On Friday, December 28 -- the birthday of jailed Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo -- a group of activists made a daring visit to the residence of his wife, Liu Xia, currently under house arrest.
You can watch them in the above video, uploaded yesterday to the YouTube account of Hu Jia, activist/dissident and director of the June Fourth Heritage and Culture Association. Hu writes that he and Hao Jian, Liu Di and Xu Youyu, among others, arrived at about 9 pm and basically overpowered a surprised guard.
Congratulations to Beijing, which now holds the distinction of having the longest metro system in the world. Four new lines went into operation yesterday — the second phase of Line 10, turning it to a loop; the southern section of Line 8; the northern section of Line 9; and the newly opened Line 6 —... Read more »
Tracy McGrady’s first season in the CBA has been pretty rough, but has it really come to this, T-Mac? Watching the Lakers play from an airport McDonald’s? The above comes from Sina Weibo via Adam Minter, and it’s sadly funny on many levels.
On the footsteps of an AP article about a petition warning against “revolution and chaos,” Reuters has just reported on an open letter signed by 73 scholars calling for reform, or else. “If reforms to the system urgently needed by Chinese society keep being frustrated and stagnate without progress, then official corruption and dissatisfaction in... Read more »
They’re marching in Hong Kong again — and again — as competing rallies express support and opposition to Hong Kong’s government. The first rally — the pro-gov variety — does not augur more civil public assemblies. As SCMP reports:
Peeping weekly at the best (and worst) that was, is, and will be on the China blogosphere. Aside from family animosities, hangovers and relief in seeing in another year relatively unscathed, there is little worth celebrating in the Sino-English gulag. Drawing up lists of the best and worst sites is a fool’s errand. Ditto content. It... Read more »
From the start, I’ve been optimistic about Xi Jinping and his administration. Melinda Liu of the Daily Beast has just outlined many of the reasons why:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXGIk9x-FI0] Shen Jianzhong, who fought back a pack of hoodlums in October who broke into his house and assaulted his wife, is making the most out of his 15 minutes of fame — but out of necessity. The LA Times recently caught up with him as he offered a grim update to his situation, specifically all... Read more »