The Situation Is Excellent: The Week That Was At Beijing Cream

January 14 – January 20

Plainclothes cops nabbed an interviewee in broad daylight, which is pretty incredible. Also incredible: a drug mule trying to sneak into China by pretending he was a journalist. And also fitting somewhere on the incredible scale: a factory in Hangzhou burned nearly three hours before someone noticed through the “fog.”

A scene from Skyfall was censored for its China showing, so we will not be watching Skyfall in China. Changsha residents scramble to save hundreds of cats. Most of Shenzhen’s crocodiles have died. Here’s your first look at Shanghai’s No-Pants Subway Day.

Wendy Hale made the salient point that a silver lining to the pollution was Chinese media’s coverage of it. A.N. wrote about a restaurant’s team bonding exercise like you’ve never seen before. Seahorse Liu’s piece on Jackie Chan sparked quite the conversation. RFH came by to talk about journalism in China.

Alicia wrote about Man U’s new China sponsorships. Han Jugen wrote about Wu Di, the first Chinese male at a tennis major in 54 years. Chris Clayman reminds us that good people exist in China, like this man in Luoyang. Sinopathic’s terroir wrote about ethnocentrism and culture. And John Artman wrote about Chinese tech companies at CES and Apple’s new payment plan for products in China, to say nothing of Nietzschean gang beatings.

There was a suicide bombing in Guangzhou on Friday, injuring seven. A sexy chick pole danced on Wuhan’s subway. A “ghost” scared off an attendant so she didn’t have to pay a parking fee.

Prominent social critic and writer Li Chengping was attacked at a Beijing book signing. Here’s an incredible video of a driver running over two pedestrians multiple times. Finally: the Chinese knew their shit.

Comment of the Week:

Jesse, on the post about the live chickens being used as archery targets in Jilin:

OK.

First of all, if you are here and read Chinese blogs, you have all heard that this is a development issue (insert reference to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs model). I won’t get into this.

To all those who admit to being sick of people in this country, I advice you go home. I’m not insulting you. I’m not saying take it or leave it. I’m just saying that if this gets to you, it may be time to leave. I’ve been here for 9 year, yet every time some asshole 暴发户 in a BMW almost kills me, I think about leaving. Or becoming a mass murderer. Every time someone makes a dumb-ass stupid assumption about me…every time I meet a government prick who looks down on me… every time someone tries to cheat me… I feel rage. Yet, I’m not sick of the people. So I stay.

I will say something which most expats refuse to admit… Westerners are not any better than Chinese. Sure we are more cultured in some ways and we treat our pets better. Sure we are better at separating private and public behavior. And our value of individuality makes us a little less likely to do really stupid things just because everyone else does it. However, WE kill more people than Chinese. Our governments kills those people… and we are much more responsible by virtue of the fact that we have democracy. WE (in America) have access to the free internet… yet we refuse to look for the truth, instead believing in crap like Creationism, Birthism, and the universal benefits of capitalism. WE (in America) treat the elderly like shit. And we treat the animals we eat very very poorly.

But WE have the hypocrisy to think we are better.

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    2 Responses to “The Situation Is Excellent: The Week That Was At Beijing Cream”

    1. Big Pile O' Fragrant Roses

      Nice comment of the week. Saved you from actually having to type that shit in another whine-post. Thumbs up for division of labor!

      Reply
    2. Jive madra

      Ditto that on the comment, Like everyone we get bad Beijing days (mine normally by my workplace’s ad hoc admin), but I still love shit here. Some of my co workers complain about fucking everything and it’s like “why are you still here so?”. People are going to moan about everything, every-fucking-thing, no matter what. It’s just, over here my feeling is “fuck off, so”

      Reply

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