"Nail house" refers to the homes of owners too stubborn to give in to developers. These people stand alone, with their house, while their neighbors depart, and their neighborhood crumbles, and a new world stamps the words BEYOND HELP onto their heads. Often, that stamp looks like this: 拆. Sometimes, it looks like the above: walls leaning against one another to keep from falling; a roof halfway torn off by a force of mankind. Here it is: the poverty of living in modern China.
The folks over at the Bespoke Beijing travel agency put together this hilarious spoof promo for the CCTV Tower using a recording of the building's audio tour. Among other things, I learned that romance is worth 298元.
For those worried about peace and stability in East Asia, there is plenty to keep you up at night: an international pariah armed with nuclear weapons under the apparently tenuous control of a young adult of questionable maturity; messy historical relations between regional powers; and territorial disputes that tie up political capital, inflame public opinion, and increase the chance of hostilities. If it's Tuesday, there must be a flare-up in the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.
The China Dream is in trouble according to a recent report by The Mirror. The investigative report, published on February 7, said the number of impoverished counties in China rose from 331 in 1985 to 592 in 2012.
This purported slide into poverty runs contrary to three decades of explosive economic growth and seriously clashes with the government’s official reporting of 98.9 million people in poverty nationwide.
But rather than unmasking a hidden class of impoverished citizens...
2014 has been an auspicious year so far for elephants. In January, the Chinese government crushed -- the technical term for destroying -- a whopping 6.15 tons of tusks, equivalent to one-sixth of the illegal ivory seized worldwide in 2012. The following week, Chinese officials worked with Kenyan authorities to apprehend the Chinese kingpin of a Kenya-based ivory ring.
Four female students from Wuhan University in Hubei province demonstrated on February 14 to call for respect for sex workers in China.
One student held up a pair of underpants as a metaphor for the Big Underpants building in Beijing, i.e. the headquarters of China Central Television (CCTV), which has been pejoratively called "CCAV" (AV being adult video) by Chinese netizens.
Caption: "Recently, a detachment of officers and men from the People's Armed Police in Liangshan, Sichuan held roses to depict 'thousand-armed Guanyin,' celebrate Valentine's Day's arrival, and use this opportunity to express sincerest wishes to their sweethearts a world away."
