
The village and the girl - ac2u
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-dd0e6fd5-12fc-4a4a-a0eb-4ef064900f92
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rthomas6
Could we stop talking about the fucking layout and talk about the article?

China's culture, people, and most of all economy is opaque to most outsiders
and I think it's fascinating. They built an entire city from nothing in just a
few years, just... on a whim. Because the leaders thought that would be best
for the country as a whole. It's fascinating and scary and amazing, and I
can't think of another place that works even similar to this.

Yet it seems that us westerners largely ignore China except in terms of
imports and exports. Why? Is it the language? The lack of widespread cultural
exports? I mean most people know very little about China as a country compared
to how important they are on the world's stage. In fact you could pick almost
any other country with a respectable GDP and I could tell you a whole lot more
about it.

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gkya
Regarding that last sentence, given that most such countries would be European
countries, or one of the US or the Canada, it is clearly normal what is the
reason you would have more words about it, it is simply a familiar culture.
China's culture is fascinating because it is opaque, or rather, because it was
opaque, but by now less so. By time, as westerners get to know it more and
more, it will be less relevant and/or fascinating, and contemporaneously rot.
As westerner tourists are fascinated by some places, these places quickly
become fake, they become parodies of themselves and ultimately tourist traps.
Eminönü, Venice, Napoli, others, southeast asia, in these places there has
been left nothing authentic. The fascination and interest of westerner
tourists is such a plague that it has killed some of the most characteristic
and beautiful parts of the world. So I'd rather be happier if china went
undiscovered, than it be discovered and used up.

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pkkim
It's funny you say that. I just spent about a month in China, particularly
Beijing. Because Beijing is probably the center of tourism from overseas in
China, you might think it's very touristy, and it is. But the domestic tourist
market is so much larger than the foreign one that it's already, as you say,
"discovered and used up." Other tourist sites in China are similar, though
less so.

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bruceb
I will differ from most of the comments here, I enjoyed they layout and
thought it added to the story. I am on a desktop with FF.

As for the story it is a solemn reminder millions of people work hard jobs and
make life easier for others. I hope Xiao Zhang's life will continue to get a
bit easier as the years go on.

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triplesec
Definitely following on from the format that the NYT pioneered. IT's wel done,
if you have a high-res modern desktop interface. Reminds me of trying to read
WIRED in the 90s. Actually worth the extra effort.

I don't like the politically uncritical boosterish content, however.

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cbd1984
It's impossible to read, though.

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analyst74
A very well written article, but there was one line that struck me, yet seems
totally brushed off by the author.

"...his father killed himself by drinking rat poison after a family argument
over money".

I can imagine, but will never truly understand the kind of hardship and
turmoil the family suffered between greed, family value and survival.

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oska
I don't think it was “brushed off”. The main storyline in the article was the
differences in lives and outlook across three generations of women: the main
character, her mother and her daughter. The husband was a part of this story.
The story of _his_ father much less so. It was already a long article; the
writer can't afford to branch out into the stories of all the surrounding
relatives too.

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astrange
I didn't have a single problem reading this article.

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tomtang0514
Agreed. However I didn't find it makes the whole experience better either.

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yitchelle
I had a difference experience to you. Although I didn't get much out of the
embedded videos. The still photographs had more impact for me. Just my $0.02.
It is a good article.

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Menge
Maybe the interface is misguided, but it is difficult to pull-off to this
level, and I find that it does give an overall feeling of connection to the
memory threads of rural chinese life.

I am blocking the flash content; someone else must claim my great uncle's
fortune. But it is still a great improvement on what was acceptable content
degradation a few years ago.

(edit- So overall I'd say there is far from anything wrong with this article,
and it provides an important type of impression that we lacked when I was
studying rural china, decades ago.)

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savanaly
A living advertisement for browser extensions like Readability, Clearly, etc.
that actually allow you to read articles like this.

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stephengillie
Or just disable Javascript.

Everyone's trying to outdo "What is Code" and so we'll be dealing with this
kind of journalistic showmanship for the next few months.

Edit: The article is very well written and truly touching. It feels like
reading _The Good Earth_ all over again. In another way, it reads like a story
about American Settlers from the 1800s. It's sad to hear about people abiding
solely through subsistence farming, but it's heartening to hear they're
surviving.

And from the comfort of an office building, I feel obligated to reflect on my
relative privileges. They are beyond realistic counting. This imbalance fills
me with unresolved guilt.

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savanaly
I just tried disabling javascript but it did not have the desired effect of
removing the "parallax" type effect when scrolling. I tried one of the two
browser extensions I mentioned, Clearly, and it worked well.

~~~
__z
In firefox: View -> page style -> no style.

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PlzSnow
These "immersive" stories will disappear once the realization that the ROI on
them doesn't work. Expensive to create, but no income generated because no-one
reads them because they are annoying.

The only companies left using them will be those with no concern about ROI
such as here; the state-funded BBC.

I'm sure it looks good on the designer's CV though. Who cares about the people
who have to actually read the content...

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nfoz
That's what I used to think about all-flash websites.

They did go away, more or less, but only because the Web became that same
pixel-per-pixel full-designer-control application platform, with all the same
obnoxious problems that made us hate Flash, minus the binary blob.

The overwhelming majority of websites would be better served by simple HTML3
with no javascript at all. Or rather, their users would be better served.

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thaumasiotes
> the Web became that same pixel-per-pixel full-designer-control application
> platform, with all the same obnoxious problems that made us hate Flash,
> minus the binary blob.

Browsers now disable right click?

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lmz
> Browsers now disable right click?

Hasn't that always been possible using JS? I know that Firefox in its distant
past once had an option to not allow websites to catch right clicks, but it's
been gone for quite a while.

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letitgo12345
If ppl are interested more in this topic, Last train home is a good
documentary to look at.

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sdrothrock
> they're unwilling to invest any more in the house in case it's earmarked for
> demolition in the next phase of city development.

This sentence stood out for me. It's interesting that China is pushing for
urbanization for its people and that some of those people (like Xiao Zhang in
the article) are impatiently waiting for the better life to come, but I wonder
about the long-term consequences of this -- how many people will simply be
conditioned to not improve/work on their lot in fear/hope that the government
will provide?

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placeybordeaux
For those who want to read more:

Earlier BBC article about the building of Wuix New Town:
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5103100.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5103100.stm)

Looks like it's been a bit of a case study for the BBC.

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metasean
> Built with Shorthand

Site: [http://shorthand.com/](http://shorthand.com/)

I couldn't find a feedback link, but there is an employment email address -
jobs@shorthand.com - It'd be interesting to hear their response to some of the
feedback here.

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cbd1984
Is there a readable version of this article?

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patmcguire
Wow, I really hope that brick-scroll doesn't catch on.

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cbd1984
Flagged as unreadable.

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kelvin0
Why do they feel the need to have stories with the scrolley page css of doom?
I want to read the text, maybe with a few intersparsed pictures ... please
bring back sane reading format of websites.

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ocdtrekkie
I was going to read the article, but all the Verge-tastic CSS is too
distracting.

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Nadya
Having CSS disabled doesn't help unless you go through the effort of removing
images as well, as they are repeated twice (and sometimes 3 times). The
paragraph structuring is also terrible.

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ocdtrekkie
Firefox's reading mode is also confused.

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jdmichal
For some reason Firefox reading mode starts about half way down the article.

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Paul_S
I can't read it at all without just removing the style. Insane. Fascinating
article though, worth the effort.

Pages used to have a "printable version" button, whatever happened to those?

