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Danwei Model Worker Award
Minority Stamps
AIDS Kebabs
This is utterly bizarre. My cell phone service provider, China Mobile, sends out daily news digests by SMS. Yesterday, they sent me a most unusual and somewhat sinister story.
All over China, in every night market, or on street corners, there are stalls selling Xinjiang style mutton kebabs. These are barbecued over charcoal and flavoured with cumin and chilli. Most of the stall holders (and certainly the best) are from Xinjiang, the Muslim area in China’s far west.
China Mobile informed me yesterday that there is a plot to spread HIV and AIDS through Xinjiang barbecue and that it is dangerous to eat it! I just hope that people are not so stupid as to believe that HIV can be passed through eating "infected" meat even if anyone really wanted to try. But, there is still a huge level of ignorance about HIV and AIDS here and they like locking up people who try to educate and spread awareness.
I'm gonna shoot a flare up on my blog too then, that sucks.
Hey you get dried out yet?
Can you post the original text? I'd be interested to see what they wrote.
(If you don't have it exactly can you write whatever Chinese you can
remember?)
"Hey you get dried out yet?"
Are you sure it's from China Mobile itself? The language seems like a rumor
spread by some ill-minded individuals.
Got it. The original link on the bottom of your message looked like text
rather than hyperlink. Thanks.
Yes, it definitely came from China Mobile. As I said, part of their daily
news service. Where they got it from, I have no idea.
I think someone at China Mobile will be looking for a new job by the end of
next week.
Time to stop going to Chinese restaurants for Peking Duck or something. If
they can spread AIDS on kebabs, what's stopping them from spreading it with
Peking Duck ? Better spread this news to our friends and family too.
I work in Inner Mongolia. About a year ago, one of my students passed me a
similar warning about barbecue. He had translated it into English, so I
can't compare the wording, but I would guess that the same message has been
floating around for awhile.
This really pisses me off. This closely resembles a rumor that a former
student of mine passed on to me as a "warning" of how AIDS-infected folks
from Xinjiang (big surprise) had hypodermic needles full of infected blood
that they were sticking the unsuspecting passerby with at Shanghai's main
train station. People here seem to have no sense whatsoever of how
ignorant their casual racism towards minority nationalities here is,
especially when it comes to the subject of Uighur people. Some time later
I caught a story in the local English-language Shanghai daily of how the
police had arrested a couple of people for having supposedly created the
rumor. When I mentioned this to my student, he replied, "Oh. You can't
believe what the papers say."
There is more information and background here. The link
also has a translation of the message I received.
I got the same sort of text from a friend today which just surprised me. I
just wish that people were spreading helpful AIDS things like 'practise
safe sex' rather than villifying one people with no reason.