delivery program that year, appealing for
money to help four activists.

His cyber activism led to the censorship of his own Weibo microblog, Xu
says. Some posts were deleted after Xu advertised stickers with a picture
of Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer under house arrest for campaigning
against forced abortions performed to enforce the one-child policy. Chen
fled to the U.S. Embassy and later moved to New York. The stickers,
designed to be displayed in car windshields, carried the words “Free CGC.”

Pairs of Legs

Drivers were too afraid to plaster them on their vehicles, Xu
says, so he came up with a gimmick to draw attention to the campaign: He
invited women to attach them to their thighs and send him photos.

Many did, though not always with the stickers. Xu posted the best-looking
pairs of legs on his Weibo site, inspiring other people to send him more.
The photo collection helped boost his following to 140,000 people, in a
country where 3,300 microbloggers have more than 1 million fans.

The Meat Shop is a more ambitious project, he says. It’s a play on his pen
name, which refers to a monk in the classic 16th-century Chinese novel,
“The Journey to the West.” Anyone who eats the monk’s flesh becomes
immortal.

“I know a thing or two about the Internet,” says Xu, 47, as he flips
through pictures of legs on his iPhone in the study of his home in Dalian,
in China’s northeast. “When you do something, you have to make it fun, and
make it controversial to attract sustained attention.”

Bulgari Bag

He says he was inspired by the 2006 book “The Starfish and the
Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.” It chronicles
the rise of crowd-sourced phenomena such as Wikipedia and YouTube (GOOG),
which thrive on contributions from the public. Just as a starfish can
regenerate when it loses one of its arms, Xu says he hopes his model will
survive through copycats even if the Meat Shop is closed down.

Three days before unveiling the site in March, Xu used the notoriety of
his leg collection to create a teaser
<http://weibo.com/1657239733/zp7CFDgIX?mod=weibotime> on Weibo. He posted
a photo of a brown Bulgari handbag alongside a pair of women’s
smooth-skinned legs stretched out on a sofa.

“Take all the money raised for meal delivery,” read an accompanying letter
signed by “a stranger.” “I have only one request: If my legs can be ranked
among the top 10 in your 600-plus photos, can you put this as the first
auction?” The message ended with the icon of a shy face.

While Xu had embellished the note, the bag and the legs were real. Both
belonged to Candy Wang, a 33-year-old saleswoman with a multinational
company in Nanjing, an eastern city of 8 million people. The bag was an
unwanted gift from an ex-boyfriend.

‘Unacceptable’

Wang first got to know Meaty Monk from his amusing relationship advice,
she says in a phone interview. Then she noticed his appeals to raise money
for rights activists.

Like many among China’s middle class, she says she worries about air and
water pollution and is angry at the injustices she sees around her. So she
jumped at the chance to send money to one of Xu’s earlier meal delivery
appeals last year, she says.

Donating the bag, which sold for 7,000 yuan, was another way of expressing
gratitude to those who sacrifice themselves in the public interest, Wang
says.

“They did things that I am unlikely to do, because I don’t want to give up
freedom,” she says. “The way dissidents are treated is unacceptable.”
In Changsha, a city of 7 million people in central China’s Hunan Province,
two men joined the meal-delivery program in different ways. One paid 1
yuan; the other made a then-record bid for a dinner date with a celebrity
blogger that created a surge of interest in the Meat Shop.

Good Dynamite

The eyes of 32-year-old technician Xiaofang lit up when he
saw an ad on Weibo offering a date with Good Dynamite, the Internet alias
of Beijing-based artist Chen Banruo. He was one of her 170,000 microblog
followers, drawn to her postings of art, social commentary and photographs
of herself and her cat. She was pictured in a low-cut pink T-shirt. The
accompanying invitation read: “Dress code up to you, excessive drinks and
bear hug allowed.”

Xiaofang, who asked to be identified only by his Internet handle because
he works for a government agency and fears reprisals, had been looking for
a way to participate in the Meat Shop.

Even though he has an easy life in a civil servant job arranged by his
parents, he’s lonely because he can rarely discuss what’s happening in
China, he says.

“Not only those outside the system are looking for ways to change society
for the better,” Xiaofang says. “Many within it no longer want to be
imprisoned by it either.”

Finding Meaning

To win the date, Xiaofang bid 10,501 yuan, more than a month’s salary.

“I have always wanted to get to know such a girl but never had the
chance,” he says at a cafe where he plays with his Google Nexus tablet and
Kindle Paperwhite (AMZN) e-reader.

He traveled six hours by train to Beijing, where he met with Chen and a
male companion she brought along to an Italian restaurant called Annie’s.
They talked over a dinner of eggplant and pasta about her life as if they
were already friends, he says. He didn’t take her up on the bear hug.

“My life now has meaning,” says Xiaofang. Chen didn’t respond to interview
requests.

Across a river that runs through Changsha, a 20-year-old college junior
looking for meaning in his life paid 1 yuan to join the meal-delivery
cause. Li Xinyu bought a ticket in a raffle hoping to win a Hermes (RMS)
silk scarf valued at 2,799 yuan.

Weibo Generation

Li lives in a 650-yuan-a-month room that has little space
around a bed covered by a bamboo mat. He says he uses his Gateway laptop
computer and Huawei smartphone to buy goods and browse social networking
sites.

“I’m a member of the Weibo generation,” he says. “It tears open a little
window, and those who care can find things they need.”

He describes his electronic coming of age in high school when he learned
how to climb over China’s “Great Firewall,” which blocks access to some
foreign websites, to upload pictures onto the U.S. photo-sharing site
Picasa.

These days, he says he no longer bothers to do that because the Chinese
Internet has all the information and social networking he craves.

He didn’t win the scarf, but he was chosen to be among the nine people to
allocate the first 120,000 yuan the Meat Shop raised.

Named the Bulgari (MC) Committee, after the site’s first auction, the
group met in the evening of April 15, through an Internet chat room set up
on QQ, Tencent Holdings Ltd. (700)'s instant messaging service. Each
member was identified only by a number.

Dissident Candidates

They were sent a video in which Guo Yushan, the director of a citizen’s
rights group in Beijing, introduced three families in dire financial
straits. They were: Tang Jitian, a civil rights lawyer; Fan Yanqiong, a
rights campaigner; and Xu Wanping, who has spent most of the past 24 years
in jail for subversion after he attempted to register political parties.

In a country where citizens rarely have the chance to vote, apart from in
local elections for candidates approved by the Communist Party, Li says
the process was transparent and fair.

Xu Wanping’s family was chosen, winning four votes after a nine-minute
exchange.

A month later, Xu, the Meat Shop’s founder, delivered a paper bag
containing 12 stacks of bills worth 10,000 yuan each to Xu Wanping’s wife
Chen Xianying in Chongqing in western China. Xu posted a picture on his
Weibo of her smiling and holding out a bamboo ash tray she gave to be
auctioned in return.

Pounding Heart

“It was like sending me coal in snowy weather,” Chen says in
a telephone interview, citing a Chinese proverb that refers to providing
much-needed help. “My heart pounded fast. It was the most gracious gift in
the world.”

Chen, 38, says she can now pay for surgery for her son who’s in middle
school. The money will also allow her husband to get extra food, clothing
and medicine in jail. Before, she sent him 500 yuan a month from the
salary of 1,400 yuan she earns selling liquor at a Wal-Mart store.

“It’s not only my family; many unknown families are making sacrifices,”
says Chen, who recently moved into a newly built apartment building after
her home was demolished. She hopes her 52-year-old husband will be freed
on bail next year.

The Bulgari Committee stayed together through late July to manage a
special relief fund for victims of an April earthquake in Sichuan, western
China. The temblor killed at least 196 people and injured more than
10,000. Almost 1 million yuan was raised from more than 7,000 Meat Shop
customers for that cause, which was separate from the meal delivery
program.

Li says he was more fulfilled being part of that effort, and he even
visited the disaster zone to monitor the use of the money.

“I tried my best to make a difference, even though I could only play a
small part,” Li says.

Online Spat

The Meat Shop was twice temporarily shut down for falling afoul
of Chinese regulations, according to Xu, the founder. He wouldn’t say
whether he had personally come under official pressure. Alibaba doesn’t
comment on individual storefronts on Taobao, a spokeswoman said by e-mail.

Xu’s online reputation as a firebrand led to his removal as the program’s
organizer on June 20 by one of the committees selected to oversee the
shop. The decision came after he used obscene language in an online spat
with other activists. The dispute erupted after Zhao Hui, a dissident and
former journalist, posted that the program was a “short-lived game.”

“A frivolous approach won’t stop the authorities from getting you,” Zhao
says in an interview. “I support the cause but this isn’t the most
effective way to bring about change.”

Movie Star

Xu says he doesn’t mind being ousted as he had always intended
to hand over management of the site to its supporters. He says he’s
surprised the venture has survived this long.

The arguments brought more attention to the site. So too did involvement
by celebrities. A Phoenix TV war correspondent donated a Ferragamo scarf
and an antique clock. Movie star Chen Kun retweeted the May auction of the
Liu Yu dinner to his 40 million followers 90 minutes before the bidding
started.

After Wei sealed her victory, she felt the wrath of her friends, who told
her she was crazy to ditch their holiday for the dinner. They had named
the trip “the sunshine sisters’ Thai buzz,” and planned to tag the phrase
on every vacation photo they posted online.

Generation Gap

Wei also faced disbelief at home when she tried to explain the cause. Her
mother told her that political prisoners no longer existed
in China, says Wei, an economics graduate who still looks like a student
in cropped pants, T-shirt and gold-rimmed spectacles.

“They choose to limit their knowledge to a safe zone,” Wei says of her
parents. “My generation is different.”

Last fall, Wei joined a demonstration in Ningbo’s central square against a
planned chemical factory. She says she worried for her job afterward
because her employer threatened to fire anyone caught on surveillance
cameras.

The amount Wei paid to win the meeting with the scholar beat the Meat
Shop’s previous record for the Good Dynamite dinner.
The website’s creator Xu took notice, posting on his Weibo that China has
hope.

A second auction for dinner with Liu
<http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/people/data/liu_yu.html> in June set a new
record of 18,100 yuan. Liu declined to comment.

On June 1, Wei met her idol in a restaurant near Tsinghua University,
where Liu works as an associate professor.

Wei had a burning question for her: Why does Liu believe China will move
toward democracy 
<http://csis.org/files/publication/twq12winterliuchen.pdf>?

Liu, 37, told her the public’s conscience is being awakened, citing the
Ningbo protest as an example, Wei says. Wei says she explained she didn’t
agree because a spiritual vacuum has made people selfish.

Wei has since quit her bank job to prepare for her first trip abroad to
Canada <http://topics.bloomberg.com/canada/> as a doctoral student in
economics and sociology. She says she thinks that while China will change,
it won’t embrace democracy.

“I want to find out the reason why,” she says.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Alexandra Ho in Shanghai
at aho113 at bloomberg.net; Wenxin Fan in Shanghai at wfan19 at bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Neil Western at
nwestern at bloomberg.net; Melissa Pozsgay at mpozsgay at bloomberg.net