Mid-Week Links: Why Chinese buildings are ugly, porn police, and the Lakers are coming

Shandong’s home-court DJ taunts Qingdao’s coach yesterday. Shandong won the game to snap Qingdao’s five-game winning streak, in the process extending its winning streak to nine games. (Sina)

Let’s make tonight a drinks night links.

Also see, from earlier today, this. “The typical Chinese city is grey, ugly and congested. It has pointlessly wide roads and squares, and functional, boxy buildings clad in grimy concrete or dirty white tiles. The old parts of town have been demolished, save perhaps for a solitary pagoda, rebuilt and sucked dry of its historical sap. Its roads are jammed, the air filthy, the streets often unwalkable. Pavements and public entrances are blocked by private vehicles, whose owners scream abuse at cyclists and pedestrians for getting in their way. It is, in short, anything but ‘liveable’.” (The China Story)

Porn cops. “Some mid-week fun. A viral story today on both Renren, China’s Facebook clone, and Weibo, China’s leading microblogging service, has to do with a job that may be the envy of many Chinese young guys – police porn examiner. They are technically police, but their sole job, as the original news article indicates, is to screen porn materials and distinguish pornography from non-pornography content.” (Offbeat China)

I thought Jiang Zemin was dead. “The Xinhua report surfaced after journalists covering the funeral service of General Yang Baibing on Tuesday discovered the wreath bearing Jiang’s name appearing behind the name of President Hu Jintao, party general secretary Xi Jinping and current members of the Politburo Standing Committee. // Xinhua explaining Jiang’s request said: ‘This reflects the Communist Party member’s noble character and sterling integrity.’ // The state news agency’s sycophantic rhetoric was quickly mocked on China’s twitter-like service Sina Weibo, where netizens often use the phrase ‘noble character and sterling integrity’.” (SCMP)

Yeah, pollution sucks, doesn’t it? “Speaking at the opening of the annual session of the city’s largely rubber stamp legislature, Beijing mayor Wang Anshun said the government would take 180,000 old vehicles off the road this year and control the ‘excessive’ growth of new car sales. // The heating systems of 44,000 old, single-story homes and coal-burning boilers in the city center will also be replaced with clean energy systems, Wang said in a speech carried live on state television.” (Reuters)

Feature on Jin Auyeung. “In 2004, at 22, he became the first Asian-American to release a solo rap album on a major label in the U.S. // …For seven consecutive weeks, he dominated the program’s “Freestyle Friday” rap battles, fending off his challengers’ ethnic insults with rapid-fire retorts like: // “Yeah, I’m Chinese / Now you understand it / I’m the reason that his little sister’s eyes are slanted / If you make one joke about rice or karate / NYPD be in Chinatown searching for your body.” (NPR)

21 and Over movie interlude (there’s a decent chance that the funniest parts of the movie are all in this trailer, but hey, at least watch the trailer):
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc9vHeGNTY0]

Finally…

Police in Shenzhen find alleged killer of 16-year old girl in a hostel in Longhua. (The Nanfang)

Funny snow sculptures. (Xinhua via Global Times)

Tencent Weibo has 540 million users. (Tech in Asia)

French revolution book The Old Regime and the French Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville is a bestseller in China. (Xinhua)

The Lakers will be in China next preseason for the China games. (ESPN)

Finally, finally…

Shanghai’s new air quality mascot is adorable, kind of, via Angel Hsu:

• 
•