By RFH With all the stuff going around about Bo, Bogu, Guagua, Gu and, of course, Neil and Nick Heywood, it’s getting hard for even the most Burroughs of media junkies to keep up. Every time I tell myself I’m done with it, Malcolm Moore at the Telegraph or Jeremy Page of Wall Street Journal turn up offering another... Read more »
We were playing liar's dice at El Nido when a pair of loud, demonstrably buzzed expats plopped down next to us on the wooden outdoor table. We made fast acquaintances. "Whoa, your English is really good," said the man pictured above, to me. "You sound American."
And we were off. We learned that the man -- who introduced himself to us with his Chinese name, though we'll just call him Lee [Ed's note: we've changed his name and his son's by request; see update, below] -- was, despite all appearances, not American. And unlike his friend, Natsun, he was not Canadian, either. He tried to convince us he was Chinese. We expressed our doubts, and that's when he admitted, OK, he wasn't Chinese... yet. He was merely on his way toward Chinese citizenship.
Progress making dissidents more obsolete Global Times | April 9, 2012 00:13
The Man:
For those of you who haven’t heard, Fang Lizhi, a crusader for human rights in China and a brilliant physicist and teacher, died last week. I can’t pretend to have been a follower due largely to my relative youth, but, frankly, I have a soft spot for nerds, physicists especially.
Let’s play a guessing game. What kind of website would host a series of pictures such as the above? Cracked.com? (Too classy, probably.) Bro Bible? Frat House Sports? Slingshot? Surely one of those sites with features like “The 50 Bustiest Girls on Facebook” and pop-up video ads. One of those sites in which a new... Read more »
Installation art may be the only type that lets artists actually live up to their outsider, free-spirit, totally bullshit reputation. It’s also more fun for the audience to get to step into/touch/eat the artwork, so they tend to be crowd pleasers and museum favorites. I’m inclined to give artists more credit for giant installations because... Read more »
Earlier this week I came across a story on Offbeat China about Kate Winslet’s breasts being censored in the Chinese theatrical release of Titanic 3D. Alia wrote, without citing a source (cite your sources, people; I’m looking at you too, Shanghaiist), that the reason they censored the breast was because, “Considering the vivid 3D effects,... Read more »
My apologies for being out last week. The editor of this blog, Anthony Tao, broke some of his own self-aggrandizing journalistic rules when he said I was “sick” last week. That’s not true at all. In fact, I was simply incapable of reporting back to him because I had been coming off a bender over the recent Tomb Sweeping Day. [Ed’s note: that's being sick, you twit.] My body felt like it had been frozen and bashed with a spiked club (think the bad guy from Terminator 2). My liver probably looked like it just went through 12 rounds with Manny Pacquiao. But the stories, oh my, the stories…
We mean “Western Internet,” of course, but considering 10 of the top 12 sites on Alexa are based in the West, it’s fair to wonder — as RFH did just now — “what the damage is economically by turning yourself into North Korea, Internet-wise.” Check out the image above, a very short list of websites... Read more »
This may not have anything to do with Bo Xilai, but then again… maybe it does? [UPDATE 2, 4 pm: 薄熙来, GKL and BGG (Bo's Chinese name and the initials of his wife and son) all get blocked, too -- see screenshot after jump.] It doesn’t matter if you’re using an iPhone or a plain... Read more »
Over the past month, there’s been a lot of smoke regarding Bo Xilai, some of which we’ve been happy to fan here, but when it comes to Chinese politics and media, you know there’s definitely a fire when that smoke is being blown by none other than Xinhua. A little more than an hour ago, the... Read more »
