Some disappointing news for this year’s Bookworm Literary Festival, which launched on Friday: headline act Roxane Gay, an American writer, critic and literary figure whose books include the bestselling Bad Feminist, has cancelled her much-anticipated visit, citing “personal reasons.”

Author Roxane Gay, whose books include Bad Feminist and the novel An Untamed State

Roxane was scheduled for a solo talk today, talking about gender activism and her recent novel, as well as a forum on March 15 addressing race, gender, identity, and cultural marginality. The latter, though, will proceed as planned (The Bookworm is refunding all ticket holders for the Sunday talk, and offering the same deal for anyone not wishing to attend Tuesday’s panel).

Last week, Roxane had tweeted concerns about how she might be received in China

Also, theoretically I am going to China in 6 days. I keep hearing horror stories of how fat people are treated there.

— roxane gay (@rgay) March 5, 2016

So I am in a constant state of panic and dread about the trip.

— roxane gay (@rgay) March 5, 2016

Although… being “plus size” in China is an aspiration to many.* Subjects that might be considered taboo or tricky elsewhere – education, salary, medical history, career prospects, home ownership, whether you’re interested in investing in a third cousin’s startup – are sometimes used as ice-breakers in the PRC.

“Hi, good to meet you – are you married? Why not? Did you attend Harvard? OK, see you later” is a conversation we’ve all had, or overheard, or had a few times (by the way, if you’re ever in a desperately awkward social situation: mention that you don’t “get why people have kids, ever,” suggest all property is really theft, or boast about the cartel of Japanese nationalists you befriended last week in a Mongolian nightclub. Problem. Solved).

Big picture, though – times are tough for women. Last year, five were detained by police for handing out leaflets discussing sexual harassment – they were only released after an international media backlash. Those same women have since been sharply warned to keep their mouths shut while Beijing hosted the annual political meeting this month. Meanwhile, officials celebrated last week’s International Women’s Day with an… ethnic fashion show. And just yesterday, before the Bookworm Literary Festival’s morning event called Women’s Rights Around the World, this happened to Beijing LGBT center executive director Ying Xin (a.k.a. Xiao Tie):

An empty seat for Xiao Tie, who was intercepted by cops on her way to her event this morn at The Bookworm #BLF2016 pic.twitter.com/g6WSf5MiHy

— The Bookworm (@BeijingBookworm) March 12, 2016

To be clear: not detained, just not allowed to participate in event Women's Rights Around the World with Bidisha, Clare Wright, Lijia Zhang

— The Bookworm (@BeijingBookworm) March 12, 2016

China already has many bad, bad feminists ­– just look at the All China Women’s Federation. So be well, Roxane: you’re probably needed here. You’ll certainly be missed.

* OK, mainly men. Many men. There’s definitely a tranche of Chinese fellows who’d argue Jabba the Hutt is a jovial wealth creator, simply a KTV-loving slug who makes his own rules. When Jabs is then cruelly betrayed by Princess Leia in Jedi, the lesson becomes ever-clear: Never the trust a woman you’ve kidnapped and sexually demeaned. Right?!? These men should be avoided at all costs, but can be swiftly identified by their pompadour hairstyles, loose polo-and-slacks combo and insistence that you get blind-drunk with them at midday.

Happy holidays, everybody!

The author, in The Den circa 1999, wearing a wig for reasons unclear and not committed to memory.

Beijing has no use for your nostalgia. But when news that The Den was closing reached abroad last week it warranted a moment of reflection.

I have not set foot in The Den since 2002, and from the sounds of reports from Beijing this week, that was for the better. The Den, a European sports bar? That’s what Hidden Tree was for. Then again, Zhang Yimou makes CPC propaganda now.

Early Sanlitun was a dynamic, rogue, multicultural municipal experiment. And The Den, for a time, was its prince.

When The Den opened in 1997 it was a fresh, sexy, low-lights nook that evoked both opium den romance and illegal speakeasy raucousness. Today this bar-with-Mandarin-characteristics design — red lacquer and carved wood — is replicated in countless pubs across China as well as every Shanghai Tang boutique. New York City’s Pearl River Market sells for cheap the design elements that made The Den unique when it opened. In 1997, Beijing’s framed 1920s cigarette girl antique ads were all real and Alan Chan was just some guy in Hong Kong making retro postcards.

The Den combined two things Sanlitun revelers had already proved they wanted. The refinement of Jazzya and the drunken youthful abandon of Poacher’s unfussy dance floor. (This was the first, illegal, fire-trap Poachers on north Sanlitun before it moved into Chaoyang Park.)

The rugby brutes listening to Van Morrison had Durty Nellie’s, and the moody sophisticates giddy to bump into Cui Jian or Kaiser Kuo had Jam House. The horny old men had Maggie’s (and, honestly, 90% of the other bars in Beijing). The expats blinded by the optimism of youth and excited by a future in which their adventure in China was meaningful had The Den.

The Den’s owner, Meng Tong, was the closest Beijing will probably ever have to Rick. A friendly and handsome Chinese rake with a mysterious backstory, Meng was a presence over whom even the foreign girls swooned. (Too bad, ladies, at the time Meng was dating the daughter of the US ambassador.)

I spent no small amount of time with Meng in those early years. My roommate and I launched a monthly networking event — Young Professionals Happy Hour — and often held it at The Den. For a time, The Den also sold some of our hats and bags under the label The Chopstick Factory. More than once I jumped behind the bar and served free drinks to crowds swaying shoulder to shoulder, all with Meng’s blessing. One night, we convinced a traveling Hawaiian hula troop to drop by The Den and perform. To promote the event we “borrowed” a neon palm tree from the theater department at the International School of Beijing (then at the Holiday Inn Lido). The crushing crowd and ensuing half-riot ended with the Hawaiians fleeing into Ernie’s next door (formerly Frank’s).

And the dancing. Oh the dancing. The Den doesn’t have dancing anymore? What good is it then?

Unlike the cavernous, airline hanger dance halls popping up then (Big Ball; Nightman), The Den was tight. In fact, The Den was too small with ceilings too low to really be a dance space at all, which is what made it a perfect dance space. It was before good DJs came to Beijing, so dancers pinballed off each other in the tight upstairs to whatever the terrible hits of the day were, from the Spice Girls to Ricky Martin. If you bet me The Den played “Mambo Number 5” eight times in one night I would hold my money. Santana and Rob Thomas provided the soundtrack for tipsy young lawyers grinding on diplomatic contractors hoping to someday pass the foreign service exam. Nobody could tell what was the sweat and what was the spilled gin and tonics, and nobody cared. When Chumbawumba got knocked down (but got up again) the floor felt like it might collapse. And it being China, it might have been close. And if it did, well, we were going to the downstairs bar for a refill soon anyway.

The Den’s momentum was not sustainable, of course. Even by 2000, its popularity was ebbing, eclipsed by nearby haunts in the shadow of Workers Stadium, like the Havana Club and Vic’s, the latter having been opened by Meng himself.

Fun at the early Den was not just its unpredictability but also its inclusion. Unlike the predator-prey dynamics of most of the period’s expat bars, The Den was home to young professionals both Chinese and foreign. Students who grabbed a miandi (面包车 taxis) over from the west side universities rubbed shoulders with Chinese junior associates at foreign firms, expat interns at NGOs, and China Hands-in-training. Chinese and expat colleagues now often socialize together, but in 1997 that was rare. But not rare at The Den. Unlike the crowds at other Sanlitun nightspots, a surprising number of expats in The Den spoke at least a workable amount of Mandarin. The in-it-togetherness of the early Den created an atmosphere of respect, if a naughty one.

Abe Sauer has lived on and off in China for a quarter of his life starting in 1987. He’s an author and on Twitter @abesauer.

Sunday, December 13, 2015: The Den’s final night

Since 1997 in Beijing, it’s been possible to answer “Where can I get a really nasty Old Fashioned and a 900-gram burger at 5am?” “Who’s showing the goat-wrestling qualifiers?” and “What happened to my phone?” with the same words: The Den. Last weekend, all that changed. Seventeen years after President Jiang Zemin ordered the Chinese military to give up its illegally owned commercial enterprises, local units in Beijing have begun to reluctantly comply (further closures have already been announced). As of Monday,  the city’s only 24-hour all-in-one sports bar, restaurant, short-time hotel, crisis-counseling centre, divorced men’s networking club, Pattaya tribute venue and dipsomaniacal dog whistle is no more.*

The Den… shut?

“A continuing expansion of competition and a slowing economy may both be playing a role in the changing of Beijing’s bar scene,” reckoned the Beijinger when the news surfaced some weeks ago. Competition? Slowing economy? Changing bar scene – The Den? All that seemed grist to its mill. The Den was not only recession and puke-proof, it was the kind of place people went to because they were unemployed. One doubts its patrons gave much of a passing care about “scenes,” artisanal infusions or whatever pop-up concepts make the long, hard-seat journey from the West to Beijing. The craft beer revolution was something that just happened to other bars; The Den was popularizing gastro-enteritis long before the gastro pub humped its way into the local consciousness. To the world outside it may have been 2015, but over in the People’s Republic of Denezuela, it was perpetually 2007.

For a long time I didn’t get the appeal of the place, finding it always populated by aging sports enthusiasts whose faces had exploded. My mistake was timing: I was coming in at sane hours, like lunchtime or 11pm on a Thursday. You needed to hit The Den at a very exact sweet spot. Peak Den was between the clubs closing on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday and the rest of the world getting up and going about its respectable business: say, 4 am – 7 am. This was when the magic happened. There aren’t many bars in Beijing where it feels dangerous to get chummy with the regulars after a certain hour, but The Den firmly ranked as one. For all its friendly aggression, actual fights were rare, though the staff were regularly called upon to remind emotional patrons how to leave. Closing time: You don’t have to go home, but maybe you should, because it’s midday and you’re hitting on barstools and frightening children.

Here’s an Iranian man being helped to the door on a quiet Thursday afternoon

Tributes have been pouring in since the news broke, ranging from pithy (“Wut?”) to prosaic (“Fuck”). What was it about this place that inspired such poetry? What ensured its runner-up success in such categories of the Beijing Cream Bar and Club Awards as Bar Where a Lay is Most Likely Followed by Postcoital Triste, Probably Because You Paid for a Hooker (2^nd place, 2012) and Worst Place to Go if You’re Feeling Mildly Suicidal (2^nd place, 2012), before stealing the crown at 2013’s ceremony for Most Likely to Encounter a Cockeyed Sot Who Harbors Bad, Bad Intentions?

What was the Definitive Den experience?

The people

Sure, there was the half-price pizza, the five-hour Happy Hour, the football, the fact that it was open. But for many, it was about the people: you’d get the full gamut, and gamut is definitely the word we need here. Tourists would wash up here at 4 am and not believe their luck. Surly Eastern European dancers and Gongti shift workers, Aeroflot crews on layover, aging expats who could remember visiting the Goose & Duck Ranch; Chinese students visiting in the mistaken belief that this was a suitable venue to bring someone you hadn’t slept with yet; visiting scholars; Tier-88 entrepreneurs pressing business cards into the hands of elderly Australian men; borderline schizophrenics; saturnine Germans that arrived at 3 am to watch Munich Bayern battle for the third-place playoffs of the Hofmeister Cup (who drank four pints and spoke to no one); expat sporting societies almost as old as The Den; the entire cast of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet ; angry Russians who’d been exiled from the Russian exile community… all were Denizens.

Denders

Because The Den never closed, it invited the most ridiculous benders: Benders seemingly without end, benders that would leave your taste buds numbed for a week. 24 hours in The Den? Child’s play.

A Russian man expresses his love of The Den

Hookers

Probably the most overplayed aspect of Den life. Sure, in the wee hours, there was usually someone happy to meet your glassy-eyed gaze and steadily hold it; the odd brass; the occasional strumpet or two. But The Den wasn’t exactly the Red Mansion. More a last-chance saloon for Nigerian baby mamas on their way to a sweet retirement gig jacking-off pensioners.

The ‘Denu’

A multipage, pleather-bound tome with a nice heft to it, covering a wide array of, uh, “cuisines,” The Den’s food was part of the venue’s core appeal: No nonsense. Solid. Unpretentious. If you’re down with The Den’s food, then you’re all right with me – you’re OK.

This beef tenderloin, priced at a gentle 68 yuan, was Tao’s last Den meal and supposed to come with mash but they’d run out. He didn’t mind

Unlike most restaurants, The Den’s picture menu was unafraid to dramatically lower customers’ expectations with blurred, two-megapixel shots of congealing sauces atop lonely cuts of meat, captioned with unpunctuated, unadorned prose describing the various ingredients. If a menu could be said to have a “voice,” then The Den was Samuel Beckett reading aloud government warnings from a carton of Mongolian filterless cigarettes. Thus, the actual quality of the grub was a consistent surprise. Hits included the pizza, steak, sausages and mash, and, of course, “Eggs Norway,” the classy European breakfast choice for any true international Denizen. On the other hand, the “Lamb donner pitta roll” [sic] was a diplomatic incident waiting to happen. For my final repast on Sunday, I spun the wheel and chose the Corned-Beef Hash with Sweet Peas for the first time. Like a chef on condemned-man’s-last-meal duty, The Den produced something thoroughly digestible that I would, like the venue, never revisit again.

What are your thoughts, Beijing? Be a true Denizen and have no shame while sharing your best (and worst) Den moments. (Feel free to email.) Whatever your story, it’s not gonna beat this:

*The Den will be back, don’t you worry. But for now, if you see a fifty-year-old bleary-eyed British man tottering about and banging on the locked doors of Gung-Ho Pizza at 4 am, give him a hug.

Every time I biked past the dozens of men (and the occasional woman) fishing in Beijing’s canals, I’d assumed they were fishing for their dinner. I shuddered at the thought of eating anything that came out of a stinking canal that already had dead fish floating in it. I mentioned it to my Chinese coworkers and they said it was impossible, that nobody would be crazy enough to eat Beijing’s fish. But I wasn’t convinced, so camera in hand, I went to find out.

Many people whom I interviewed were very candid about their fishing habits, discussing either their complete willingness to consume their catch, or their refusal to do so. Of those I spoke with, almost half insisted the water was okay.

The thing that was missing from everybody’s commentary was scientific fact. My team contacted some labs and found just one that was willing to test a fish for toxins, Ponytest. But after I’d obtained a fish from a canal in west Beijing, Ponytest suddenly informed us that we’d have to wait an additional three weeks before we could even bring them the sample. That plus the two weeks to complete the testing, unfortunately amounted to a timeline which was beyond my deadline.

So, are these Beijing fish safe to eat or not? I can’t say for sure, but I definitely wouldn’t use my stomach to find out.

Explanation here.

Here is what we all should do: Tomorrow, take a little time out of your day and go leave flowers and/or positive messages on the ground where it happened. We have to change the mentality here, enough with this “If I help, I’ll get in trouble” or “China doesn’t value people’s life” excuses. You can be black, white, yellow red or blue it doesn’t matter, bottom line is this, if you are in China YOU are CHINESE, you want to make China a better place then make it happen. 

 

Sina Weibo’s watershed came in 2011 after two high-speed trains crashed in Wenzhou: as officials bungled the response, and then censored news stories, netizens stormed onto Sina’s microblogging platform to voice their outrage and fill gaps of knowledge with educated speculation. Four years later, just as Weibo has seemingly run its course, a different program is stepping into its place as the prime facilitator of unfettered discussion in this country of shackled exchange.

As far as watershed moments go, WeChat’s was notably less newsworthy in the classic sense: it was a sex scandal. Yet it was significant because the sex only became a scandal after — or the exact moment when — a message was transferred from one man’s phone onto another’s via this Tencent chatting platform. By the time the now-infamous Uniqlo sex video reached traditional media — traditional, these days, referring to the Internet — practically everyone who cared had seen it, or knew it existed.

This brings us to the horrific stabbing yesterday morning — outside, of all places, the Sanlitun Uniqlo that nestled into our collective consciousness only a month prior — details of which revealed itself almost exclusively on WeChat. Perhaps this seems unextraordinary, considering how fully WeChat has uplinked with most of our lives. But let’s pretend, for a moment, it were not possible to dart in and out of six separate chat rooms, to easily compare discrepancies in different tellings of the same story, to pose questions to dozens of people at the same time. How many instant messaging windows would you have opened? How many text messages sent? Phone numbers dialed? There was a time not long ago when we’d have to go to the scene to sniff for answers, if that’s what we wanted. Upon being stonewalled by official sources, you’d have to inquire of strangers, and then you would still only have a small piece of the puzzle.

Consider how many of us learned about the victim, the Chinese woman who was stabbed in the back (and how did we know it was the back?). It was likely from the following message, currently going around WeChat, sent from a person who knows both the woman and the foreigner who knelt over her:

Guys, it is very bad news. Our captain roro s wife has been killed by a crazy guy using a 1 meter long knife (“sabre” in french) a few hours ago in sanlitun. They were coming out of the embassy to officialize their wedding when they came accross this crazy chinese guy who told roro he did not like american people. He replied he was french. They left and he inserted his long knife inside isabelle s back.. Trying to defend her, the knife went inside roro s belly twice…. Isabelle died right after she made it to the hospital. Romain is going through an operation now because it was bleeding inside his body..This happened exactly 2 years after the murder of an american citizen in joyce city..
I can t find the words… Huge shock

Hours earlier, “My friend knows someone who knows the girl,” someone may have said in a group you’re in.

And those videos from the aftermath of the attack? Found on WeChat, of course.

As human beings we are inclined to gossip, and WeChat is currently the best tool for our time and place. It has tapped into our instinct to share and learn. Once upon a time, in a bygone age, we would gather around TVs for the 6 o’clock news, thus was our instinct to know and to know collectively. Well, China doesn’t air real news — nothing we can trust, I mean – and who has time for the television anymore? With WeChat, we get all the angles, sometimes simultaneously. We gather sources that we deem credible, and ignore those a bit too eager to forward rumors. We build a story, confirm or deny that story against the observations of others, and pass it into other groups. The transference of knowledge, from one bubble to the next, is seamless and swift. If we thought print media was slow before, print journalists are practically tablet engravers in this age of the intranet. No story published tomorrow will contain information that a smart and plugged-in smartphone user won’t have already obtained from multiple sources tonight.

The service won’t render the Internet obsolete, but it makes certain parts of it less vital: Sina Weibo, with all its ghosts and overseers? Who needs it. Twitter, that echo chamber with character limits? It’s fast becoming a place where the oldest of old-media hang out, those who haven’t ingratiated themselves into enough group chats. Facebook? LOL.

But WeChat, of course, did not rise out of pure innovation. Sure, it’s faster than microblogs (which are faster than blogs, etc.), and more tailored – you can choose who to follow, what groups to join or leave — but it would be much less useful if it were restrictive. That is, if messages were routinely censored, and certain topics disallowed. In other words, if it were a mobile version of Sina Weibo, which has been punished often enough that it will gladly stifle user participation to avoid offending sensibilities.

Finally, WeChat has the ability to create action, similar to 2009-11 Twitter (before Twitter became suddenly dead). A person — any person — can propose an action, and if it makes enough sense, creates enough momentum and gains enough support – all organically, of course, like a snowball — it will translate into movement. Ultimately, for as comfortable as virtual spaces have become, users still seek to translate their virtual conversations into real-world activity. For an example, check out this message currently making the WeChat rounds:

Here is what we all should do: Tomorrow, take a little time out of your day and go leave flowers and/or positive messages on the ground where it happened. We have to change the mentality here, enough with this “If I help, I’ll get in trouble” or “China doesn’t value people’s life” excuses. You can be black, white, yellow red or blue it doesn’t matter, bottom line is this, if you are in China YOU are CHINESE, you want to make China a better place then make it happen. So tomorrow let’s all show that we care, that life matters and that we are concerned by deposing flowers. People might look at you, judge you, ask you to leave but keep in mind that it is because you are doing the right thing. Let’s all make sure that tomorrow by the end of the day, all wechat moments are filled with pictures of flowers, and trust me, by night, people will light candles all over the place. This is how you change mentality, this is how you show you care about something, by doing something as simple as deposing a flower. So what’s your excuse?

I’m not saying there will be “candles all over the place” by nightfall tomorrow, but I’m willing to believe a few people will lay flowers. We’re just talking flowers, by the way, but authorities will notice. They’ll think, Next time, what if it’s not just flowers commemorating the innocent victim of a random attack? What if it’s, say, to commemorate a self-immolation at Tianamen? (Guess where I learned about the man who purportedly set himself on fire at Tiananmen last night?) What if it’s… something bigger?

It seems almost impossible that WeChat escapes official censure. It’s too easy to use, and thereby too dangerous. And this is how an innovative piece of technology that’s born in the People’s Republic of China dies there. Eventually, the only thing left to destroy will be censorship itself.

UPDATE, 4:16 pm: Flowers.

We have two videos from the stabbing this morning, in which a man wielding a meter-long sword attacked — seemingly at random — two people outside Uniqlo in Sanlitun, Beijing. The first video, above, is graphic, and I wouldn’t recommend it if you’d rather not watch a woman bleeding from stab wounds.

We’d like to point out this guy, casually strolling by the scene of two bloody stabbings:

In the video below, the attacker, when approached by police, simply gives himself up by laying down his sword and getting on his stomach.

UPDATE, 8/14, 10:54 am: How this story unfolded on WeChat.

The man is said to be a 25-year-old named Mr. Gao. Via Guardian:

Police said the attacker was from Tonghua, a city in the north-eastern province of Jilin.

Friends of the woman, who is thought to work as a tattoo artist in Beijing, posted messages on social media expressing their shock. Addressing the female victim one wrote: “You have to wake up and make me a tattoo, bless, my thought is with you.”

@prchovanec @zhongnanhai Victim was friend’s friend’s fiancee. Motivation was apparently nationalist — “Chinese who sleep w/ 老外 should die.”

— Jordan Phillips (@jordanp) August 14, 2015

As heard on social media, there was a stabbing this morning outside the Uniqlo in Sanlitun, one of the busiest areas of foot traffic and commerce in Beijing. Police appear to have subdued the assailant and roped off the area.

Sina Weibo is still all about the Tianjin explosion last night, but more information to come on this stabbing as it becomes available.

For now, some pictures culled from Twitter:

UPDATE, 1:13 pm: Um, is that a katana?

Police seem to have the situation under control:

Some more pictures:

UPDATE, 2:10 pm: Here’s a video of the moment the man is arrested after stabbing two people. He appears to simply give himself in.

Here’s another video taken just moments before the one above. It’s graphic.

UPDATE, 8/14, 10:54 am: How this story unfolded on WeChat.

The man is said to be a 25-year-old named Mr. Gao. Via Guardian:

Police said the attacker was from Tonghua, a city in the north-eastern province of Jilin.

Friends of the woman, who is thought to work as a tattoo artist in Beijing, posted messages on social media expressing their shock. Addressing the female victim one wrote: “You have to wake up and make me a tattoo, bless, my thought is with you.”

@prchovanec @zhongnanhai Victim was friend’s friend’s fiancee. Motivation was apparently nationalist — “Chinese who sleep w/ 老外 should die.”

— Jordan Phillips (@jordanp) August 14, 2015

Authorities were not happy about that Uniqlo fitting room sex video. Reports the LA Times:

The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s Internet watchdog, reprimanded two of the nation’s main web portals, Sina and Tencent, for failing to stop the spread of the video, and police said they were investigating. On Sunday, Beijing police said they had  arrested the couple in the video and four others.

According to Beijing TV, the police investigation is focused on two questions: first, who posted the video and second, whether the tape was a publicity stunt intended to drum up business. A brief police statement said one 19-year-old man surnamed Sun was charged with disseminating obscene material, while three others were being detained, along with the couple. Police indicated the video dated from April.

We hope the couple is okay. I guess public sex is a real threat to society and you shouldn’t do it, but then again — maybe you should.

Porn is “illegal” in China, but, you know — does this need to be said? — good luck stopping it.

It doesn’t have to be Uniqlo. (Actually, better if it isn’t – spread the wealth.) It doesn’t even have to be a dressing room. But here’s an honest chance for us, the little people, to make a real difference in the fight against censorship: we can — by a simple bit of sex in a public place, a camera phone, and an Internet connection — show the world just how fucking dumb this fucking government can sometimes fucking be.

Apologies for the split infinitives.

We’ve been trying to do it with our page of porn sites not blocked in China (“We hate Internet censorship, of course, but so should the censors: it doesn’t work”), but this is much more effective. If you choose the video route and can sneak in a “we will be together,” that’s cool, but it’s unnecessary. Pictures will do. Post them. We’ll do it for you if you’d like.

Go do this. If you need a reason why, be reassured that you’re ruining the day for benighted bureaucrats who believe in “socialist core values,” and if they want their socialist values so bad, they can leave the sex to us and all just go fuck themselves.

“The vulgar video had spread like a virus online and clashed with socialist core values,” Xu Feng, a director at the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), was quoted as saying by the Global Times newspaper.

The government would “continue to crack down on vulgar materials online and safeguard the cyber environment,” Feng vowed. Beijing police are reportedly investigating who made the film and how it appeared on the internet.

(Above quote from the Guardian.)

Also, if you see a shirt available on Tmall or Taobao, BUY IT. It won’t be available for long.

I passed by Uniqlo just now on my way home, the infamous Sanlitun branch where a young man and woman had sex in the fitting room and put the video of it online. (You can watch it here.) Maybe that part of Sanlitun Village always has a large crowd of young folks milling about. Maybe there are those who ironically take selfies in front of retail chains, and journalists often un-ironically do work there (CNN!). I don’t know. Or maybe shoppers are lining up for this season’s hottest new item:

I don’t know. A couple had sex, and Uniqlo is by far, now and forevermore, the biggest beneficiary. Come on. That’s kind of bullshit.

Uniqlo says they weren’t behind this, and the fact that they’re probably not lying makes the story all the more disappointing. If a real human being concocted this bit of marketing derring-do, it would justify and vindicate the entire history and field of public relations. Dov Charney – American Apparel’s skeevy founder – hired porn stars and models to attain Uniqlo’s current wildfire of buzz, and failed. Companies sink thousands every year into advertising campaigns without entertaining the possibility that mainstream media will notice. And Uniqlo? Did it spend money to make money? Did it bother to pollute our eyes and ears with subliminal messages of bonking? Did it so much as try to position itself in our subconscious as a place where quickies were cool? No. It did nothing but offer medium-priced everyday wear and fair-quality jeans. And now it’s laughing its way to the bank, because two people had sex. Life isn’t fair.

Well, I suppose there is one drawback: someone will have sex again in a Uniqlo fitting room. Probably not by tomorrow, because there’ll be some Argus-ass eyes affixed to those doors. But it will happen. And may it continue happening until it becomes commonplace, and we can continue to stroll by this store in the heart of Sanlitun without raising our camera phones as if in the shadow of Angkor fucking Wat.

If you’ve been anywhere near WeChat or Weibo today (or China’s corner of Twitter, for that matter), you’ve likely heard that a young man filmed himself having sex with a young woman in a fitting room in the Sanlitun branch of Uniqlo in Beijing recently. The video was uploaded to the Internet yesterday evening and has been making the rounds. It’s out there. Someone was gonna post it. [...] Here it is.

In case you were wondering, as many online have, Uniqlo says this was not a publicity stunt (who do you think they are, American Apparel?). Quote from Shanghai Daily:

In its statement released on Wednesday morning, Uniqlo said it has reported the indecent content to websites where it appeared “immediately.”

“We would like to remind the public to uphold social morality and use our fitting rooms in a correct and proper way,” said Uniqlo.

“We also firmly deny some online allegations saying the video is our publicity stunt.” Uniqlo said in the statement.

UPDATE:

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May 27 saw the gathering of several writers in The Bookworm for an event called Scotch and Stories, presented by the Anthill in collaboration with Whisky Wednesday and with support from Ai Whisky. We’re reliving that event in today’s podcast, timed with the last of those stories going online on the Anthill and The Bookworm’s launch of its new whisky menu.

The rundown:

5:10 mark: Anthony Tao with the poem “Whisky”

8:40: Daniel Tam-Claiborne story “Classifieds”

16:25: Tom Pellman story “Tiger Suit”

25:55: Karoline Kan story “The House by the River”

40:00: Kaiser Kuo story “The Hornèd Hand”

47:45: Kerryn Leitch with faux advice to laowai

55:10: Aaron Fox-Lerner story “Goodbye Joe”

The Creamcast would like to thank Popup Chinese for letting us use their studio and Great Leap Brewing for their generous support.

Download Episode 20 of The Creamcast here, or listen to it on iTunes.

|The Creamcast Archives|

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(H/T Julia Lobyntseva)