A paragraph in a recent China Youth Daily article about the two victims of Asiana Flight 214 seemed to take undue pride in extolling a Chinese government official, which makes just no sense at all.
In March, China began regulating the number of properties families could buy, prompting couples around the country to file for divorce so they could buy more properties. In Nanjing, the schools available to children were tied to household registration, causing another wave of divorces in that city (we wrote about this one, citing Louis CK). So what's a poor government to do in the face of that terrible loophole to its policy?
Torrential rains in Sichuan province have caused flooding in several cities in recent days, leading thousands of militia and reserve troops to be dispatched to the hardest hit areas.
The rains actually began last week, with the worst of it coming down in the last few days. Exact numbers regarding loss of life and property aren't available yet, but the rains have given us two vivid image of the destruction.
Drop what you're doing and watch this, Beijingers. Mark Griffith, a photographer and videographer who used to live in Beijing, has just released the fruit of 15 months of work, "Beijing State of Mind," set to Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind. The project was the brainchild of Andrew Dougherty, an expat who'd lived off and on here for five years. Rapping alongside Princess Fortier (in the role of Alicia Keys), the duo take us on a trip from the Forbidden City to the hutongs to the Great Wall to The Place, and so many other places in between that make our Beijing experience what it is.
Someone doesn't enjoy his job. Reports The Telegraph, Zhou Shengxian, who is China's environment minister, was "quoted by state media as saying: 'I've heard that there are four major embarrassing departments in the world and that China's ministry of environmental protection is one of them.'"
This is really awful and despicable beyond words. An anti-corruption whistleblower in Huizhou, Guangdong province apparently made very powerful enemies over the course of the past year, enemies who finally got to him on Monday morning when three men attacked from behind using sulfuric acid and knives, according to Southern Metropolis Daily.
A young woman got into a fight with subway security last Friday at Beijing Subway’s Changping Line. According to the video description, the scuffle began when she refused to put her bag through the X-ray machine, reportedly saying, “My bag costs twenty-fucking-thousand bucks, can you afford to touch it?” She then began cursing the poor security guards, with her male companion joining in.
Photographer Zhang Kechun first got the idea to walk along the Yellow River in 2008, and for two years, he did just that, documenting "images of life," as Slate's photo blog Behold puts it, along with "flooding, pollution, and destruction caused by China’s push to modernize."
The Wall Street Journal has a follow-up to a Chinese state media article we linked to yesterday, in which a South Korean broadcaster, while trying to express relief that the two girls who died on Asiana flight 214 from Shanghai to San Francisco via Seoul were not Korean (as if nationality matters in these tragedies), used utterly regretful phrasing.
![Weibo Reports A Man Got Killed By A Train Next To Wudaokou Subway Station Over The Weekend [UPDATE]](http://beijingcream.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Dead-body-train-160x120.jpg "Weibo Reports A Man Got Killed By A Train Next To Wudaokou Subway Station Over The Weekend [UPDATE]"){kind=small}
