When a movie makes Steven Spielberg cry, you can be sure of one thing: it was written for the express purpose of making people cry. Please take a look at the trailer for Coming Home, the new film by Zhang Yimou starring his muse Gong Li and the distinguished Chen Daoming. Then consider how Sinosphere described one particular audience's reaction after a screening:
Soon-to-be-weekend links are the best. There's some sort of fight club party tomorrow night in a warehouse in Sihui, hosted by the Bunker folk. Also, Joe Wong's at The Hutong, which should be... crowded.
It’s odd to imagine Jesus, in China, is more discussed than historic leaders, but Weibo chatter suggests precisely that.
An infographic published by Foreign Policy (non-paywalled version here) last month showed that discussion of Christian terms is several times more common than similar political phrases.
While the disparity may be exaggerated by attempts to create a healthy environment for discussion, it reflects a growing trend as young adults born in the 1980s and 1990s rediscover religion.
Most people know better than to eat street malatang, which -- if you don't know -- basically consists of pieces of veggie and tofu and fish balls and squid and other indecipherable foodstuff stabbed on sticks and boiled/drowned in oil and spices. It's disgusting and no one likes it. But sometimes, because you're drunk or too prideful to say no to a dare, you do eat, and your stomach dies a little.
Watching the leaked surveillance video of two men walking with a sea of migrant workers in front of the train station in Ürümchi makes your blood turn cold. You want to look away but you can’t. You want to understand what was going through the heads of those men with their hats pulled low as they marched with the crowd – but you can’t. Only after the shock of the fireball and the smoke clears can you stop looking, but then you can’t un-see it. You can only play it over and over in your mind.
National Hugging Day has long passed, but a feel-good story like the following needs no time hook. Here's Didi Kirsten Tatlow writing in NYT's Sinosphere:
