Geng Yanbo, mayor of Datong in northern Shanxi province, was ordered to step down on Friday and accept his new position as vice mayor, for mysterious reasons. Residents haven't exactly embraced the decision, reports SCMP. "While it is not unusual to see villagers in China sometimes kneeling to petition for their rights or to seek justice from senior officials, Datong residents have gone down on their knees to plea for a popular mayor to remain in office."
We’re not sure when this happened, but the Black Mamba joined Sina Weibo. He hasn’t posted a thing, but more than 160,000 people are anxiously awiting that first message (that number of followers is rapidly increasing, by the way). The last time Kobe Bryant was in China, he did ridiculous things like score 68 points... Read more »
Is there any pro athlete who stars in as many amateur short films as Jeremy Lin? When it comes to humility, this future pastor is the real deal. Check him out in the latest, "The Last Pick," produced by Jubilee Project for the Jeremy Lin Foundation (brought to us by 8Asians).
And here's J-Lin in his first SportsCenter commercial:
Valentine’s Day is a lot of things, including fake, commercialized, contrived, and unworthy of intellectual consideration, but in China, it’s also a “breeding ground” of “corruption and debauchery for a minority of party members,” as SCMP puts it, paraphrasing People’s Daily. A four-paragraph story in People’s Daily said Valentine’s Day had become a hatchery of decadent ideology, indulgent lifestyle,... Read more »
What does Gilbert Arenas, three-time NBA All-Star, do before CBA games in Shanghai?
Watch YouTube, of course. We know this thanks to Donald Mahoney of the video series Donnie Does.
"I watched you on YouTube before I got here," Arenas tells Donnie in the tunnel before a Sharks home game. "You're funny as shit."
"How you liking Shanghai?"
"It's fun."
"Let's grab a beer sometime."
One of the most talked-about and controversial moments from this year’s CCTV Spring Festival Gala was magician Lu Chen’s “looking for Leehom” joke. His one-liner got the best crowd reaction — a mixture of delight and genuine shock that such a joke could fly — and ensured he’d stay in the public eye for days,... Read more »
Tragic, depressing, infuriating. Via AFP: A Tibetan monk doused himself in petrol in a Kathmandu restaurant on Wednesday and set himself on fire, marking the 100th self-immolation bid in a wave of protests against Chinese rule since 2009. Police in the Nepalese capital told AFP that the exile had burned himself in an eatery near... Read more »
“Get lost” (滚, gǔn) isn’t the worst thing one can write to another person. But what if 10,000 people do it? Would it result in hurt feelings? Fang Binxing can tell you. For Chinese New Year’s, Fang, known as the father of the Great Firewall, posted a nice little greeting (in third-person) on his Sina Weibo: “Fang Binxing... Read more »
![While US Embassy Pollution Index Measured 755 Last Night, Beijing’s Official Air Quality Index Was “Out Of Service” [UPDATE: Video]](http://beijingcream.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/AQI-800-150x150.png "While US Embassy Pollution Index Measured 755 Last Night, Beijing’s Official Air Quality Index Was “Out Of Service” [UPDATE: Video]")
