Reuters reported yesterday that 0.1 percent of children in Shanghai — or one in 1,000 surveyed — want to grow up to be “common workers.” The story notes that while being a common worker used to be the ideal of the communist movement, values in China have changed since Deng Xiaoping proclaimed that “to be rich is glorious.”

Newly rich Chinese are expected to spend the holiday, a time to celebrate the international labor movement, opening their wallets in far-flung destinations, reaping the rewards of higher paying jobs in the professions and financial sector.

My question is: Who is that one kid in 1,000 who wants to be a common laborer? And by “common laborer” I mean the guys using pick axes to dig a hole to the sewer line in my neighborhood, the mine workers who disappear in coal mine collapses on a regular basis, the construction workers climbing up scaffolding 15 stories high without ropes, sometimes without shoes.

There’s absolutely no sense in wanting to be a common worker in China. People do it out of necessity, not desire. I can’t even imagine the children of common workers wanting to grow up to be common workers.

So that one child, does he really want to be a common worker? I imagine his parents are making him spend the holiday memorizing Marx while his friends are lounging on a beach in Hainan.

Continuing its trek through absurdity, the China Daily reports that a teenage girl in Dalian has been paying a classmate’s aunt to pose as her mother at school meetings. Why? Because her mom lacked fashion sense.

Although Pingping attends school regularly, Wang never attended any of the parents’ meetings because her daughter never told her about them. It was only when Wang called the school did she realize she had missed many meetings. Bewildered, Wang asked her daughter about what was going on, but Pingping’s answer astonished her. “You made me lose face,” she replied. “I have been asking a classmate’s aunt to take part in it for me, 50 yuan (US$6.4) each time.”

Apparently being embarrassed by your parents when you’re a teenager is universal. The story continues with a long, hilarious account of the ongoing mother-daughter troubles between Wang and Pingping, and attempts to place the “conflict” in some sort of social context:

The generation gap in China has become so dramatic that parents who fail to catch up with the rest of the society could be abandoned by their children.

That statement left me as bewildered as the mom with no fashion sense. Note to Chinese moms and dads: You better wake up and smell the Calvin Klein, otherwise you won’t have an offspring to take care of you in your retirement years!

I can’t help it — that headline was irresistible. Now that I don’t write stuff like that for a living, I have to do it somewhere, so please forgive me.

I enjoyed a brief flurry of stories about the Beijing Olympics torch last week. After Beijing announced that the torch relay would include a climb up Mt. Everest, there was a little commotion caused by some Free Tibet protesters at base camp. It would have been little more than a blip on the news radar if it weren’t for the fact that the activists, all American, were arrested.

But I found the wrangling over Taipei’s position in the torch relay much more interesting. In the ongoing struggle between the PRC and Taiwan to project opposite images of inclusion/independence, Taipei will be the last stop on the international route/first domestic stop on the torch relay, or that’s the plan so far. Officials in Taipei are said to have refused to be part of the domestic leg of the torch relay, but agreed to be a part of it if the torch entered from another country and exited to Hong Kong. Apparently that was international enough for Taiwan to accept and domestic enough for Beijing to accept.

That is, until Tsai Chen-wei, the head of Taiwan’s Olympic Committee, decided that even that was unacceptable.

“This route is a domestic route that constitutes an attempt to downgrade our sovereignty,” Tsai said. Tsai’s comments contradicted an April 13 statement by another Taiwanese Olympic official, who said the island could accept a spot on the torch route that involved Hong Kong.

As a side note, not surprisingly the Chinese press includes Taipei on all its maps of the domestic relay.

Now while I see the concerns on both sides, the torch route is nothing more than a public relations battle, of which I believe Beijing has already won. Taipei’s back and forth — yes we accept, no we don’t — isn’t helping their image or their credibility. To an international audience, the argument over placement in a torch relay can seem silly and irrelevant.

The 2008 Olympics has the potential to be a PR coup not only for Beijing, but also for Taiwan, human rights activists, the “Free Tibet-ers,” big business — and any individual or organization that has a stake in China. I, personally, am interested to see how the spin plays itself out over the next year.

Much has been written on the Everest protest in the blogsphere. Here are a few posts worth reading:
* Protests at the Roof of the World, Bad History and a new P.R. strategy for the P.R.C. from Jottings from the Granite Studio.
* An amusing post that makes its point well: Free Advice for the Free Tibet Crowd from Mutant Palm
* And an account from one of the Mt. Everest protesters himself in The Columbian.