August 6 – August 12
For the second consecutive Olympics, Liu Xiang failed to clear any hurdles in his event, this time inspiring one Chinese commentator to openly weep on air (linked to by Daily Beast). Badminton may have been plagued with controversy, but Lin Dan and Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei put on a hell of a match in the men’s final. While we wonder whether Cameron van der Burgh should be stripped of his gold medal for cheating, China Daily doesn’t seem to care that cannabis is not a performance enhancing drug.
The Gu Kailai trial began and ended in a matter of hours, and here are the most interesting details from the case. An armed robber in Chongqing who shot and killed a woman and wounded two others is in fact a hardened criminal who’s been wanted for years. And a woman got killed by a train next to the Wudaokou subway station in Beijing.
A boy peed into a cup held by his father at a hotpot restaurant, and the video and picture went viral (linked to by Gawker). An inventor created a post-apocalyptic vessel called “Noah’s Ark” (linked to by io9). Guo’an FC’s Xu Liang hit an incredible 62-meter game-winner in Workers Stadium. A white woman walked naked in Kunming, and a girl rode a pug.
Defenestration is a real thing: first there was a puppy that survived being thrown out of an 18th-story window, and then a women survived being thrown from the sixth floor. Related, a dog in Beijing was stuck on a fourth-story air conditioner for hours, probably as punishment.
The official trailer for the stupid movie Red Dawn features a grammatical mistake. Here’s a seven-year-old Michael Jackson impersonator. This man’s shirt is amusing. And if you want a chuckle, put the Chinese characters for “pa-pa-pa” into Google Translate.
