London Olympics organizers have said they wanted to go a completely different direction than Beijing (and everyone ever), and yesterday's release of this year's Olympic theme song, "Survival" by Muse, confirms they're men and women of their word. But really, organizers are a Steps line dance away from being in full fuck-all-y'all mode: they do not give one rat's greypence about what the Olympics were, are, or will be. This year, it's gonna be British, so contemporarily and creatively British that anyone who doesn't like it can make like a tree and naff all the wankbats up Piccadilly.
The singularity approaches ever closer. At a restaurant in Harbin, Heilongjiang province called Haohai Robot Themed Restaurant (昊海机器人主体餐厅), robots greet customers, cook and serve food, and generally charm. Even WALL-E, the lovable protagonist in the Pixar movie by the same name, calls this place home*. We’re told that the restaurant employs 18 robots, each with... Read more »
We’ve documented here that chengguan — China’s urban management/street enforcement officers — are not generally favored by the people. You might think it unfair to call them street thugs, but that’s the reputation they’ve built for themselves, and while some chengguan, surely, are decent, it’s unfortunate that it will almost always be the bad apples who... Read more »
Less than an hour after posting about the upheaval in Zuotan, Foshan, Guangdong province, I realized there was a bigger, concurrent riot in the province, in Zhongshan City. According to NetEase via the website Democracy and Law Network, the fight started Monday around 6 pm when, in front of a primary school, a 13-year-old got beat up... Read more »
China Digital Times curates a news story from Caijing reporting that yesterday before dawn, thousands of residents clashed with hundreds of riot police in Zuotan, part of the city of Foshan, Guangdong province. According to Caijing: “Zuotan officials secretly arranged for the sale of land in three neighborhoods to developers. The officials thought they could claim... Read more »
Multipass is company that promotes travel to Asia, which means there’s a chance I’ll be seeing one of the above cretins here in Beijing. Oh, joy. Lots of folks are calling this ad, called “See Asia Like Asians Do,” racist. Eh, I say. They have different standards for racism in Eastern Europe, as this year’s Euro... Read more »
I'll try my best to walk you through what happens here, with help from Yimeng Evening News's June 20 edition (story is pasted onto this Youku video, which appears after the jump, uploaded three days ago and currently with 1.3 million views).
