I would not recommend driving around Workers Stadium this evening, where I took the above picture. Expect throngs of people as FC Guo’an, Beijing’s hometown team, takes on Japan’s Sanfrecce Hiroshima in the AFC Champions League (game is wrapping up as we speak). Meanwhile, also prepare for tomorrow’s Pi Day over links.
It's tough being a cyber spy. You don't get to do any real spy work -- by which we mean shoot a gun, or sneak around dark mansions, or race around in BMWs -- but instead face a daily 8 to 5:30 grind in front of computers, probably in cubicles.
A sleeper coach carrying 22 people, most of them migrant workers, drove off the Jingzhou Yangtze River Bridge on Tuesday evening in Jingzhou, Hubei province, killing at least 14, according to Xinhua. Two passengers remain in critical condition, while the other six suffered a range of injuries but are expected to survive.
First, let’s make clear that it could be a suicide. It’s certainly possible that someone would go to the riverbank, bind his feet, then hands, then tie a manhole cover onto his body and jump in. But if you were the police, would you really rush to that conclusion in less than two days?
Unsatisfied with “hogwash,” “bay of pigs,” and “bacon” — all perfectly good and scurvy ways of describing the deathcarts of pig carcasses dredged out of the upper regions of Shanghai’s Shuangpu River this week — we now have “pigfestation,” courtesy of Bloomberg Businessweek:
A man surnamed Chen, who was wanted for keeping a girl in a dog cage as a sex slave for a week, was arrested in Guiyang, Guangdong province, Southern Metropolis Daily reported Tuesday. Authorities identified the victim as a 17-year-old from Hunan province. Chen, believed to be a 40-something from Shenyang, Liaoning province, met Ms.... Read more »
Li Tianyi, who was arrested last month for allegedly participating in a gang rape with four other people in a Beijing hotel, may have used his famous parents’ connections to falsify records to make himself seem younger than he actually is, according to a blockbuster exclusive from the South China Morning Post. Li’s parents, father... Read more »
Found on Sina Weibo, the above picture supposedly depicts a thug beating a petitioner in broad daylight on the streets of Xi’an in Shaanxi province. The man on the left is a goon allegedly hired by a demolish-and-relocate (chai-qian) gang, perhaps a real estate company or a local official. (Think the government wouldn’t get involved?... Read more »
The General Administration of Press and Publication, or GAPP, and State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, or SARFT, are China’s two principal ministries of propaganda, tasked with tweaking, managing, and bowlderizing creative, edgy, realistic, and otherwise inspiring work into a mushy, digestible pap for mainstream consumption. It’s an unpleasant job, but someone has to... Read more »
