IHT Quick Read: May 20

NEWS Prime Minister David Cameron's leadership came under growing criticism in Britain on Sunday, with a senior former minister asserting that Mr. Cameron had lost control of his party over European policy, and a Cameron ally reportedly describing local activists as “swivel-eyed loons.” Stephen Castle reports from London.

The push to bring up a law that attempts to halt abuse has split the small group of Afghan women's rights advocates. Despite fears of the conservatives, some argued that quick action had to be taken before the exit of the United States, which, along with the European Union, has championed better lives and protections for Afghan women. Alissa J. Rubin reports from Kabul.

At every major stop on the long line from Peshawar, in the northwest, to the turbulent port city of Karachi, lie reminders of why Pakistan is a worry to its people, and to the wider world: natural disasters and entrenched insurgencies, abject poverty and feudal kleptocrats, and an economy near meltdown. Declan Walsh reports from Ruk, Pakistan.

The retailer H&M led the charge in agreeing to improve worker safety in Bangladesh after a factory collapse, but the company said the decision was in the works before that tragedy. Liz Alderman reports from Stockholm.

EDUCATION Concern among international students and their parents about safety on American campuses long predates the Boston Marathon bombings. Still, American schools seem to be more popular than ever. Joyce Lau, D.D. Guttenplan and Lara Farrar report.

ARTS After days and nights of rain puddling on the red carpet and grim tidings darkening the screens at the Cannes Film Festival, the Coen brothers delivered both much-needed levity and an expressive, piercing story about artistic struggle. Manohla Dargis writes from Cannes.

DESIGN Some recent design projects both give pleasure and entertain, some in surprising ways. Alice Rawsthorn writes from London.

SPORTSArsenal scored just once against Newcastle United, and edged out Tottenham Hotspur for the last available passport to Europe's top competition. Rob Hughes on soccer.

After the death of a British sailor in a training accident, Luna Rossa Challenge said it would consider not participating in the America's Cup if wind limits for the race were not lowered. Christopher Clarey reports.

Storm in a Dipping Bowl Over Europe\'s Olive Oil Rule

LONDON - Even the most fervent supporters of the European Union would acknowledge that its bureaucrats occasionally display an unrivaled talent for shooting themselves in the foot.

At a time of declining public enthusiasm for the pan-European project, Brussels has set aside time from tackling a chronic economic crisis to confront the pressing issue of how olive oil is served in the Continent's restaurants.

In a move that has been seized upon by so-called Euroskeptics as further proof of mindless interference by a faceless bureaucracy, the European Commission has announced a ban on offering olive oil in dipping bowls and refillable jugs.

From Jan. 1 next year, restaurants will only be allowed to provide the product in sealed, clearly labeled, and non-reusable containers.

The French newspaper Le Figaro said it had given Euroskeptics another issue to get their teeth into, while Reuters quoted critics of the ban as saying it would only add to the frustration of many towards a Union bureaucracy regarded as bloated and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Europeans.

The measure has a serious purpose, according to its proponents. Sealed containers will offer a better guarantee of hygiene, and labels will ensure the quality and authenticity of olive oils.

The new rule also offers suppliers an opportunity to promote brand awareness.

But the European Union nevertheless faces the accusation that, at the very least, it is guilty of bad timing.

“Suddenly, E.U. ministers have decided to wage a war on bad hygiene and sound traditions when many Europeans can't afford a bar of decent soap,” wrote Robert Bridge for Russia Today.

The austerity measures to which Mr. Bridge referred in his commentary are seen as a major factor in the decline of the popularity of the Union, as revealed in a Pew Research Center survey this month.

The olive oil rule also comes at a time when Britain's Conservative Party is seen as tearing itself apart over the issue of Europe, with some demanding an early referendum on continued membership of the Union.

Seemingly crazy “diktats” from Europe are a staple of Britain's Euroskeptic press, which has in the past railed against rules that supposedly outlawed bent bananas or feeding bones to dogs.

Danny Alexander, a pro-European Liberal Democratic minister in Britain's coalition government, conceded that the olive oil rule was “pretty silly” but was not reason enough to leave the European Union.

Other legislators, however, demanded to know why Britain had not voted against the measure rather than abstaining.

Fifteen of the Union's 27 governments supported the olive oil rule. They included the Continent's main producers of the product - Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal - which have been among the hardest hit by the crisis in the euro currency zone.

It was opposed by other governments in the non-olive-producing north, including Germany, where an agriculture ministry representative was quoted as saying it would force restaurants to needlessly discard olive oil, contradicting a separate E.U. campaign to reduce food waste.

Europe is the world's largest olive oil producer, with up to 70 percent of the global market. The United States is the biggest consumer.

It is an industry that has been widely affected by fraud, one of the targets of the new European rule.

One criticism of European Union intervention in the olive oil business is that it favors big brand suppliers rather than small farmers, who continue to suffer low prices despite a fall in production in the past year.

In Spain, producer organizations have told their members not to be intimidated by bottlers and distributors, who they accuse of holding off buying the olive crop until the last moment in order to push prices down.

Does U.S. Violence Scare Students Away?

HONG KONG - The Boston Marathon bombings last month hit America's education and research hub, a city that draws the best and the brightest from across the globe.

Its campuses were particularly affected by the violence. Lu Lingzi, a Chinese student at Boston University, was killed by the bombs. The suspects also killed an officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of the suspects in the violence was a student at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, where he reportedly hung out after the attacks.

Worries about safety on American campuses long predate the Boston attack, because of numerous school shootings and other gun violence. D.D. Guttenplan, Lara Farrar and I reported from London, Shanghai and Hong Kong on whether that violence has actually had an impact on the decisions of foreign students shopping for schools. Our full article is here. For Chinese readers, the translated version is here.

On one hand, education experts and overseas education agents say that parents are worried. This is what David Qin, a co-founder of Paladin Learning in Shanghai, had to say:

“They are concerned about the safety level of universities. They don't want their kids to own guns. There are no gun shooting issues in Shanghai. They don't want their kids to buy guns in the future.”

On the other hand, there are risks everywhere, said William Lawton, director of the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education:

“There is anecdotal evidence that interest in studying in Britain dipped after the London riots. There is hard evidence that attacks on Indian kids in Melbourne in 2009 or 2010 hurt recruitment from India until just this year.”

Meanwhile, the number of foreign students in America continues to rise, as does the number of young people crossing national borders all over the world for education.

What do you think? Would gun violence in the United States have an impact on your choice of school?

IHT Quick Read: May 21

NEWS A giant tornado, a mile wide or more, killed at least 91 people, 20 of them children, as it tore across parts of Oklahoma City and its suburbs Monday afternoon, flattening homes, flinging cars through the air and crushing at least two schools. Nick Oxford and Michael Schwirtz report.

Lebanon reeled Monday from the twin realizations that Hezbollah, the nation's most powerful military and political organization, was plunging deeper into the war in Syria, which the country has tried to stay out of, and that the group was taking unaccustomed losses.  Anne Barnard reports from Lebanon.

Throughout her rise to power and as Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel has kept her personal life strictly private. But every four years, the election cycle cracks the door open a bit, and Ms. Merkel can be found telling tales of hunting for goods in the sparsely stocked stores of Communist East Germany, where she grew up, or mixing cherry juice with vodka as a barmaid at university parties. Melissa Eddy reports from Berlin.

The Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo, the comedian turned political insurrectionist, won municipal elections a year ago in Parma. The movement went on to win 25 percent of the vote in national elections in February, making it the most potent threat to Italy's traditional political parties in years. As the party accumulates power, Parma is now being scrutinized as a test of what it would do if given still more authority. Elisabetta Povoledo reports.

Guatemala's highest court on Monday threw out the genocide conviction and prison sentence of the former dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt. Elisabeth Malkin reports.

The Royal Horticultural Society‘s decision to allow garden gnomes - creatures commonly associated with the landscapes of the unrich, the unfamous and the untasteful - at the Chelsea Flower Show this year elicited a variety of responses. Sarah Lyall reports from London.

BUSINESS Yahoo, the faded Web pioneer, said Monday that it would buy the popular blogging service Tumblr for about $1.1 billion in cash, a signal that the company plans to reposition itself as the technology industry makes a headlong rush into social media. Michael J. de la Merced, Nick Bilton and Nicole Perlroth report. 

Even as Apple became the nation's most profitable technology company, it avoided billions in taxes in the United States and around the world through a web of subsidiaries so complex it spanned continents and went beyond anything most experts had ever seen, Congressional investigators disclosed on Monday. Nelson D. Schwartz and Charles Duhigg report.

ARTS Arnaud Desplechin, whose first appearance at the Cannes festival was in 1991, is competing this year with a movie that has deep French and American roots. Shot in English, “Jimmy P., Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian” is based on a book by Georges Devereux, an early French psychotherapist, about an American Indian veteran of World War II. Joan Dupont reports from Cannes, France.

SPORTS More than a week after the death of British sailor Andrew Simpson in a training accident, none of the four America's Cup teams have withdrawn from the competition, which is still scheduled to begin in early July in San Francisco. But the teams have made significant proposals for change. Christopher Clarey reports.

Budget-Conscious Scotland Yard Moving to Smaller Home

LONDON - The legendary Scotland Yard is on the move. London's police authorities, short of cash, have announced that the city force is to leave its current headquarters and decamp to smaller premises.

Scotland Yard! The very name evokes swirling fogs, Jack the Ripper, and Sherlock Holmes outwitting the bumbling Inspector Lestrade.

As London's Metropolitan Police itself boasts, “it has featured in almost every famous policing story over the past 180 years.”

The reality is more mundane. In 1967, soon after the fog - read “smog” - was banished by a tough anti-pollution law, the “Met” moved to its present headquarters, a glass-fronted block with all the charm of an insurance company office in a suburban business park.

In the spirit of the age, as Clyde H. Farnsworth wrote for The New York Times at the time, the police hired a public relations expert to revamp the Yard's image, including designing sassy new uniforms for its women officers.

Visitors wanting to recapture a more traditional feel are best advised to press their noses to the gates of the old Scotland Yard, a fortresslike riverside Victorian pile that housed the Met from 1890, and now provides offices for legislators at the nearby Parliament.

The 1967 upgrade to what is officially known as New Scotland Yard reflected Britain's embrace of what Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister of the day, described as the “white heat of technology” in the latter half of the 20th century.

The latest move reflects more the budget-paring preoccupations of the 21st.

The police and the London mayor's office this week invited architects from around the world to submit plans for a new headquarters, to be housed at an old police station in the same Westminster neighborhood.

Stephen Greenhalgh, the deputy mayor for policing and crime, said the move was part of a strategy of selling off part of the Met's property holdings that would generate the equivalent of at least $450 million.

The money would be “plowed back into the remaining buildings so that a rundown, largely Victorian police estate is fit for the 21st century,” Mr. Greenhalgh said.

A $90 million saving in building operating costs would pay for 1,200 additional police officers on the streets of London within three years, he said.

That is potentially good news for Londoners, at least the law-abiding ones, and for members of the Met who last year took part in the largest street protest by police officers against budget cuts.

Although the London force has around 26,000 officers, in many districts the traditional “bobby on the beat” is now almost as rare as a London fog.

A recent mission statement from the mayor's office pledged to create “a Metropolitan Police Service that becomes the U.K.'s most-effective, most-efficient, most-respected; even most-loved police force.”

However, the Metropolitan Police Federation, the London police officers' union, said the mayor's plan to enhance visible, local policing was “in keeping with the reductions all round which are the hallmark of austerity Britain.”

If the Met still finds itself short of money, even after the savings promised from the Scotland Yard move, it could always consider ramping up the marketing of its world-famous brand.

Taking its lead from the New York Police Department, it already has licensing deals with toy makers to sell “Scotland Yard” forensic kits for 10-year-olds and “Scotland Yard” jigsaw puzzles.

On a dedicated Web site, the Met invites private businesses to associate themselves with a brand “legendary around the globe for strength, courage and steely determination.”

What Sir Robert Peel, who founded the Met in 1829, would have made of it is anybody's guess.

Tensions Flare in Asian Seas, Now Involving Taiwan

BEIJING - The world is growing used to reports of aggressive diplomatic and military behavior by China over ownership of the South China Sea and the East China Sea, resulting in regular standoffs mostly with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, some of the other claimants to disputed seas and islands there.

But a recent quarrel between Taiwan (which has historical claims to the same sea and land territories as China) and the Philippines has come as something of a surprise, and has led to allegations of “Han chauvinism” in a region where Taiwan is more normally viewed as a victim of China's “one China policy.” China claims Taiwan as a breakaway province and in recent decades has squeezed Taiwan out of most international institutions, leading to international isolation for the state.

Others say the fracas, which turned ugly with attacks on Filipino workers in Taiwan and anti-Filipino demonstrations, as well as economic sanctions by Taiwan, is more a sign of domestic Taiwanese politics than Han chauvinism (the Han are the majority ethnic group in China and Taiwan and are closely associated with the identities of both places.)

On Tuesday, a senior Philippine official responsible for Taiwan affairs, Amadeo Perez, said that the Philippines was doing everything to protect Filipino workers in Taiwan, who number nearly 90,000, Rappler, a Filipino Web site, reported, saying the falling-out had caused “so much” damage and tension.

The facts: on May 9, a Taiwanese fishing boat, the Kuang Ta Hsing no. 28, was fired on by a Filipino coast guard vessel in disputed waters southeast of Taiwan, killing Hung Shih-cheng, a 65-year-old Taiwanese fisherman. The Filipino authorities said the boat tried to ram its Coast Guard vessel; Mr. Hung's son, who was on the boat, reportedly denies that. Investigations are under way by both sides.

Mr. Perez traveled to Taipei to meet top politicians and convey his “deep regret and apology over the unfortunate and unintended loss of life,” according to multiple media reports, but Taiwan refused to accept an apology “to the people of Taiwan” from the envoy of President Benigno S. Aquino III of the Philippines. Other reports said Taiwanese leaders wanted a state-to-state apology, something the Philippines said it could not do because it followed the “one China policy” and does not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Writing in the South China Morning Post, the respected commentator Philip Bowring said, “Now it's Taiwan's turn to show some nationalist anger, and its target is the Philippines.”

“Taipei's reaction seems more than just local political pressures on a weak President Ma Ying-jeou but linked to the desire to show that the island's Kuomintang government is at least as eager to pursue Chinese maritime claims as Beijing,” Mr. Bowring wrote. “The same has been seen in respect of the Diaoyu islands,” he wrote, referring to the islands in the East China Sea claimed by Japan, China and Taiwan.

“Taiwan's consequent higher profile in the South China Sea issues makes peaceful accommodation in the region more difficult and shows the Taipei government placing more emphasis on old nationalist doctrines than strengthening relations with its non-Chinese neighbors,” Mr. Bowring wrote. “For the Han chauvinists, an apology from the president of the Philippines is not enough. The Filipinos must grovel, be reminded that they, like Malays generally, are the serfs of the region.”

Writing in The Diplomat, J. Michael Cole, an equally respected commentator, disagreed, saying that Taiwan had mishandled the incident.

The principal reason for the standoff was that “Taipei allowed itself to be carried away by the domestic indignation over the slaying of an unarmed Taiwanese (we should furthermore note that a similar incident in 2006 remains unresolved),” Mr. Cole wrote, saying that Taiwan's president, Ma Ying-jeou, who has low popularity ratings, was seeking to “ride the wave of nationalism that, almost spontaneously, had taken over the whole of Taiwan.”

However, Mr. Cole wrote, Taiwanese official intransigence “is unlikely the product, as some commentators have suggested, of ‘Han chauvinism.' It is instead the result of something much more granular, such as local legislators' political ambitions in fishermen's constituencies, as well as by opposition parties' efforts to criticize Ma no matter what he does, especially at a time when he is vulnerable.”

Mr. Cole concluded: “A lack of worldliness, of understanding Taiwan's position within the international community, and of how its actions will be interpreted abroad, better explain what happened. Depicting Taiwan's actions as a plan by a secret cabal of ‘Han Chinese' chauvinists to take over the region simply doesn't help us understand what ultimately went wrong with Taiwan's handling of the situation.”

Some grass-roots efforts are under way in Taiwan to reduce the tensions, which have led to military exercises in the region.

 

IHT Quick Read: May 22

NEWS Hezb-i-Islami, a powerful and feared player in the fight against the Soviets and later in Afghanistan's civil war, is now widely seen as a spent insurgent force that poses little military threat. Instead, on the eve of the American troop withdrawal, Hezb-i-Islami's real strength now lies with its political party. Matthew Rosenberg reports from Kabul.

Despite growing public opposition to the practice, the Chinese government is not prepared to end the lucrative trade in ursodeoxycholic acid, the active ingredient found in bear gallbladders. Although scientists have engineered a synthetic alternative, traditionalists claim it lacks the therapeutic punch of raw bile. Andrew Jacobs reports from Chengdu, China.

In a case of alleged forgeries that roiled the New York art market and led to a host of civil lawsuits, the U.S. authorities on Tuesday declared a series of works sold as Modernist masterpieces to be fake and charged a little-known Long Island dealer at the center of the scandal with tax fraud. Graham Bowley, Wiliam K. Rashbaum and Patricia Cohen report.

President Barack Obama embraced drone strikes in his first term, and the targeted killing of terrorism suspects has come to define his presidency. But lost in the contentious debate over the legality, morality and effectiveness of a novel weapon is the fact that the number of strikes has actually been in decline. Scott Shane reports.

BUSINESS Ireland came under sharp criticism Tuesday for its attractiveness as a pied-à-terre for American companies doing business in Europe. At the eye of that storm is a special corporate tax rate of only 2 percent that U.S. Senate investigators say Apple worked out with the Irish tax authorities. Landon Thomas Jr. and Eric Pfanner report. 

David Karp neither finished high school nor enrolled in college. Instead, he played a significant role in several technology start-ups before founding Tumblr, the popular blogging service that agreed to be sold to Yahoo for $1.1 billion this week. He joins a tiny circle of hoodie-wearing characters like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who have struck it rich before turning 30. Jenna Wortham and Nick Bilton report.

ARTS Ai Weiwei plans to release his first heavy-metal music video, one with detailed re-creations of scenes from his 81 days of detention by paramilitary guards in 2011. He also portrays fantasies he imagines flitting through the guards' minds. Edward Wong reports from Beijing. 

The Cannes festival celebrated 100 years of Indian cinema last weekend with a digitally restored screening of Satyajit Ray's 1964 film “Charulata,” and many new films from India were on the schedule. Joan Dupont reports from Cannes.

Cecilia Bartoldi lights up the Salzburg Whitsun Festival with the power of Bellini's “Norma,” writes George Loomis.

SPORTS After years of poor play, management changes and bankruptcy, Bradford City A.F.C. finally shines, writes Rob Hughes. 

Vote Allegations Rattle Eurovision Song Contest

LONDON - Tension has been rising between Russia and neighboring Azerbaijan since the weekend over an alleged vote-rigging scandal whose reverberations are being felt across Europe.

Even Sergey V. Lavrov, the formidable Russian foreign minister, has stepped in, threatening that an “outrageous action” committed in Baku will not go unanswered. The Azerbaijani authorities have offered a full-scale fraud investigation.

The origin of the diplomatic spat involving Moscow and the former Soviet satellite is the annual festival of kitsch and glamour known as the Eurovision Song Contest.

Russia claims its entry at the finals of the televised songfest in Malmö, Sweden last Saturday was pushed into a desultory fifth place as a consequence of vote-stealing in Azerbaijan.

Results in the contest, watched by an estimated 125 million viewers across Europe, are determined by a mix of votes from official national juries in participating states and those phoned in by the public.

The result announced from Azerbaijan on Saturday awarded zero points to the Russian entrant, Dina Garipova, rather than the 10 points indicated by data from cellphone operators.

It has prompted allegations of both jury-rigging and illicit “power-voting” via text and telephone.

“We can't be happy with the fact that 10 points were stolen from our participant,” Mr. Lavrov warned on Tuesday.

“We will discuss joint measures to ensure that this outrageous action will not go unanswered,” he said after talks in Moscow with Elmar Mammadyarov, his Azerbaijani counterpart.

The European Broadcasting Union, the pan-national authority that organizes the contest, is so far standing by Saturday's independently audited results.

However, Eurovision officials have tried to calm the troubled waters by promising to look into the accusations on behalf of millions of viewers and the contestants, “who have put heart and soul into their performances.”

Camil Guliyev, the head of Azerbaijan's state broadcaster, said he hoped the incident “possibly initiated by certain interest groups, will not cast a shadow over the brotherly relations of the Russian and Azerbaijani peoples.”

Among evidence to be examined is an undercover video, shot hours before the final and said to show how two individuals approached people to cast large numbers of votes in favor of one particular entry.

Jon Ola Sand, the contest's executive supervisor, emphasized that no link had been established between the individuals in question and Azerbaijani officials.

This year's diplomatic spillover was the latest example of politics intruding into the contest, challenging Mr. Sand's assurance that “the Song Contest's apolitical spirit is a cornerstone of its enduring success.”

As Rendezvous reported a year ago, when Azerbaijan hosted the finals, local political activists took advantage of the presence of more than 1,000 visiting journalists to highlight corruption and rights abuses by the regime of President Ilhem Aliyev.

An Irish academic study in 2010 noted that, “even though the contest professes itself to be apolitical…the political alliances and divisions that mark Europe often become too readily evident with the contest.”

The paper by Adrian Kavanagh of National University found that countries tended to vote for their friends and not for their enemies, regardless of the quality of the songs.

In recent years, the annual lineup has been bolstered by entrants from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where the contest is taken more seriously than in some of the Western European states where it has been running since 1956.

In countries like Britain, a five-time winner, it is now widely regarded as a once-a-year celebration of televised kitsch, more watchable for its spangles and sparkle that for its instantly forgettable songs.

Eastern Europe has dominated the winner's podium in the past decade, although Saturday's crown went to Emmelie de Forest of Denmark, with “Only Teardrops.” Azerbaijan came in second.

But, even in Western Europe, the contest maintains its ability to provoke a political reaction.

In Germany this week, there was speculation that the country's miserable 21st place at Malmö was Europe's payback for Chancellor Angela Merkel's tough stance on the euro zone financial crisis.

Overseas Chinese: A Foreigner at Home

BEIJING “Your Chinese is terrible! Aren't you ashamed as a Chinese?''

‘‘Oh, you've come home! That's wonderful! You can see how the motherland is developing.''

‘‘I've always wanted to know - how do Australians view us Chinese?''

As a second-generation Chinese-Australian now living in Beijing, I've become used to such questions - from taxi drivers to distant Chinese relatives and tourists asking me for directions.

Cities like Beijing and Shanghai are increasingly home to overseas Chinese, as those of us of Chinese descent who are not citizens of China are known. By some estimates, more than 30 percent of the American citizens living in China are of Chinese ethnicity.

For hyphenated Chinese like me, living here presents challenges as well as attractions. The chance to explore our's roots and discover a country radically different from the one left behind by our parents or grandparents can be as powerful a lure as the job opportunities offered by a rising China.

Yet expectations of some Chinese toward ethnically Chinese foreigners can be disconcerting. There are assumptions that someone who looks Chinese must speak fluent Mandarin and instinctively understand cultural norms that may be peculiar to the contemporary mainland. Both locals and foreigners can be unsure how to categorize us.

Last summer, a Chinese-American friend, Holly Zhao, was squished in a sweltering Beijing subway car and talking distractedly on her cellphone in English when she accidentally stepped on another passenger's foot. Her apology did little to quell his anger. ‘‘This is China,'' the man snarled. ‘‘Learn Chinese and then apologize.''

Li Jinzhao, a specialist in diaspora studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, says overseas Chinese are often ‘‘blamed directly or indirectly if they look the Chinese language but don't speak the language. They are seen as a failure of Chinese culture.''

Overseas Chinese also find they are a part of the complicated racial landscape of China where ‘‘you get five stars if you are a white foreigner, three stars if you're an overseas Chinese and two stars if you are local Chinese,'' said Jason Zheng, a Chinese-American who has lived in China for eight years, first as an English teacher, and who now runs several bars and restaurants in Beijing.

‘‘Even though I had two years' experience teaching English in China,'' Mr. Zheng said, ‘‘I was told I wasn't white enough when I went for an interview at Crazy English,'' referring to a popular language program.

Classified ads in expatriate magazines are filled with advertisements for ‘‘foreign-looking'' foreigners who can pose as chief executives to enhance the aura of Chinese companies in crucial negotiations, ‘‘white'' English teachers, and men marketing themselves as a ‘‘Caucasian boyfriend-slash-husband-to-be.''

Last year, Ross Tan was refused entry to a Beijing club because he could not produce a Chinese identity card, he said. He explained he didn't have a Chinese identity card because he was born and raised in Australia. But he did have an Australian passport he could present as proof of identity. The bouncer refused him entry but let his five Caucasian friends in without even a glance at their papers.

Two weeks later, during a police crackdown on foreigners without valid paperwork, Mr. Tan was asked to produce his passport, his visa and his residence permit at the very same club. ‘‘So basically, I'm too Chinese to be foreign and too foreign to be Chinese,'' he said with a sigh.

But this confusion over identity might also be one of China's attractions to many overseas Chinese. Steven Tao, another Chinese-Australian, sees the advantages of playing to stereotypes.

‘‘You have to know how to use it in different situations depending on who you are interacting with,'' he said. ‘‘Sometimes, I'll exaggerate my foreign accent when I speak Chinese. Sometimes, when I'm asked where I'm from, I'll say ‘I'm Australian, with a Chinese heart.' ''

Mr. Zheng, who has investments in several of Beijing's trendiest restaurants and bars, agrees with the importance of embracing the contradictions. ‘‘In China, I found the American Dream. But I wouldn't have come or stayed if I wasn't ethnically Chinese.''

Sometimes Beijing's air pollution and food safety scares make me want to pack up and go home. But the dynamism of a rapidly changing China, coupled with curiosity over what my life might have been if my grandparents hadn't left, searching for better opportunities, keeps me here.

Chinese friends often confess that if I were white, we probably wouldn't be so close. Foreigners who are not ethnically Chinese frequently complain about the difficulty of making Chinese friends who aren't simply interested in practicing English.

The divide between locals and foreigners can be stark. While there are a lucky few who comfortably navigate the two worlds, the chasm is evident in the passport-based lunch circles at multinational companies in Beijing and in the awkwardness of foreigners at karaoke evenings or of Chinese at house parties hosted by foreigners. The segregation extends to the different apartment complexes, supermarkets and bars that cater to Chinese versus foreign tastes.

Growing up, I used to ask my parents why I didn't have blond hair like my classmates. At my university, I took a class on diasporas in which the professor said everyone should spend some time living in a society where they look different from the mainstream. In China, although I look like that mainstream, I've discovered just how Australian I am.

I often find I have much in common with overseas Chinese from countries as diverse as Panama, Mauritius, Denmark, Germany, France, Switzerland, Myanmar, Japan, Singapore and Canada. We get together and laugh about our encounters with Beijing taxi drivers. We argue about what it means to be Chinese and the connection between language and identity. We speculate about why it probably is different for a second-generation Irish-American in Ireland than it is for us in China.

But we seem to agree on one thing: There needs to be an evolution of Chinese identity to include overseas Chinese.

Holly Zhao summed it up when she reflected on her encounter in the Beijing subway, ‘‘You don't have to be Chinese the way they want you to be.''

Are you, like the author of this post, “Overseas Chinese” or “hyphenated Chinese”? Share your experiences in the comment space here.

Beyond the Obvious

My colleague Mark Bulik offered these thoughts on caption writing, with examples, bad and good.

Every day Times editors conduct dozens of weddings, uniting words and images, in print and online. Many of these unions are things of grace and beauty, others come closer to an ugly brawl, and more than a few just seem silly. As in any marriage, the two parties should not just speak to each other, but seem as though they belong together. And so, in the service of a more perfect union, let us start with the advice of The Times's stylebook: “A caption should normally explain what readers cannot see for themselves in the picture and should omit the obvious.”

Consider what can happen when we ignore that admonition and fill a caption with whatever basic information came with the photo.

---

US Attorney's Office Eastern District of New York

Published caption: A photo shows about $20,000 sitting on cans of beer following a series of thefts from A.T.M.'s in New York in February.

We can assume that it's a photo and that it shows something - no need to say so. And yes, it's pretty clear that those are cans of beer. Instead of telling readers what they could already see, we could have tried for a bigger point - for example, did the suspects take this picture themselves?

---

Angelos Tzortzinis for The International Herald Tribune

Published caption: Michalis Petrakis, who is jobless and whose son Pantelis has been going to school hungry, opened his nearly empty refrigerator.

In case you thought he was closing it. Perhaps instead of telling readers that Mr. Petrakis was opening his refrigerator, we could have told them that he has trouble filling it.

---

Saul Martinez/European Pressphoto Agency

Published caption: Courtroom spectators applauded after the trial judge refused to accept a ruling annulling the case.

Yes, that's what they are doing with their hands - applauding. A better use of the space might have been to note that the spectators included a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Rigoberta Menchu (center, with beads).

---

Josh Haner/The New York Times

Published caption: Pallbearers carried Krystle Campbell's coffin at her funeral Monday in Melford, Mass. “I'll miss her, that's for sure,” her grandmother said. “She was my baby girl.”

Instead of reporting the obvious - that pallbearers were carrying a coffin - we could have noted that this was the first of the funerals for the Boston bombing victims.

---

Now consider what a cutline can add to the presentation of a story when we give the reader some additional context:

Larry W. Smith/European Pressphoto Agency

Published caption: The remains of the plant. The authorities say there is no indication of criminal activity in the explosion, which followed a fire.

With this caption out of West, Tex., we avoided belaboring the obvious and used the space to address a key question in readers' minds: Was the explosion foul play?

---

Boyd Norton

Published caption: Anna Merz with Samia. The rhino would follow her around like a dog even after she was grown.

After a caption like that, who wouldn't want to read more?

 
In a Word

This week's grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.

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A pristine 12-room sponsor unit at 535 West End Avenue, a 1920 brick building reinvented, expanded and marketed as a luxury destination by the Extell Development Company, sold for $16.295 million and was the most expensive residential sale of the week, according to city records.

From the stylebook:

When mentioning an address on a major thoroughfare in New York City, ordinarily specify the nearest cross street.

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The revelations had been published by The New York Times, The A.P. and in several books.

With the switch of prepositions, this doesn't work as a three-element series. Make it “by The New York Times and The A.P. and in several books.”

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Both Mr. Sharif and Mr. Khan have been measured in their criticism of the Taliban, and neither have suffered attack, although the caretaker government says they are also at risk.

“Suffered attack” is an odd phrasing, and in any case, “neither” is singular. Make it “neither has been attacked.”

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To many, they remain the afterthoughts of the New York City mayoral race: outsider candidates, polling in the single digits, whom the political establishment assumed would at some point quietly go away.

The establishment assumed that they, not them, would go away; replace “they” with “who,” not “whom.”

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It conjures up the old adage that ships are safest on shore, but that is not why they are built.

As the stylebook notes, an adage is an old saying; “old adage” is redundant.

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His game, redolent of crisp iron play and clutch putting, has resurfaced.

Redolent means smelling (of) or, by extension, evocative (of). We needed a different word.

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Len Johnson, who lives in the Jefferson Houses, another public housing complex in East Harlem, explained it this way: “It's like, ‘What I done to your door, I'm going to do to you,' ” he said, “It's a powerful message. It's all about saying something without them saying it out of their mouth.”

This sentence attributes the same quotation twice. Why not drop the “he said”?

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An affadavit sworn out by Douglas J. Kunze, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the authorities had found the parts of a pipe bomb, including potassium nitrate powder, which is used in fertilizers and gunpowder.

Though Mr. Reed was not in possession of the materials, he admitted to having possessed them, according to the affadavit.

It's spelled “affidavit.”

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A witness also said Mr. Scarcella told him who to choose in a lineup.

“Whom,” not “who.”

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[Caption] Barbara Walters and Harry Reasoner after her debut as the nation's first female anchorwoman.

Redundant; of course an anchorwoman is female. In any case, the stylebook prefers “anchor.”

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The family has also been troubled by what they say is a lack of communication from the authorities.

Singular or plural? Make it singular throughout.

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But it does offer a reminder that how patience on both sides is wearing thin as the war grinds on, and that thoughtless acts can lead to international incidents.

Perhaps we were changing “of how” to “that,” but didn't finish the editing?

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The glasseslike device, which allows users to access the Internet, take photos and film short snippets, has been pre-emptively banned by a Seattle bar.

Avoid this jargony verb use of “access” if possible. Here, we could simply say “go online.”