Despite our initial assessment of the "international" magic carnival that happened from Saturday to Monday in Beijing, magic is actually pretty cool, as are magicians. ITN has highlights of performers doing their thing.
Image taken from People’s Daily’s infamous and now deleted slideshow (seriously) Last week, Time Magazine opened a reader poll for its Person of the Year, prompting us to ask whether Bo Xilai should win. Turns out, that was the wrong question. The question should be: by how many votes will Kim Jong-un win by? Because... Read more »
On Sunday, Beijing Youth Daily reported that Beijing had sentenced “10 people to up to 18 months in jail for illegally detaining petitioners from another city” (Reuters‘s words). It was, as Reuters noted, “a rare case of the judiciary taking on the shadowy men who operate on the margins of the law.” Ah, but not so... Read more »
On Tuesday night, the Global Times published an article damning Elton John for dedicating his performance to Ai Weiwei and encouraging Chinese people to boo future similar performers off the stage. On the same day, GT published “‘Top thinkers’ list a reflection of US values,” a scathing indictment of Foreign Policy’s list, which features, among others, Ai Weiwei.
Lectures, exhibitions, and online discussions marked China's first national day for for road safety yesterday. ("The timing was based on the date Dec. 2 for its appearance as '122,' the telephone number for reporting road accidents in China," says Xinhua.) In particular, the focus was on not running red lights, which reports have said have "claimed 798 lives in the first 10 months of 2012." (Only 798?) But China could use help in almost every area in road safety, as this story via The Nanfang shows:
Are you sick of Christmas yet? The tawdry lights, varnished commercialism, snowy cliches? Has the inner cynic in you roused like the rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem?
Then this story is for you. Via the Washington Post:
To celebrate the Sackler Gallery’s 25th anniversary, Cai Guo-Qiang, the Chinese artist famous for his Olympic pyrotechnics display and his gunpowder art, plans to ignite a daytime fireworks show on the Mall that riffs on the Christmas tree lightings taking place around the country.
By Xiao Yi “At my residence in Beijing, with Coke toast first to the supreme leaders!” And with that first message on June 29, Sina Weibo user @作家崔成浩 – literally, “Writer Choi Seongho” – launched himself into Chinese social media fame. From the very beginning, as a self-proclaimed North Korean patriot, he has written solely to glorify the Democratic People’s... Read more »
Chen Guangcheng, in a measured, carefully scripted nine-and-a-half minute speech that was just released on YouTube, name-drops two dozen activists and dissidents while calling on world leaders to focus more attention on China's human rights. "Dear Mr. Xi Jinping, the whole nation is watching you," he says. "Whether you will follow the call of heaven and people to carry out reform, or kidnap the government and maintain the power of the Communist Party, is a matter of whether China will have the transition in a peaceful way or a violent way."
Talentless but big-breasted Gan Lulu, who skyrocketed to infamy when her mother filmed her naked last year -- then wore a diamond dress at the Beijing Auto Show in April -- is back in the news. She and her younger sister, Gan Maomao, along with their attention-starved mother, Lei Bingxia, were recently guests on Jiangsu Educational Television's game show Bang Bang Bang when the three vixens began exchanging profanities with an audience member who asked if Gan has damaged China's morality.
