According to Chinese media, violence that broke out in Bachu county, Kashgar yesterday, leaving 15 dead; among those, 10 are Uighurs, 3 Han and 2 Mongols. Two other Uighurs were reportedly injured. Eight people have been arrested. The incident reportedly began when three community workers stumbled upon a shack of knives, and were subsequently held... Read more »
We know our friend Andray Abrahamian to be both a beer and coffee snob, so who better than he to discover an unnamed cafe in Pyongyang, next to the Pyongyang Hotel View Restaurant, that might well be North Korea’s first “third-wave coffeeshop.” (As Dray describes it: “For those of you unfamiliar with the term, ‘third wave’... Read more »
Pictured above is Yang Li (Li is apparently his surname; he appears to have a LinkedIn account under the name Jiao Yang Li). We don't know much about him, but he made the news recently after allegedly trying to bribe a University of Bath professor -- and carrying an "imitation firearm" into the meeting.
Ed’s note: On April 19, the US Department of State published its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, which included a section on China. It was typical, mundane, and features nothing you don’t already know, including restriction of Uighur and Tibetan movement, harassment of journalists and dissidents, prison labor, discrimination, extrajudicial killings, etc. On... Read more »
If you'll allow yourself a quick moment of unabashedly sentimental feel-goodness, please turn your attention to this story out of Longmen Township in Sichuan province.
A Youku citizen journalist encountered an old couple walking down a mountain road in this earthquake-striken part of town on Monday at 9 am. The woman, hard of hearing, is 90 years old this year, while her husband is 88.
The couple has no home to return to -- "just a tent," says the husband.
The earth's convulsion along the Longmenshan front on Saturday jiggered a few rocks loose from the mountains of Sichuan, among other things, and on a narrow road connecting Longmentong and Baosheng Township, a boulder rested squarely in the middle, blocking everything. Two days later, the bulldozers were out, along with a demolition team. Uniformed young men, looking like China's version of the national guard, ushered villagers from the area. Experts drilled a hole into the boulder, then packed it with gunpowder. Then, beginning at the 2:40 mark, a silent countdown... toward... KABLOOEY.
What separates losing 10,000 dollars from not losing it?
The honesty of the person who finds the money, nothing more.
In Hong Kong, 23-year-old pub manager Lin Ho-kit fell asleep on a bus and dropped a small bag containing HK$74,000, or about 59,000 yuan ($9,500). Other passengers, probably not knowing there was a small fortune inside, kicked the bag off the bus, where it was scooped up by 60-year-old Chan Chung-lam.
The wife of jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo was seen in public for the first time in more than two and a half years today as she attended the trial of her brother, 43-year-old Liu Hui, who has been charged with fraud. According to Tania Branigan of the Guardian:
Check out this young couple on the Taipei subway: he reads a book while she, um, sleeps on his lap... with a jacket over her head... bobbing up and down.
Yeah.
Sneaky, naughty, and bookish. Kids these days.
On April 19, 2012, a 41-year-old woman in Haikou, Hainan province was picking up her child when a 42-year-old shop owner confronted her because her bike was blocking his store. What happened next, one would never wish on his worst enemy:
