As you've surely heard, president Barack Obama has nominated Democratic Senator Max Baucus from Montana as the next US ambassador to China. Baucus appears to have support from both sides of the aisle and is expected to be confirmed soon.
The top-ten-list format has its limitations as a vehicle for instruction and dialectic, but The Nanfang has a great one you should check out: top 10 translations of quotes from the novelist Qian Zhongshu (yesterday was the 15th anniversary of his death). Our favorites come in a clump, Nos. 5-7:
It’s not every day that a Chinese animated film manages to secure more than 1 million yuan in funding. It’s even rarer that that money comes from the crowd.
But 3,596 backers saw promise in Big Fish & Chinese Flowering Crabapple, a new film by Liang Xuan. Enough promise that they donated 1.58 million yuan over 45 days on Demohour.
It now holds the title of China’s most successful crowd-funded project to date.
Showcasing the best in Asian-related memes. Above via China Media Project: "Following a report in December 2013 by the Beijing News about poor migrants living in underground wells in the capital’s Chaoyang District because they could not afford housing there, local authorities sent teams to seal the well entrances with concrete."
Donnie has a music video. He worked on it for three months. It features pandas and handjobs, and if you didn't think of the Oriental Pearl Tower as phallic before, well:
The Uyghur-language songs of teen heartthrob Ablajan Awut Ayup run on a loop through the heads of many Uyghur tweens and young urbanites. Taking cues from Justin Bieber, the ever-popular dance moves of the late-Michael Jackson, and the pretty-gangster affect of Korean pop stars, Ablajan is a self-styled chart-climber; he is a self-made song-and-dance man. Whether you love him or hate him, the fact remains that he has cornered the Uyghur children’s music market by tying clever songwriting with catchy beats.
At the Exit-Entry Bureau this afternoon, one of the officers behind the table almost got into a fight with another officer. They moved to the back, where there was audible shouting behind a closed door, and the sound of a slap. Anger does weird things to people, divesting them of shame. Links time.
