About 200 men participated in the first round of auditions on Saturday for the ATV 2012 Mr. Asia contest, the finals of which will be held on November 18. Before we proceed, you should know that the five contestants pictured above are named Wong Chak Fung, Lee Si Tung, Wat Ho Ming, Wong Ching Chung, and... Read more »
Something called the “National Peasants’ Games” — the 7th edition, in fact — is currently being held in Nanyang, Henan province, which People’s Daily Online describes as a “quadrennial multi- “in which sport event… in which competitors from among the country’s rural residents take part in sports, both conventional, including basketball, athletics, table tennis, shooting,... Read more »
In case you've forgotten, The Simpsons is set to begin its 24th season this Sunday, which is an amazing accomplishment no matter much you've complained about its last 15 seasons as being "not what it used to be."
As a preview, the producers have released this short -- viewed 2.7 million times already in four days -- to satirize the good ol' American election process.
The Wukan protests that began last year over illegal land seizure might have seemed, at the start, unspectacular, merely another in the hundreds of rallies that happen every year in China. But with each passing day — and each development reported breathlessly by embedded reporters — the demonstrations revealed themselves to be a bit more... Read more »
Via John Saeki Wang Lijun, who will forevermore be known as “flamboyant” in Western media, was sentenced to 15 years in prison today on four counts, “defection” probably being the gravest. That he did not get a more severe sentence is interesting, and bodes unwell for his one-time comrade Bo Xilai, with whom he will... Read more »
We know that some cops carry firearms in China — certainly the special-duty officers, and security personnel in highly sensitive areas — but it’s rare enough that I’ve never actually seen an officer holding a gun in all my years here. So you can imagine my surprise upon hearing this story, headlined, “Villager shot dead... Read more »
When is a riot just a fight with a lot of people? When is a fight with a lot of people a riot? In Chinese factories, where thousands of workers live in close proximity, it can be difficult to tell sometimes — and there is ample risk, from a journalistic standpoint, in using the “R”... Read more »
By Jim Fields Recently, I went to Tianjin on a one-day business trip. In the morning, a co-worker picked me up from my apartment at Yonghegong. After completing my business-related tasks, I bid farewell to my colleagues (who had more to do) and took a cab to the local railway station, where I planned to buy a... Read more »
You know, it's not that we don't sympathize with chengguan, China's street-level urban management officers. We get that they have a tough job, and encounter scoundrels and freeloaders on a weekly, if not daily, basis. But every single week, we see a video of chengguan somewhere behaving as poorly as the people they're supposed to police. And what are supposed to do about that?
