Top-of-the-Week Links: Xi Jinping reviewed, lingering questions from Qingdao pipeline blast, and Maison Boulud closing in Beijing?

Ai Weiwei’s Zodiac Heads in Cleveland Art Museum

Some Friday links are included in here, since we missed Friday’s links.

Translation of Xi Jinping’s words on media, given during Third Plenum: “[We must/will] perfect systems and mechanisms for adhering to correct guidance of public opinion. We must fully build interactive mechanisms for the work of basic management, content management, industry management and the crackdown on and prevention of criminal conduct online. [We must/will] perfect mechanisms for handling online sudden-breaking incidents, creating an online public opinion work pattern that integrates positive public opinion channeling and management according to rule of law. [We must/will] integrate news media resources, promoting the integrated development of tradition media and new media. [We must/will] promote the institutionalization of news release. [We must/will] strengthen the professional credentials system for news workers, and prioritize the use and management of new media, and regulate the communication order.” (China Media Project)

Covering China. “Today, the story is at once more accessible and more dangerous. To cover China is to chronicle the world’s second-largest economy, a rising superpower, and one-fifth of the world’s population. China is so central to our economic lives that journalists have had no choice but to engage China with greater technical analysis and precision.” (Evan Osnos, The New Yorker)

On that Friday Qingdao pipeline blast that killed at least 52. “The Beijing News, an aggressive commercial newspaper, suggested that the lack of sufficient warning might have contributed to the death toll. // ‘According to already public information, from 3 a.m. when the leak happened to 10:30 a.m., in the space of more than seven hours, the company and even the local government it seems were only busy with handling the leak,’ the paper said in a commentary Monday. ‘No warning to evacuate residents has been seen, and from news reports, many residents regarded this as a sudden disaster with no chance to prepare. This perhaps is a reason for the large toll of dead and injured.’” (Sinosphere)

Chinese fathers. “In a survey of 500 Chinese fathers released earlier this week by communications company JWT, respondents ranked driving their children to extracurricular activities and to school first and second, respectively, as the childcare responsibilities they most viewed as the responsibility of the male in the family. More than two-thirds of Chinese fathers surveyed said they saw these tasks as their responsibilities, not their wives’.” (WSJ)

Headline: “Husband and Wife Desiring Child Discovers They Are Brother and Sister, Wife’s Father and Husband’s Mother Were Lovers.” (chinaSMACK)

Calling Photoshop experts. “As more and more officials are blackmailed using faked digital photographs, the government is asking scientists for help. // Research teams at major universities have received funding from the central government to come up with ways to help the authorities quickly determine whether an image has been manipulated by photo-editing software such as Photoshop. // In China, sending a government official a batch of sexually-scandalous photos for extortion has become a thriving business. Sometimes the pictures are real, but in most  cases the official’s head has been superimposed on to a body that does not belong to him.” (SCMP)

Look who has prosthetic eyes. “Guo Bin has undergone a series of operations for the prosthetics to give him a natural appearance but these will not restore his vision.” (BBC)

Li Guanfeng back in Beijing. “A court in Beijing on Tuesday heard the appeal of two defendants, including a son of a well-recognized uniformed tenor, who were given prison terms for gang rape. // The 17-year-old son to the 74-year-old singer Li Shuangjiang and the other juvenile offender surnamed Wang stood the second trial in Beijing’s No.1 Intermediate People’s Court. Defense lawyers of the both insisted on the advocacy of innocence, the court said.” (Global Times)

Maison Boulud rumored to be closing in Beijing. “The hot news flying around late this weekend was text message whispers of the Chi’en Men 23 institution Maison Boulud’s incipient closure. After five years of foie gras and madeleines, Daniel Boulud’s Beijing outpost is rumored to be shutting its doors on December 8.” (the Beijinger)

Chinese photographer profile. “I first came across the introspective photography of Lahem (拉黑) (born 1984) on the Chinese street photography collective Zaijietou.com (meaning ‘in the street’). We finally met in 2010 at the Shanghai Photography Night run out of Dada Bar. I recalled him a shy but excitable man, and in the few times we’ve spoken over a dinner here, an exhibit there, I’ve grown to admire his passion, thoughtfulness and resolution for his craft. It could be his Chinese Literature background from Fudan University that compels him to delve philosophically about the nature and meaning of his work. Or his small town roots that highlight the contrast of his generation in China’s hyper urban society today.” (Shanghai Street Stories)

Google’s Schmidt Sees Encryption Killing Censorship http://t.co/ubOZkncXQL via @BloombergNews

— Edmond Lococo 罗孟德 (@EdmondLococo) November 21, 2013

This is what makes China great. #guangzhou #beer http://t.co/1H0XCrayNq

— Cam MacMurchy (@zhongnanhai) November 20, 2013

This company will help any country build their own Great FireWall among other services http://t.co/5JSa8uVAbf

— Jeremy Goldkorn 金玉米 (@goldkorn) November 21, 2013

Use of Wikipedia in expert opinions (this recently came up in the China context): my take | http://t.co/nNa53y12mR

— Donald Clarke (@donaldcclarke) November 23, 2013

With Gary Locke stepping down, why not name Bloomberg CEO Dan Doctoroff new US ambassador? There's a man who knows how to work with China!

— The Relevant Organs (@relevantorgans) November 20, 2013

This was the scene nearby my home here in Urumqi yesterday. Nice blanket of snow! http://t.co/VZCvtWo4Za

— Josh (@farwestchina) November 23, 2013

Two on art, beginning with: “Just as China announces plans to curtail its one-child policy, a new art exhibition in Beijing takes a look at the experience of being an only child – through the eyes of an artist whose work focuses on the lonely children of his generation. // Meng Site, 25 years old, grew up an only child in the Hunan city of Shaoyang and was raised by his grandparents because his parents worked elsewhere in China… // His one-day exhibition this Sunday, ‘Open House: Black Space/White World,’ is a collection of a dozen paintings and other works that aim to capture the poignancy of that experience.” (WSJ)

@beijingcream Exhibition of paintings inspired by Beijing and Yunnan Province at Francis Kyle gallery London pic.twitter.com/vUoGkgNPVw

— H R Bell (@H_R_Bell) November 24, 2013

“The Fox” performed by children interlude:

Finally…

“From Hu’s the Boss to Xi’s in Charge: A First Season Recap of China’s Still-New Leader.” (Pacific Standard)

“For Cash-Strapped Chinese Parents, Two Babies Are Too Many.” (Tea Leaf Nation)

“Explorer Jeff Fuchs interviews a mountain trader and guide at 4800 metres.” (the Anthill)

“In Praise of Gary Locke, the Best Ever American Ambassador to the P.R.C.” (The Atlantic)

“China’s Online Satirists Bringing an Old Tradition to a New Medium.” (The Nanfang)

The end of another China blog? (Sinolicious)

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