George Ding, the Beijinger’s backpage columnist, has provided us the latest example of why humor articles should never be translated. His recent column, “Why I’m Coming Back To China,” is an attempt at satire, and it wasn’t exactly well received by the Beijinger’s readers, some who didn’t get it (“Is George Ding thebeijinger’s racist-in-residence?”) and... Read more »
About 300 people gathered on Sunday in Chaoyang District to protest a proposed high-speed rail that would connect Beijing and Shenyang. As noted earlier, they demonstated peacefully, holding mass-printed pieces of paper that read, "Support 18th Congress, oppose bureaucracy" (among other slogans). Oiwan Lam of Global Voices adds more information:
Look who’s making friends from both sides of the aisle. Explains Tea Leaf Nation’s David Weritime in the Atlantic: Xi Jinping, China’s new leader, has recently embarked on a low-key barnstorming of China’s entrepreneurial south. The mere fact of Xi’s visit is exciting to Chinese liberals, echoing as it does the “Southern Tour” of reformist... Read more »
This should be everyone’s fear about living in a city with such crippling traffic. In Beijing on Friday, a woman in her 50s died in the back of an ambulance because it was stuck in a gridlock. How bad was it? According to the doctor, Wang Yuzhu, as reported by Sina: “The scene of the... Read more »
The alternative is peeing your pants, of course. We’ve seen this before, by the way. UPDATE, 12/30, 4:10 pm: The kid’s somewhat of a genius, apparently.
In Songyuan, Jilin province recently, government thugs were hired to bully villagers into accepting a lowball land requisition deal. According to the description on this video uploaded earlier today, the thugs told the villagers to acquiesce or get beat up. Villagers called the cops, who didn’t show up. No one should have been surprised: they... Read more »
I have to admit, the first time I encountered @XHNews, calling itself the “Xinhua News Agency” — description, “A multimedia group, Xinhua delivers the most authoritative China news as well as fast and objective global news” — I thought it was a joke. (First tweet, March 1: “Annual sessions of China’s top legislature and political... Read more »
If our faith in humanity is to be restored, we can do worse than starting here. On Saturday at about 9 pm, a man fell onto the tracks at Sihui station on Beijing’s Subway Line 1. With a train rumbling down the tunnel, passengers rushed to the edge of the platform — “almost in unison,... Read more »
“1 Škoda 2 guys 3 cameras 30000 pictures,” reads this YouTube description. (Škoda is a Czech car brand.) It’s an entrancing video, if only because we wish traffic always moved that fast in Beijing. It’s only too bad that the video’s not longer, but it looks like the guys already did a lot of work to produce... Read more »
Global Times reports that “some 40 experts proposed over the weekend that foreign experts and leaders be invited to retrace the historic Long March, in an effort to promote the 12,500-kilometer-long route’s listing as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.” But… foreigners have already done this. And look at the fruit they bear: Ed Jocelyn and... Read more »
