UPDATE, 9:37 pm: Several colorful details added via Yangcheng Evening News. Last Tuesday morning, a woman threatened to jump off the 9th-story roof of a commercial building in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, and certainly would have if not for the intervention of family and rescue workers — eight of them by my count, including her daughter, as shown in... Read more »
Update, 8/27, 12:13 pm: Found some raw footage of the pageant, embedded after the jump. Yu Wenxia may have won the Miss World crown on Saturday, but could she hold a pail to any of these cows? I’ll let Want China Times explain this one: “The first ever beauty pageant for cows is being held... Read more »
Continuing our coverage of world records you didn't know existed, "1,215 farmers in Taiwan set a new world record for transplanting rice seedlings on a plot of land," breaking a mark formerly held by Thailand, says ITN News.
Via The Basketball Jones First, the picture, taken on Thursday in Wuhan as part of Kobe Bryant’s annual Nike tour: it is ridiculous. Reports the LA Times: This is the seventh summer in a row that Bryant has visited China, including the 2008 Beijing Olympics. On this trip, according to published accounts, Bryant has hosted training clinics... Read more »
Save the lecture about historical context. We’re talking about rocks. Uninhabited rocks. If indeed there’s black gold inside the set of rocks known as the Diaoyu Islands, governments should mine ‘em together and split the profit, as was proposed once upon a time ago. But nooo, that would be too elementary a solution. We have... Read more »
In the most non-suspenseful verdict ever, a court in Hefei, Anhui province (read: the Party) has officially sentenced Gu Kailai to “death with a two-year reprieve” for murdering Neil Heywood, as expected. What this means is that Gu will not be put to death, assuming she doesn’t commit another crime in the next two years.... Read more »
We don't know what caused employees of two realtor companies in Beijing to stage this public brawl, with white-shirted men on one side and light-blue-shirted men on the other (except the white-shirted one attacking his own, which just confuses everything), but we do think all participants of group fights should wear different colored outfits, or uniforms. Just a modest proposal for anyone else out there planning a get-together at fight o'clock.
A foreigner nearly incited a riot in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province on Friday evening after he got into a physical confrontation with a Chinese woman on the road. The foreigner, riding a BYD, apparently thought the female had hit his car with her electric bike, so he got out and slapped her twice across the... Read more »
If you’re wondering why the new Miss World’s smile looks so robotic, you might find the answer in this Forbes article about cosmetics mogul Yue-sai Kan, who is the national director for Miss Universe China. Granting that Miss World and Miss Universe are different, it’s still telling that Kan operates a “boot camp” that winnows out... Read more »