A player from Mata's team at Xie He Primary School (left) pursues the ball carrier from the Shanghai American Football League (right). The game between Xie He Primary and the SAFL was the first full-contact organized American Football game in China's history. Photo Courtesy of Paul Song

By Alex Endress
For ChinaInFocus and the Austin American-Statesman

The 32-year-old Mata serves as head coach of the first Chinese youth football team in country’s history, the Sea Dragons Football Program. His team will be showcased later this year when the NFL lands in Shanghai for an international fan expo.

“People who are developing and teaching football in the right ways in China- we’re supportive of,” said Richard Young, Managing Director of NFL China.

In December of 2010, the NFL brought Buffalo Bills Offensive Tackle Ed Wang to hold a clinic for Mata’s players. Wang is the first Chinese-American player to be drafted by the NFL.

“It’s awesome for [Mata] to be able to do something out there with the sports barrier and the language barrier,” said Wang, whose younger brother, David, plays for Virgina Tech.

“And on top of that, he’s done such a good job with his team.”

Before China, Mata served on active duty with the US Marine Corps from 1997-2001, moving to the reserves in 2001 and remaining there until 2008.

He also put in two years at Bobcat Stadium during the 2002 and 2003 seasons and earned a degree in History and Anthropology before moving to Guangdong in 2005. There he met his wife, Marissa, and relocated to Shanghai in 2008 to begin teaching English at Xie He Primary School.

Memo Mata is the first coach to start an all-Chinese youth football team in China. Photo by Emily Mitis

When Mata arrived at Xie He Primary, the school approached him about teaching an extracurricular class. While activities like music and art were available, Mata naturally chose to start a class about American football.

Though the Sea Dragons are currently in their off-season, during the summer Mata holds an American Football clinic every other Saturday called the “Saturday Football Smash.”

The clinics provide interested youth with a crash course in American football and help more seasoned players advance in a sport that’s only recently gained popularity in China.

Mata provides helmets, shoulder pads and jerseys for the newcomers, paid for out of his own pocket.

“I wanted to start a new sport that I’m good at and suited for,” said Winston Hsu, a 14-year-old defensive tackle for the Sea Dragons. “I like the action and contact in the sport.”

Looking to expand it’s global market, the NFL is working to build more fans like Hsu.

“[We’ve] really just started here,” Young said. “We really need to focus on the people that are ready to adopt the NFL as a sport. In all honesty, that’s a small percentage of the people in China right now.”

Despite the hurdle, Mata and the Sea Dargons have pressed on.

In November, the SAFL defeated the Sea Dragons 26-0 in the Shanghai Youth Bowl— the first full contact American football game in China’s history.

Plans for the near future include a Junior National Chinese Team for International competition to join the International Federation of American Football, and the creation of a program to facilitate high school students.

Mata plans to host a youth camp at the Star Gym Stadium in the Minghang District of Shanghai on July 25 for kids of all ages. Though the two-week camp will run about $500, inexpensive by American standards, the costs will cover equipment Mata has purchased as well as new equipment for each individual player.

“My vision,” he said,  ”is to give the kids a new dream of football.”

The league will host an NFL Experience expo in Shanghai on Nov. 26, inviting the public to learn more about the NFL and it’s players. Mata’s players are scheduled to showcase their talents during the expo, competing in a live scrimmage for the public’s viewing.

“We’ve spoken to these middle schools and high schools, and we can provide a fund to get them equipment,” Young said. “[But] they need coaches, they need people to play, they need referees, and that’s something that will take time to develop.”

Huang Qui, 50, shops for facial whitening products at the Aupres counter in Shanghai's Cloud Nine mall. Photo by Jasmin Sun

By Jasmin Sun
For ChinaInFocus

A young woman sits in the waiting area of the Shanghai East Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery Clinic, flipping through the latest issue of Marie Claire’s China edition. She looks through page after page of skincare product advertisements, each boasting the face of a fair-skinned model, complete with doe eyes and a nose bridge high enough to, well, thumb a nose at the average Han Chinese face.

The ads hark back to a period of plastic surgery obsession that first gripped the whole of greater Asia nearly a decade ago. The number of Asians who, under the unstoppable soft power of Hollywood movies and TV shows, wished to remake themselves to look more Caucasian became, and still is, a culturally loaded issue. Since then, China’s aesthetic ideals have changed to include wider eyes and longer noses, features not typical of the race.

However, as Nancy Etcoff posits in Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty, beauty is evolutionary. The prevalence of Hollywood might have turned the Western ideal into a universal standard of beauty, but as the word “China” becomes synonymous with the term “emerging superpower,” the country is slowly redefining its own modern version of feminine beauty.

“Young women are beginning to strive for a modified, yet traditionally Chinese look,” explains Ni Huili, a doctor at the Shanghai East cosmetic surgery clinic. “They feel that a strictly Western look is too exaggerated and very unnatural.”

Ni says the face most young Chinese women visiting Shanghai East hope to emulate is Chinese actress Fan Bing Bing. One look at a photo will reveal that the actress has eyes much larger than your average Chinese woman. In this case, the contradiction between request and rationale might be explained scientifically.

According to a report released in 2005 by the University of St. Andrews in Fife, United Kingdom, women with higher levels of estrogen were found to have more attractive faces. The female sex hormone leads to larger eyes, reduced size of the nose and chin, and increased thickness of the lips.

MAC makeup artist K.K. Huang says that wanting bigger eyes might also just be a way of achieving an age-old Chinese ideal rather than a way to emulate the Western face. “Chinese women traditionally like to be seen as having a smaller face,” he explains. “Bigger eyes can make the face look smaller overall.”

Photo courtesy of Cinemafestival / Shutterstock.com

But the idea of viewing those with larger eyes and higher noses as having “more Western” features might not be the right way to look at things, says advertising company Young & Rubicam’s creative producer Fan Xiao Xiao. To her, the argument boils down to the haves and have-nots within the average population’s pool of physical attributes. Standout facial features, like popular Chinese actress Fan Bing Bing’s eyes, are precisely what make celebrities and models worthy media subjects.

“Chinese people don’t want to have larger eyes to look more Western,” Fan says. “They want to have bigger eyes simply because they feel they look better. It’s like how the average Western girl isn’t going to be as thin as the model chosen for the advertisement is going to be.”

Perhaps the one beauty feature that has most strongly defied Westernization is the Chinese penchant for fair skin. Despite the appearance of tanning salons in some of the country’s larger cities, most women still choose to avoid bronzing at all costs—carrying umbrellas on sunny days and wearing modified versions of legwarmers on their forearms to keep them from tanning.

There are numerous theories for why Asians share a cultural preference for lighter skin, but the most common rationale is that a lighter complexion is associated with wealth and higher social status. Those with a better education could stay out of the sun while those from lower social classes, like laborers and farmers, would have had to work outside during the daytime heat.

According to Huang, the obsession with pale skin isn’t going away anytime soon in China, especially now with the popularity of South Korean soap operas and their fair-skinned stars. Plus, he says, “pale skin looks healthier and more flawless than skin that’s tan.”

Huang’s point is well taken, especially considering Unilever’s decision on June 13 to expand its business in China by fivefold. Unilever is the world’s second-largest consumer goods company, and markets products like Pond’s Flawless White across Asia.

But could the combination of China’s increasing prominence and redefinition of its beauty standards turn the Chinese face into the modern universal beauty ideal? “It should,” says Shanghai native Estelle Zhou, 27. By looking at top runway models like Liu Wen, whose international popularity has earned her campaigns for retail brands like Gap and Lancôme, “I think it already has.”

Café Sambal, one of the eco-friendly restaurants in Jiashan Market, has a rooftop garden that supplies it with fresh herbs and vegetables. Photo by Lizzie Chen

By Lara Berendt
For ChinaInFocus

The view from atop a renovated textile factory in Shanghai’s Xuhui District overlooks an expanse of skyscrapers, while murky gray smog hangs on the horizon. Below lies a rooftop garden of rich green herbs and vegetables. A hen and two rabbits rustle in their cages amid rows of plants.

This unexpected oasis is a project of Café Sambal, one of seven eco-friendly businesses within Jiashan Market, an upscale Shanghai “urban garden community” that integrates residential, commercial and recreational spaces. Two Saturdays a month, a farmer’s market, complete with wine and cheese tasting, lures hundreds of discerning shoppers.

Throughout this sprawling cosmopolitan city, Jiashan and similar projects have arisen to meet a demand for healthy, sustainably produced foods, and a growing desire among Shanghai’s wealthy elite to adopt more environmentally conscious lifestyles.

“My restaurants, when I first started out, used mainly fresh ingredients instead of processed foods,” says Café Sambal owner Cho Chong Gee. “Not all organic, but fresh. Now that it’s becoming more trendy, though, I think maybe it’s something I should promote more.”

Cho, a native of Malaysia, says he initially got involved with the trendy Jiashan project because of his love of historic architecture and interior design, but had little knowledge of the local, organic food movement.

“After seeing it, I’m attracted to the whole concept of keeping things sustainable,” he says.

Above Jiashan’s businesses, loft apartments and office spaces carry steep price tags. Residential rents start around 20,000 RMB ($3,076) a month.

“People move here because they like the lifestyle and think it’s more like a small society, with shopping, cafes, and gardens,” says Jiashan assistant office manager, Kong Xiao Yan. “Life is more leisurely here.”

This brand of leisure hasn’t attracted many Shanghai natives, though. The shop owners are largely expats, and residents are all European or American, Kong says.

“The price is a little expensive, and Shanghainese prefer new buildings or flats more than these, which are old, renovated buildings,” she says.

Like the Jiashan lifestyle, organic food carries a price tag that many Shanghai residents are unwilling or unable to pay. Locally sourced, sustainably produced foods are within the reach of a small, affluent segment of the population, as is the case in many Western countries.

“It’s becoming a fashion [...] for young people and foreigners, but maybe the older generation does not prefer this lifestyle,” Kong says.

The 2010 World Expo, which advertised the slogan “Better city, better life,” drew the attention of even the older generation to issues of food production in China, says Jane Tsao, spokeswoman for Shanghai’s first certified organic farm, BIOFarm.

“Food safety became the top concern, even raising high interests for many local Shanghai elderly people with limited but stable income,” Tsao says. “As for the linkage from organic food to the ecosystem or to environmental sustainability, I am afraid it’s not usually the major reason to push customers to buy organic foods in China.”

An increasing number of organizations are promoting the local-food movement in China, but these make up a small minority of the Chinese consumer market, she says. Western sustainable food movements such as Slow Food International, Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) and Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) have inspired some Chinese to follow suit in seeking out organic foods in their own cities.

“I’ve found more and more young Chinese working under high pressure who have taken action to become local-food practitioners,” Tsao says. “Some quit their jobs for a rest, and some started a small farm to practice a slower lifestyle.”

A world of difference persists between China’s affluent professionals, who can afford to buy into the organic food trend, and the majority of the population—rural Chinese who might view a leisurely lifestyle as one in which the backbreaking labor of daily farming can be abandoned for a quick stroll through the aisles of processed foods in a market.

“Organic foods are very expensive so they are not consumed by the majority of people in China,” says Dr. Zhuang Junpeng, a resident physician at Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai.

Zhuang says he has several rich Chinese friends who are able to buy strictly organic foods from high-end groceries, but that “most of the people still consume cheaper, processed foods, and many become very fat as a result.”

But this does not describe the clientele at Jiashan Market. Matteo Ferraboschi, manager of Jiashan’s hip juice bar and café, Melange Oasis, says his customers are 80 percent European expats, and about 20 percent local Shanghainese.

“Expats are surprised when I offer them organic and local vegetables,” he says. “They say, ‘Organic? Really? In China? But it’s so polluted!’”

Are projects like Jiashan Market a passing craze in China or a glimpse of the future? The coming years will reveal how this populous nation wrestles with sustainable food production—and a host of other escalating environmental problems.

Erwin Sennet Wu, a 28-year-old from Long Beach, Calif., is the director of “Gameday China,” a backyard football club in Shanghai, China. The National Football League hopes groups like Wu’s will bring more Chinese fans to the sport. Photo by Emily Mitis

By Alex Endress
For ChinaInFocus

They might be far from Uncle Sam, but that doesn’t stop the Gameday China group from playing American Football in Shanghai.

Led by Erwin Sennett Wu, a 28-year-old American from Long Beach, California, the backyard football club represents a portion of China’s small but growing population of American-style football fans. The crew meets every Sunday at local parks and universities to run through warm-ups, drills, and scrimmages.

Wu’s club is also a bit player in the National Football League’s burgeoning  vision of building a fan base in a country that’s never hosted a professional football game. The NFL’s international reach spans as far as London, where the league has played one game in each of the last four seasons. That global push is part of the NFL’s plans to expand their fan base, possibly increasing revenue from merchandising and advertising along the way.

Wu has a more modest goal. “What I’m trying to do right now is build a solid community,” he said. Gameday China has enough regular participants for one game every Sunday, according to Wu. However, he has high hopes for continued growth: “Hopefully we can start [our own backyard football league] one day.”

American Football has much to overcome if it is to succeed in China, a place where soccer and basketball have already planted roots. The NFL planned to host an exhibition game between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks in Beijing in 2007. Dubbed the “China Bowl,” the game was rescheduled to August 2009, and eventually canceled altogether in order to put more efforts into a regular season game in London – the first regular season game to be played outside of North America.

“We have a long ways to go, and we realize that,” said Richard Young, Managing Director of NFL China in Beijing. “But we do want to make sure that China is part of the development plan oversees for the NFL.”

The NFL, which has offices in Toronto, Mexico City, London, and Tokyo, established its Beijing office in October 2007. Aside from supporting groups like Gameday China, the NFL also promotes its own development program—the NFL University Flag Football League.

“Flag football has changed over the last 10 years to become a sport on its own,” Young said. “It’s a very good way for people to become initiated into the rules and the general strategies involved with American football.”

While the league is more similar to American college intramural competition than a Division I sport, it seems to have captivated the hearts of participants in China. “It was a whole new world,” said Andre Rook, a quarterback for the Fudan University team in Yangpu district.

Rook, an ethnic Chinese who was born in China and has lived there his entire life, said that most children in China are steered toward safer sports like ping pong at a young age. “You don’t have to follow what the community tells you,” Rook said. “You can be different.” Rook, a 24-year-old, has already graduated from Fudan, but is still allowed to play on the team.

Rook fits snuggly into the NFL’s mold of a Chinese football fan.

“There’s no question—people who play and who have been involved have a much higher level of interest in the game, whether or not its flag or whether its contact,” Young said.

The NFL is also working closely with China’s 14 state-run sports schools. Graduates of the schools tend to work in physical education, and the NFL hopes some of these graduates can implement football programs in middle schools and high schools, according to Young.

Memo Mata, from Austin, Texas, has already taken a lead on this. Mata has been coaching his own, full-contact, Chinese youth football team since February 2010. The team began as an extracurricular class at Xie He Primary School in Shanghai, but branched off as a private organization in spring of 2011. Mata calls them the Sea Dragons. In December 2010, the NFL sent Ed Wang, Offensive Tackle for the Buffalo Bills, to hold a clinic for Mata’s team. 

Mata said that at first, parents tended to be apprehensive toward the sport because of its violent nature. He further explained that because of China’s policy limiting families to only one child each, parents are extra protective of their children. “But when they saw the discipline that football can bring out in someone, and [that] you have to actually use your mind, and run plays, they really respected it,” Mata said.

Song Xuhua, father of running back Luca, has enjoyed watching NFL games since the 1980s. He believes the game instills confidence in his son. “Boys should be brave,” he said. “And in China, boys tend to be reserved, resisting risk. To have this kind of experience [with football] is what we are wishing for.”

Aside from grassroots level operations, the NFL also holds large scale NFL Experiences in China during the fall season, introducing fans to NFL cheerleaders and former athletes. “They bring the pageantry of American football to China,” Young said. “While it is on a very focused group – when it comes to percentages – these are people who will be the ambassadors for the game.” The next NFL Experience is scheduled for Nov. 26 at Shanghai South Stadium in Shanghai.

A diverse range of activities are offered at these events. Those that are curious may test their skills against the athletes, or participate in a punt, pass and kick clinic, which takes place at the stadium’s field. Other festivities include games put on by the university flag football league, and an EA sports competition, as well as parties with organizations like Sports Illustrated during the evening. Mata’s team is scheduled to hold a demonstration at the next NFL Experience in Shanghai this November.

“We have a vision of being a very significant element on the China landscape for a longtime,” Young said. “[We] believe that we can be seen as a very professional, very entertaining, very high quality sports league that can be followed by a large percentage of the population in China… and we believe in the next couple of years we’re going to see great strides here in China—absolutely – with the popularity.”

As for Wu, he’s going to keep playing – and recruiting.

“It will catch on,” Wu said. “When we play out here, we have anywhere upwards to 50 people just coming out here to watch.”

Jiashan Market is a community that focuses on sustainability and an eco-friendly environment. Photo by Lizzie Chen

http://vimeo.com/25557194

By Lizzie Chen
For ChinaInFocus

Located in the heart of Shanghai’s French Concession, Jiashan Market is a residential and business community that focuses on fostering an environment that sustains healthy lifestyles. Inspired by the concept of sustainability and an eco-friendly ideology, the people of Jiashan Market are trying to nudge Shanghai—and China—in a greener direction.

Members of Fu Yin church near Xiejiaqiao village in Zhejiang Province sweep the floor of their sanctuary. Christians are a small segment of China's population, but numbers have grown since religious persecution during the Cultural Revolution. Photo by Josh Barajas

By Ryland Barton
For ChinaInFocus

The majority of rural Chinese practice traditional folk religion, which incorporates deities, spirits, and ancestor worship. But more and more rural Chinese are converting to Christianity, with its own Chinese characteristics.

Podcast: Christianity in Rural China

Joshua Barajas contributed to reporting for this story.

Shanghai drag queen Alysa is the youngest of the drag performers at Lai Lai Dance Hall. Photo by Josh Barajas

By Lena Price
For ChinaInFocus

Drenched in neon light, about 300 men packed into the grimy Lai Lai Dance Hall in the Northeastern part of Shanghai—but even in the crowd, it was impossible to miss Alysa.

The petite drag queen strutted to the middle of the floor in a pin-straight pink wig, a strapless wedding gown and a pair of elbow-length white gloves. She grabbed a microphone and belted out a Chinese pop song in honor of Father’s Day as middle-aged men in the audience catcalled and threw 100 RMB ($15) notes at her.

Alysa is 21 years old and started doing drag less than six months ago, but she seemed unfazed by all of the attention. Along with about eight other drag queens, Alysa performs at Lai Lai up to three times every week. She earns about 5,000 RMB ($773) a month.

Lai Lai is the only club in Shanghai, and possibly the only one in China, to regularly feature full-length drag shows, said Min Min, the club’s owner and a frequent performer. He started the venue about 10 years ago, using all his savings from his former job at a transportation company.

“I just love dancing and I love art,” Min Min said. “I wanted a big venue where gay men can come to experience these things and to be themselves.”

Drag in Shanghai is still mostly an underground form of entertainment. The city has about 30 drag queens total, but they perform sporadically and mostly in small venues or gay clubs. There aren’t any reality television shows dedicated to drag like there are in the U.S., but Min Min said people who aren’t interested in the shows leave him alone.

On top of drag performances, Lai Lai also provides a place for older gay men to socialize. Many of them have wives and children and are not publicly open about their sexuality.

Min Min said for the most part, the Shanghai community supports his dance hall, but he can remember several instances of police harassment when he first got into the club business.

“I’ve had police come in and order everyone out during performances,” Min Min said.

He said recently he’s been able to run his club without any major incidents. By charging 10 RMB ($1.50) for admission, Min Min is able to pay his performers and the club’s rent.

The building is located on the second floor of a seedy karaoke club in the Huangpu District. Potential patrons need to climb a flight of narrow steps to reach the football field-sized dance hall.

Inside, dozens of strands of Christmas lights cover the low ceiling and a thin layer of dirt coats the chipped wood floors. For Alysa, the place has become like a second home.

“I love support and the encouragement I get here,” Alysa said. “When the claps are loud, it gives more confidence to keep performing.”

Alysa said she has been a performer as long as she can remember. She spends two to three hours practicing before every show, and almost as much time getting ready. She taught herself how to apply thick layers of glitter make-up and to design her own costumes, but she had some help from some of the more experienced queens.

Sixty-year-old Teacher Zhang, who prefers to use his stage name because he is not out to his family, has been doing drag for the past nine years and dancing since he was nine years old. The recently retired dance instructor from Shanghai University offers lessons to the younger drag queens at Lai Lai.

“Even once they get the performances down,” he said. “I still like to watch the rehearsals.”

Teacher Zhang has studied the history of drag in China. It dates back to the days of the Peking Opera, when males played the opposite gender. Mei Lanfang, one of the opera’s most well-known singers, often took on female roles. Teacher Zhang called the performer one of his idols.

“His heritage has been passed down to current performers, and I’m very happy to see that,” Zhang said.

Zhang puts on up to five shows in an average week and plans to continue performing at Lai Lai and around the city as long as he is physically healthy. He said the dance hall is leading the drag scene in China, and he hopes it will become progressively more popular.

“Drag is an elegant art,” Zhang said.

The qipao dresses of Sally Tailor in Beijing's Ya Show Clothing Market have been sought after and bought by First Ladies. Photo by James Jeffrey

By James Jeffrey
For ChinaInFocus

With the proliferation of Western fashion brands and shops in China, there are plenty of choices for eye-catching clothing. But there’s one Chinese dress in particular that succeeds in standing out from the crowd.

When a woman wears a Chinese qipao—pronounced “tee-pow”—people notice its distinctive design. A tight-fitting dress that usually falls above the knees or ankles, the close fitted neck and buttons for doing it up along one side of the body make the qipao unique. Although a dress with traditional roots, Chinese women haven’t always been permitted to wear it.

“It’s flattering to the figure, that’s why women like the qipao,” said Xiao Xing, a tailor in Beijing’s Ya Show Clothing Market. Xiao has worked at Sally Tailor making qipaos for seven years. He said the best made sell for 4,000-5,000 RMB ($615-769) and can take a month to make because of the detailed embroidery in patterns that range from flowers or dragons to fish. Other flourishes include backless qipaos and higher slits along the leg side.

More affordable qipaos are available at small clothing stores like the one run by Wang Liying in Beijing’s Haidan district, where they sell for between 100-260 RMB ($15-$40). Wang said women like that qipaos are normally made of cotton and are comfortable, light and cool. Echoing Xiao, she said there’s another crucial factor.

“Women find themselves looking sexy in a qipao.”

This hasn’t always been the case. The qipao originated in the 17th century during the Qing Dynasty. Back then it was baggy and extended to the ankles and wrists to conceal a woman’s figure and conform to feudal society’s conservative principles.

In the 1920s, especially in Shanghai, designers looked to Western styling for the qipao in order to accentuate the female figure, unlike before. After the communist revolution in China, the qipao was banned because of its Shanghai connection and by association, the capitalist West.

Outside Ya Show Clothing Market, 84-year-old Li Jinchun said she remembered women having to stop wearing the qipao and make-up after 1949 when the Communists took power.

Following the communist restrictions, the relaxation of dress regulations beginning in the 1980s led to Western styled dress in China. The qipao came back into fashion.

“Society developed and styles gradually changed,” Li said. “The Western style, the qipao—they both look good.” She added she’s not worried about Chinese fashion being replaced by Western styles—people should be able to wear what they choose and the most important thing is it looks good on them, she said.

But today the qipao’s traditional status can deter some.

“I don’t like it,” said Xiu Xiu, 20, a worker at Ya Show Clothing Market. “I think it’s for people over 30—I would feel old wearing it.”

Others say another problem can be the dress generates too much attention.

“When you wear the qipao, people look at you,” said 21-year-old student Gong Yu, visiting the trendy Sanlitun Village shopping mall in Beijing. “I don’t want people looking at me—but I think it’s beautiful.”

Yu and her friend Wang Xuehui agreed they want to dress comfortably and casually, leaving the qipao to be worn by others on special occasions.

“I like it,” said 18-year-old student Sun Xiaoke. “It’s part of our culture and should be accepted.” He added China provides a huge market for Western fashion chains looking to win over its eager youth. “The world has connected,” he said, “so maybe clothes and culture can mix together and make the world more beautiful and better.”

It’s not just Western influences visible in Chinese fashion. Styles from Japan and South Korea are much in vogue, according to Wang Liying in her small shop. She added though the qipao is the least worn style, sales have remained steady the last five years and she plans to keep selling them.

“Girls today look really good in a qipao,” said Li Jinchun. “Though the qipao is different now, as the style has changed, it still looks beautiful.”

In an attempt to address the mental health of the country, China is drafting a national mental health law to protect the human rights of its citizens.

The current draft, made available for public viewing and comment on the Legislative Affairs of the State Council website June 10, would ban compulsory mental health screenings and would allow patients diagnosed with mental disorders to be discharged from the hospital at their discretion. Patients with serious diagnoses would require the consent of their doctor or guardian.

The proposed law represents a new direction for China, which some experts believe indicates increasing Western influence over Chinese practice of psychiatry. But the process of diagnosing and treating supposed mental disorders is still a contended issue.

“In the past several decades we have collected a lot of experiences in how to treat and diagnose the patients in a rational way and at the same time retain their human rights to the maximum extent,” said Dr. Zhuang Junpeng, a resident physician at Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai.

The draft law also lists the right to education, employment, medical insurance, privacy and basic human rights such as the freedom from discrimination, regardless of an individual’s mental health.

More than 100 million Chinese have been diagnosed with mental illness by doctors using the Chinese Criteria for Mental Disorders-III. Of that number, 16 million are considered severely ill, according to 2009 National Center for Mental Health statistics.

“The DSM also has very big influence in China,” said Shanghai-based psychiatrist Xu Yong, referring to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders commonly used in countries like the U.S. and the U.K. “For a long time, treatment approaches for people with mental illness in China have predominantly used a hospital-based service model, and institutionalization and psychiatric and pharmacological treatment are mainly provided. The services delivered by clinical psychologists, social workers and occupational therapists are mostly unavailable.”

The law has been in the works and undergone more than 14 revisions since a group of psychiatrists began preparing it in 1985. If it is approved, the law will be the first of its kind in the country. Big cities like Shanghai and Beijing have local mental health regulations, but not so underdeveloped locations.

“Almost all people who face the screening reject it because they are ill and can’t control themselves so they reject everything,” said Li Sha, the deputy director of Shanghai Mental Health Center. “Sometimes we force them to do so but that’s because they’re really ill, but we have a very specific process.”

Li said the process involves doing checks and screenings multiple times before admitting a patient to the hospital. The individual’s diagnosis and mental state must be confirmed by the director, doctor and nurse, she said, to ensure they require treatment.

The diagnosis and treatment received in mental health hospitals is inevitably interconnected with the human rights issue, said Hu Zhitie, a human rights lawyer with Shanghai Mingqing Law Firm. Several people labeled as political dissenters have been hospitalized against their will as a form of containment, he said.

“The new law will be an improvement in the human rights of mental health patients,” Zhitie said. “They used to be forced by the government and hospitals to get screenings. This needs to change and the law is changing that.”

One of Zhitie’s clients was the victim of the forced screenings the new law aims to prevent. His client, whose identity is protected for anonymity, is currently negotiating compensation for an incident that led to his detainment in a local mental health clinic. The client was brought to the clinic when police broke up a quarrel between the man and an Internet café manager. Zhitie said his client was forced to stay in the clinic for a month against his will before being released.

Before economic reform, China was economically poor and the methods for dealing with those diagnosed with mental illnesses were oftentimes crude, Zhuang said. Because mental illness was considered taboo, families would confine their relatives who displayed any form of illness to the home so as not embarrass the family.

“Before we would treat this patient in a rude manner or hit them with a rod,” Zhuang said. “It’s not because we don’t care, it’s because we [were] poor and we [didn't] have the effective tools to treat him. It was the only way is to stop him from hurting others.”

Zhuang said this situation may still exist in the rural areas of China that lack proper facilities to treat mental illness, but the new law should help remedy this. The development of the law hints at the government’s awareness of the demand for mental health service.

“Chinese people experienced many fast and great changes of society, such as dissolution of social security, breakup of traditional family structure, the individual search for happiness, and therefore have to overtake much more psychological pressure than before,” Yong said. “The demand for mental health service is on the rise, as evidence by the increased utilization of both outpatient psychiatric and mental health counseling services and the tremendous popularity of hotlines and radio call-in programs.”

Xu attributed the change in China’s attitude toward mental illness to the influx of Western thought concerning counseling and psychotherapy for mental disorder patients, which did not previously exist in China.

“Many foreign counseling and psychotherapy experts visited China and developed and conducted workshops and short- or long-term training programs,” Xu said.

Zhuang said that in the past several decades, China has collected information on how to treat and diagnose patients in ways that retain their human rights—something they learned from the West.

“[The law] attracts so much attention because of intervention of Western culture,” Zhuang said. “More and more people know how the West deals with these issues and some Chinese people admit that for some aspects, Western society does a better job.

“We are walking a road the Western society already traveled.”

Photo by Lizzie Chen

By Jasmin Sun
For ChinaInFocus

Looking at it by the numbers, Tsingtao should be considered a very good beer. In fact, the omnipresent lager is the top-selling native beer in China, which makes it the leading brew of the world’s most highly populated country. Tsingtao also exports bottles to 62 other countries and regions. In a country of 1.4 billion people, that means a lot of mouths that favor the taste of Tsingtao.

Yet if mass-market beer is doing so well in China, then what’s fueling the recent appearance of microbreweries—and the artisan beers that come with them—in Shanghai?

Since 2006, four new microbreweries have opened in Shanghai to join the Bund Brewery, an expat-owned small production brewery established in 1998. The Boxing Cat Brewery offers two locations within the city’s former French Concession in addition to a dedicated brewery in Shanghai’s Minhang district. In the Gubei area, Shanghai Brewery and Ganlanba have received local media attention. In Pudong’s Kerry Hotel, The BREW’s Australian craft beers have caught the eyes of trade workers and city beer enthusiasts alike.

“I see a lot more passion in [places like The BREW],” said Boxing Cat head brewer Michael Jordan. “You can see a real commitment to making a proper craft beer instead of just making a profit off of it.”

As recently as 2009, research house Euromonitor predicted domestic beer consumption costs in China would reach 457.9 billion RMB ($70.4 billion) by 2014, a massive jump from the 305.3 billion RMB ($15.7 billion) worth of beer consumed in 2009. But China’s beer market is fragmented, with roughly 50 percent going to the country’s top six mass-market brands, most notably Tsingtao, Harbin and Yanjing. The rest of the market is made up of smaller, more local beer makers, including microbreweries.

To target the remaining market, microbreweries like Boxing Cat hone in on the city’s expat population. From there, it’s only a matter of time and successful advertising before what was initially aimed at a niche market extends to include members of the newly forming Chinese middle class.

Photo by Lizzie Chen

“Expats already know what microbreweries and craft beer are all about,” said Boxing Cat managing partner Lee Tseng. “After that, what eventually works as a good stepping stone is to develop a good presence with the locals. Once they start seeing your brand as something they’d like to look into,” it’s easier to draw a crowd with enough spending power for purchases like craft beer, he said.

The boom in Shanghai’s craft beer industry mirrors what has taken place in Austin, Texas, since 2008, when a new wave of small production breweries like (512) Brewing, Thirsty Planet, Jester King and Circle Brewing emerged on the local scene.

In a Skype conversation from Blanco, Texas, Real Ale Brewing Company’s head brewer Tim Schwartz offered the idea that Texans’ growing awareness and excitement toward craft beer was the galvanizing force behind many new founders’ decisions to open microbreweries of their own.

“A lot of this wave [of growth] has to do with the fact that the Texas beer consumer has become more educated and more adventurous about craft beer,” he said. “The demand for craft beer in Texas and Austin is at an all-time high … It’s an interesting time for Austin brewing.”

The increasing popularity of microbreweries in Shanghai might have less to do with the quality of the beers produced than with the hip, trendy restaurants built around each one. In a country obsessed with mian zhi, or how one’s reputation or status is perceived by others, eating dinner and drinking a beer at a cool new restaurant offers more cachet than the fact that the beer they’re holding is fresh and locally produced.

“It’s not just about the beer,” Bignold said, “it’s got to be about the venue and the service as well. The beer itself will take a bit longer to grow on the Chinese consumer. Luxury goods and status goods have been accepted well, but beer isn’t necessarily something that has status attached to it.”

When it comes to drinking craft beer—traditionally seen in the West as a backlash against imbibing mainstream mass-market beer—marketing to Chinese locals has to be carefully thought out. As Tseng tells it, “[The craft beer] trend in America was borne out of passion. In China, this trend was borne out of saving costs.”

To bring locals in to Boxing Cat, Tseng offers patrons free samples of the rotating artisan beer selection in addition to generous happy hour specials. “We want them to get a chance to taste the beer and associate craft beer with beer made with great quality ingredients,” he said.

Despite the different motivations behind the recent wave of new microbreweries in both cities, it seems that it’s this ultimate goal of providing customers with what owners and brewers believe is the best beer available that brings the burgeoning craft beer markets in Shanghai and Austin together.

“At any craft brewery,” said Schwartz, “you’re going … to try and educate the public and elevate the customer’s beer appreciation. As far as I know, that’s always been the mission.”

Perhaps long-time Boxing Cat employee Ellaine Navarro has it right when trying to predict if artisan beers will continue to be accepted by local Chinese in the future. “They would definitely like it,” she said. “They just haven’t gotten a chance to try it.”