Our charity for tomorrow's community fiction event is Educating Girls of Rural China, which provides financial aid and other support for deserving young women from rural areas (principally Gansu province, but also Qinghai and Guizhou) to continue their educations. Since its establishment in 2005, EGRC has awarded 435 university and high school scholarships. The organization boasts a 100 percent graduation success rate.
Called "the stupidest movie of the year" and "one of the most atrocious movies I have ever seen in my life" -- so bad that even Peter Travers, a man who loved King Kong, urged viewers to not watch it -- Transformers: Age of Extinction just might be the frontrunner for worst movie of the year. Funny thing: it's also the frontrunner for highest grossing movie of the year, after Chinese audiences just made this film the No. 1 movie in China of all time.
On Saturday morning, a middle-aged man boarded Bus No. 7 in Hangzhou and lit a package of flammable liquids. The ensuing flames injured at least 32 passengers, with 24 in critical condition. You can watch the frightening scene above, and also check out the scene from the street, outside the flaming bus.
Thank you for answering the call, Beijing writers. I've anonymized all entries and sent them over to our judges, who now have the truly unenviable task of choosing just five. We'll reach out to each writer individually later this week (Thursday at the latest). Important note: if you submitted but did NOT receive a confirmation email, PLEASE EMAIL US AGAIN as soon as possible. We had an untimely server hiccup over the weekend, but everything is now fixed.
We're extending our flash fiction deadline. Submit stories 500-700 words before 11:59 pm this Sunday for a chance to read your piece over beers at Great Leap Brewing's Original No. 6 courtyard on Sunday, July 13. If you need any inspiration, check out the piece that just went up on the Anthill about the heartache of being alone in a city of 21 million.
Yesterday marked the 17th anniversary of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Britain to mainland China, and in the midst of growing concerns over CCP meddling in local affairs, tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents took to the streets for a democracy march that was the island's biggest rally in a decade.
Occasionally a man needs to sleep off the heat of a midsummer afternoon. Occasionally a man needs to anchor himself under an opulent shade and forget the perturbations of his life trajectory, which might pull him into the vortex that is the world's collective agitation. Occasionally a man needs to do this while naked, save for one sock.
This via an anonymous tipster:
Last September, when Literary Death Match swung through Beijing, I performed a poem called Things That Taste Like Purple about the devilry of baijiu, a.k.a. sorghum liquor (dust of the attic, wine of the gutter... with a long finish into the fetor of fragrance). Unbeknownst to me, one of my friends in the audience, the artistic and talented Amy Sands, would go on to create a series of watercolors to accompany my words. The video, which she shot, I post here with deepest gratitude and humility.
Some clever Taobao vendors have decided to capitalize on Luis Suarez's penchant for human flesh by creating what appears to be a bottle opener fashioned from a likeness of the Uruguayan striker's jaw. And look -- it can be had for only 17 RMB!
