Via Ecns.cn, here's a photo of a model space shuttle and rocket on a rooftop in Jiexi, Guangdong province, reportedly built by a 60-year-old farmer named Huang Yuzhan. We love everything about this: as a celebration of the can-do spirit, the very human tendency to detach from our worldly fetters and drift and spin alongside imagination as boundless as the pale blue sky, and as a simple expression of craftsmanship, patience, and (dare I say?) innovation. This photo deserves a song.
This morning around 9 o'clock, a five-storey apartment building in Fenghua, Zhejiang province collapsed because it was old. (We're not sure what the technical term might be.) Details are scarce, but CCTV News reported around noon that up to five people had been rescued, though an untold number remained buried.
The Xinjiang Flying Tigers may have lost the CBA championship to the Beijing Ducks, but Xinjiangers around the world came away from the games with a powerful meme. It came at the end of Game 5, after the Tigers rallied and pulled off an improbable win in front of a hostile Beijing crowd of 18,000. Shiralijan, the star Uyghur point guard for the Tigers who had been tasked with defending Stephan Marbury -- the star of the Ducks (and best player in the league, according to Anthony Tao!) --threw the ball in the air and raised a twirling, emphatic fist:
After leading Beijing to its first Chinese Basketball Association championship two years ago, Stephon Marbury was given his own bronze statue. We wondered, after his second CBA title, how Beijing would honor its adopted Coney Island point guard, and now we know: by giving him a key to the city.
Spring switches us from latent to active, and spring being the season of festivals in Beijing, it's one more reason to get up and busy (and stop marathoning shows on Sohu). Beginning next Tuesday, April 8, the six-day Beijing Improv Festival returns with shows and workshops featuring greater China's finest improv crews. Knowing almost nothing about the art, I spent time with the local bilingual group Plus One during one of their weekly Sunday rehearsals to get the scoop.
Bao Bao is Washington DC National Zoo's seven-month-old panda cub, son of (the rather fertile) Mei Xiang, on loan from China. On Tuesday, he took his first steps in his mother's outdoor pen, and yes, there is video.
It's not often that a press release makes us perk up, but earlier today TimeOut publicized its list of 100 best films made in mainland China, and it's really impressive. As editor James Wilkinson writes:
Hey party people, we're giving away five tickets to Bunker Party Vol. 3: Toxic Decay this Friday at Basement in Sanlitun (featuring lasers, strobes, post-apocalyptic haze, DJ Half/N/Half, DJ Mike Hotten, DJ MO'O, and MRG; also, body-painting via Faceslap). All you have to do is like our Facebook page between now and Friday noon. We'll randomly generate five numbers and notify the corresponding winners that they've been placed on Bunker Party's special guest list.
An episode of The Colbert Report last Wednesday used the words "ching-chong ding-dong" in an attempt to satirize / skewer Washington dunderhead Dan Synder. When the show's Twitter account tweeted the joke the next day without context -- “I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever” -- a bit of hell broke loose on social media, resulting in Korean-American Twitter activist Suey Park starting the hashtag #CancelColbert. It reeked of so much faux outrage and willful ignorance
