[NYTr] Don't-Miss anti-Cuban Propaganda but Nice Photos of Chinese Moveable Type

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Hong Kong Chinese journalism student writes a highly hostile article,
but fairly well disguised for the uninformed, about Cuba. This one,
who's an exchange student in Missouri, has a future in the disinfo
trade. You'd think there were no computers with Chinese character
sets in Cuba. Don't mistake nostalgic regard for the history of
technology for primitive necessity.  Of course, in today's grasping,
capitalist-mad China and Taiwan, this adorable relic of a newspaper
couldn't exist outside of a museum, and except in Cuba, any 74-year-old
who tried to make a living using the old moveable type would soon be
living on the street. 

Chinese treasures are called "hidden" (anywhere else they'd have been
auctioned off long ago to the highest bidder) and the people are
called "huddled" in Havana. Utter bullshit. This kid should be sent to
New York's Chinatown, with its gangs and illegal sweatshops and
tuberculosis problem, before returning home. The Chinese population in
Cuba is said to be declining. There IS such a thing as assimilation,
and there's a low birthrate all over Cuba, in EVERY community,
something that concerns the government. It's partly the result of
women's greater freedom, something Chinese women haven't traditionally
enjoyed.  The Chinese restaurants may serve pizza and pasta, but so do
some Chinese restaurants everywhere in the world, and pasta is, after
all, a Chinese contribution to Italy's culture. There's plenty of
excellent Chinese food, of variuos regions, available in Chinatown's
many restaurants in Havana. My advice to the author: Don't ever go to a
Chinese restaurant in Ireland. 

BUT the photos of the old moveable type they found in Chinatown are
great, and the reporter's enthusiasm about the antique compositor seems
genuine. Never fear, folks -- Chinese culture is honored and given
lots of recognition in Cuba. There is an active Chinese association,
as there are similar ethnic heritage associations for Arabs,
various Muslims, Africans, etc.  MANY Chinese arrived in Cuba --
as they did in the US -- to work on the railroad (not merely as
"sugarcane slaves," as claimed here). And lots of anti-Communist
Cuban-Chinese left for the Land of the Free in 1959 after the
revolution, just as many other Cubans did.  The newspaper compositor
interviewed seems to have a perfectly fine relationship with the
Chinese Embassy, by the way.

Naturally, Cuba supports Beijing's "one-China" policy and this
particular Hong Kong kid probably won't be welcomed back.  And yes, the
Chinese have the same limited internet access as everyone else in
Cuba, and the same free educational opportunities. In fact, this relic
of a newspaper (with the lovely moveable type donated by some Chinese
in New York who had no use for it and where it probably wouldn't even
be cared for) is completely subsidized by... the Cuban Government. 

This brat promised to send the old dude "Chinese fiction" and
"hoped the mail wouldn't be blocked." Well, if it is, it will be by
the US Government, kid, so better send it from Mexico. And just think:
you wanted to know where traditional Chinese culture survives, and you
had to go to Cuba to find it.

Shame on New American Media for this piece of propagandistic claptrap.
What's next? Second-generation Vietnamese-American from the Orange
County emigre mafia goes to Havana to interview the Vietnamese living
there?  Why not?  New American Media is an offspring of the Pacific
News Service, where Andrew Lam found houseroom to slam Vietnam.

But see the nice photos at the original URL. -NY Transfer]


New American Media - Aug 19, 2007
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=a88b5ebf2f77a27a453d6c27d8d37fd4

Cuba Keeps Traditional Chinese Culture Alive

Newspaper serves century-old immigrant community 
with antiquated printing press

by Ying Ying Joyce Choi
Photos by Doug Meigs

In Havana’s Chinatown, there’s a stall named “Confucius.” It has plenty
of books with Che and Castro on the covers, but not one Chinese book.
Havana’s “Barrio Chino” (Chinese District) seems to be just another
touristy gimmick where tourists outnumber Chinese, Chinese restaurants
serve pizza and pasta, and waiters and waitresses chorus Asian words in
a foreigner’s accent.

This was once Latin America's biggest and most vibrant Chinatown,
comprising 44 square blocks during its heyday, the result of heavy
Chinese immigration.

I’m a journalism student at The University of Hong Kong. For the past
year, I went on an exchange at the School of Journalism at the
University of Missouri-Columbia. Before I started my internship at New
America Media, I had a six-week backpacking trip in Cuba and Mexico.
I’m interested in understanding my fellow countrymen’s livelihood
abroad, and in particular, how cultures blend and conflict. Chinese
treasures, that will soon die out back home, are hidden in this Cuban
Chinatown.

I stepped into the office of Kwong Wah Po, the only remaining Chinese
newspaper in Cuba. Over the doorsill on a plaque, written in Chinese,
then English, followed by Spanish, “Diario Popular Chino” (Chinese
People’s Newspaper). Four or five lingering Chinese elderly, shoulder
to shoulder, crowded on a wooden bench while a Hispanic janitor dusted
the furniture.

My jaws dropped as I walked in and saw what was behind the reception
screen – shelves of Chinese movable type! I only heard about these
movable types from my Chinese teacher when I was young. No way could I
imagine to see them being regularly used, instead of displayed in a
museum, because they were abandoned long ago in Hong Kong and China.

I was thrilled by the enormous number of mini metallic stamps sitting
on wooden shelves. It reminded me of the life-size soldiers in the
Terracotta Army buried with the Qin Emperor. But I was more astonished
that a manual printing system still exists in today’s computerized
world, in a country oceans away from China.

The newspaper’s 74-year-old editor, Guillermo Chiu (Chiu Siu Sheung, in
Chinese), is the only person at the newspaper who knows how to operate
the system, colloquially known as “picking/arranging word pieces.” 

It takes a whole room to house just the commonly used Chinese
characters. The metal types can make 7,000 to 8,000 different
characters. Chinese is not an alphabetical language composed of dozens
of phonetic letters, but a pictographic system of characters that are
made up of strokes and parts. According to a 2004 update on Chinese
linguistics, there are 106,230 Chinese characters of which about 5,000
are frequently used.

Every afternoon, the old man sashays all over the office to pick out
characters from the 7,000 stamps. He then sets them in a handy
composing stick, and places the chunk in a larger master block. Then,
600 copies are printed from the bulky antique printing press, donated
by the Chinese community in New York.

It takes him 20 minutes to arrange a 150-word piece. The newspaper is
biweekly and the size is a full broadsheet of three Chinese pages and
one Spanish, arranged by his Spanish colleague.

Chiu has no one to pass on his expertise in “picking word pieces.” The
ones who can read and write Chinese, like him, are well advanced in
years and would find the skill too hard to learn from scratch. The
young Chinese-Cubans usually only know Spanish. Even if they do know
Chinese, who wants a job that is a total toil, a total tedium?

Kwong Wah Po shrinks in pages, like the Chinese population tailing off
in Cuba. Kwong Wah Po, meaning Shine China/Chinese Newspaper, went from
a daily, then weekly, to the current fortnightly publication. The three
other Chinese newspapers in Cuba have long gone out of business.

The Chinese population in Cuba peaked at 50,000 but the number dropped
drastically after Castro’s revolution in 1959, and now only about 250
Chinese-born people remain in Cuba, the majority huddled in Havana.
Many of them are in their 70s or 80s, like Chiu, still waiting for the
opportunity to visit home – China – again some day.

The first Chinese immigrants landed in Cuba in 1847. They were a group
of 200 sent from Canton province (nowadays’ Guangdong province) on a
Spanish frigate to work as contract laborers on sugarcane plantations.
Many were slaves in reality, working for a few pesos a month. After the
abolition of Cuban slavery in 1886, the Chinese gradually got richer
through small businesses and some even brought their entire families
from China to live with them.

Chiu’s father came to Cuba in 1922 and opened a store selling fruits.
He told Chiu to go to Cuba for the vibrant business climate. [At] That
time, Havana’s Chinatown was prosperous and a hub of culture. The
community had grand Chinese New Year celebrations and at least one
representative in the nation’s assembly.

The 20-year-old Chiu arrived in Cuba in 1953 and has never gone back to
China. He learned the skill of “picking word pieces” when he was 30 at
another Cuban Chinese newspaper, and left the job after a year. He then
worked at a grocery store co-owned by his father, until the revolution
in 1959, when all businesses were nationalized.

Many Chinese merchants and community leaders, rather than handing over
their businesses and properties to the Cuban government, left for the
United States.

Among the not-so-rich, Chiu stayed and worked as financial secretary
for the Chinese Association in Cuba. In 2000, he started working at
Kwong Wah Po.

He used to share the workload with two other old colleagues, but they
are too old to stand the labor anymore. Chiu is the last willing to
carry on the tradition. He doesn’t know if he will still be blessed
with health and longevity, but he wishes to do the printing for another
ten years.

“Or as long as I’m still alive,” he said with a smile showing some
missing teeth.

The editorial staff picks out local and international news stories,
including mainland China’s and local Spanish language newspapers’, and
translates them into Chinese. They also put releases from the Chinese
Embassy, activity announcements for the Chinese community, and excerpts
of Chinese martial arts fiction.

The newspaper, now funded by the Cuban government, goes through the
authority’s inspection. The paper seldom touches politics, Chiu said.
He proudly showed me the Beijing Olympics calendar he just got from the
Chinese Embassy. I asked if Kwong Wah Po would report on the Beijing
Olympics, especially if Cuba is one of the top medal-winning nations.
He said, “Depends, depends what information they give us.”

Chiu places the tiny types in the case and places the chunk in a larger
master block. 

However the content is monitored, the newspaper still “shines” and the
people  are respectable for what they persist in doing – passing on
Chinese language and culture, traditions and virtues. “We just want to
do something for the Chinese,” Chiu said. “We try to keep the
traditions.”

Kwong Wah Po and its handful of veteran staff remain a beacon to the
Chinese-Cuban community. Impressed by their labor of love, I wanted to
tell Mr. Chiu that I would love to come back and learn the skill of
“picking word pieces” from him. Traditional Chinese – a written format
used mainly in Hong Kong and Taiwan, was taken over by Mainland China’s
simplified Chinese. And the United Nation’s official website abolished
traditional Chinese and only provides information in simplified Chinese.

I feel helpless in [the] face of all these bigger forces. The world is
moving so fast, I don’t know if I could afford to learn a skill that is
no longer useful. What I promise to do is to send him some Chinese
fictions, as he requested when we said “see again” (good-bye in
Chinese). We both hoped that the mail would not be blocked.