What the heck? A series of interesting photos have surfaced on Chinese social media on April 1, without much accompanying info. Here are two Sina Weibo posts, via @bjshi (Beijing News) and @dskbhz (Chengdu Bulletin), from which we learn these facts: 1. This happened at 3 am on April 1. 2. In Wangjing, a neighborhood in Beijing.... Read more »
How many ways should this guy have died?
1. Electrocuted because he was dangling from high-voltage wires
2. Ceased to exist after plummeting 20 meters to whatever's below
3. Alcohol poisoning
Miraculously, he's not only alive and well at the end of his adventure, but uninjured
Alec Ash’s April 1 joke about fixed gear bikes being banned around the Drum and Bell neighborhood, that roost for Beijing hipsters, was closer to truth than we imagined. As Abe Sauer of Brand Channel points out in his recently published piece: China’s brewing war on fixies, the ubiquitous accessory of US hipster culture and an... Read more »
The woman in the video, reportedly pregnant, would have had her wallet (or something) wrested out of her hand if not for the guy who walks out of a nearby store and intervenes just as she's calling for help. The mugger, dealing with someone his own size and gender, succumbs quickly.
Good on you, man.
This will be fun: let’s track new cases of bird flu, specifically this new, confounding H7N9 strain. Four more cases have been reported by a health bureau in Jiangsu province, according to AP. It remains non-contagious and not actually caused by birds. The health bureau of eastern Jiangsu province said in a notice on its... Read more »
At 6 pm yesterday in Mianzhu, Sichuan province, a truck loaded with sand approached an intersection -- a red light -- too fast, and lost control. A red sedan -- the unluckiest vehicle in China -- happened to be waiting at the stoplight when the truck flipped onto its side and fell directly onto it, smashing it flat as a pancake. The sedan driver did not survive, because:
Yan Yinan, co-host of China Radio International’s daily program China Drive, died in an apparent suicide on Friday when she jumped off her apartment building, sources say. Some of her colleagues were seen crying inside the CRI office on Friday. A source said CRI management has emailed staffers asking them to keep news of Yan’s death... Read more »
“I used to assume history and memory would always triumph over temporary aberrations and return to their rightful place,” writes author Yan Lianke in this New York Times op-ed. “It now appears the opposite is true.” China is winnowing memory out of its people, creating an “amnesic generation,” Yan argues. It’s “state-sponsored amnesia,” a phrase... Read more »
A girl in her early 20s in Jiangxi province was surfing the web on her phone last September when she stumbled upon a website containing this kernel of titillating, dangerous insight: “Rope strangulation can yield pleasure.” As Changjiang Network reports, the girl, called Lin, approached her longtime best friend, one year younger, with the idea.... Read more »
If you’re a Chinese journalist, writing in English won’t necessarily shield you from the petty decisionmakers and censors in the central organs of China’s bureucracy, as Deng Yuwen can tell you. Writing in the Financial Times on February 27, Deng, the deputy editor of Central Party School-affiliated Study Times, suggested that China should “re-evaluate its longstanding... Read more »
