Sunday marked the 36th anniversary of Mao Zedong's death, and if there's one thing we know the old Chairman would never, ever approve of, it's the senseless beating of people who voice opinions contrary to his own.
At Zijingshan People's Square in Zhengzhou, Henan province, the man you see getting slapped around apparently took an anti-Mao stance, which is not something you normally want to do around elders who continue to wear badges of Communist dogma in their hearts -- holdovers from the Cultural Revolution -- but definitely not something to do amid a celebration of Mao's life. Groupthink is alive and well.
The NY Times’s photography blog, Lens, has just published 20 stunning pictures from the Cultural Revolution, a “panoramic view” that includes Little Red Books, an execution, and an elongated dunce cap. The images were taken by Harbin photojournalist Li Zhensheng, “perhaps the most complete and nuanced pictorial account of the decade of turmoil ignited by Mao... Read more »
One of the more popular Youku videos from last week, with 264,000 views, this recent incident in Changsha, HubeiHunan province has people talking. The woman in the picture was allegedly riding a motorized scooter in a part of town where they weren't allowed, and when she resisted something or other, traffic cops (possibly chengguan) decided to drag her away. When someone tried to film the proceeding, the camera got tossed into the grass. The woman's off-camera wails are far scarier when that's all you hear.
A neighborhood sinkhole in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province on Saturday afternoon caused a gas pipe to explode, sending up a huge column of fire that scorched several cars and forced hundreds to evacuate. After firefighters controlled the conflagration, the resulting pit in the road was 10 meters in diameter. Luckily, no one was hurt.
In the video above, a man and small child (let's just assume father and son) stand at a distance and watch, all the way until there's another explosion -- at which point they scurry.
Let’s play a game: identify the strangest part of this incident from Changzhou, Jiangsu province: Is it the man, on drugs, who, after his own vehicle was nicked on the road, got out and took two vegetable knives from a street-side vendor, dropped 100 yuan, and then “borrowed” (stole) a van? Is it the medium-speed... Read more »
Remember this truck with two other trucks stacked on it? It was very much worthy of the Robert Crumb "truckin'" cartoon, but it's no match for this truck here, shown lugging 18 trucks. Posted last week to YouTube by VIPCRUISING.
Last week, a "violent fight" between two Chinese passengers on a 200-person flight from Zurich to Beijing caused the pilot (or an equally harebrained decision-maker) to turn the plane around after more than six hours in the air. (I can't imagine what possible reason a pilot could give for doing this, or the passengers' resultant anger.) Sadly, no one on the flight took a video, but we imagine it would have looked something like the above
Protesters occupying Hong Kong’s city plaza have won — sort of. Wall Street Journal reports people are feeling “mixed jubilation and frustration” after the city announced yesterday it will make its controversial National Education curriculum “voluntary.” While it’s too early to unravel all the implications of this decision, a direct result is that those on their hunger... Read more »
