Thirty-Three Primary Students Injured Walking Up Stairs By Students Walking Down Stairs

Chinese people stairs
This is precious. Children are our future. Let us treasure the things they do. Via China Daily: A group of students went to the playground during their break but found that the playground was flooded, so they decided to return to their classrooms. When they were climbing the stairs they encountered another group of students... Read more »

Mario Balotelli Gets Genghis Khan Quote Tattooed On His Chest

Mario Balotelli
Mario Balotelli, the mercurial 22-year-old Manchester City striker, celebrated his first English Premier League goal of the season on Wednesday by getting a tattoo. (Note: tattoo may not be connected in any way with said goal.) And of course he went the half-Asian route, getting a tattoo of a (highly apocryphal but widely attributed) Genghis... Read more »

Quicksand To Blame For A Nanjing Bus Sinking Into A Road

Literally into the road.
Here's what it looks like to have a bus extracted from a sinkhole. Yesterday morning, a passenger bus in Nanjing, Jiangsu province drove over a subway station under construction (specifically Line 3's Daxinggong Station), and the road collapsed. The accident happend at the intersection of Taiping Road South and Zhongshan Road East.

China’s Newest Badass Is Kung-Fu Master Who Thwarted A Mob Of Thugs Out To Evict Him

Shen kung fu master
Let it be noted that kung-fu pays. (Disclaimer: it doesn’t always.) Shen Jianzhong, a 38-year-old man in Bazhou, Hebei province, fought off a mob of hoodlums who had been hired by a property developer to evict him and his family. We’re told that he more or less knocked out seven men, with help from his sidekick, his son.... Read more »

You Think The Onion Is Wacky? People’s Daily Really, Truly Loves Kim Jong-Un

TAR Kim Jong-Un
The flagship CPC newspaper People’s Daily is, well, it’s a bit, you know. It’s rubbish. The design is terrible, the editorials are as pleasant as a shirt of broken glass and Captain Crunch, they have military equipment on their flash home page every day and their non-CPC related stories have the detached insouciance of a disabled child petting a kitten too hard.

Should Bo Xilai Be Time’s Person Of The Year? (More Than 90 Percent So Far Say No)

Bo Xilai as Time's Person of the Year
There’s no question Bo Xilai has had an eventful year, directly responsible for outrage, consternation, confusion, exhilaration, and joy (he was manna from heaven for China’s foreign correspondents). As Time’s Austin Ramzy writes, “Bo was favored to win a seat on China’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee this fall after having boosted his popularity by reviving Mao-era... Read more »

Vintage Footage Of A Smiley Hu Jintao In 1984 Provides A Rare Glimpse Of Him As A Young Charmer

Chinese leaders smiling
We — you, me, the world — might see outgoing president Hu Jintao as a wan robot less charismatic than a cardboard box, but there was a time during this man’s life when he was sprightly, good-humored, and jovial. Let this video — of a speech he gave in 1984, in front of colorful balloons —... Read more »

Taiwan Only Won Four Golden Horse Awards, So Some Local Lawmakers Now Want To Nix The Whole Film Festival

Golden Horse Awards
The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, inaugurated in 1962, is the oldest and arguably most prestigious of China’s four major film awards (the mainland’s Hundred Flowers Award was also founded in 1962, but it was suspended from 1964 to 1979, for obvious reasons). On Saturday, in its 49th annual show, director Gao Qunshu’s Beijing Blues... Read more »