Described by Shanghai Daily as striking "sexy" poses around Hengshan Road in Shanghai, a young woman has been stripping for bar-goers late at night, for reasons unknown. Let the speculation begin about her motives:
This video is such a wonderfully awful capsule of urban life in a lower-tier Chinese city. (Specifically Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, in this case.)
At the start of this video, the man behind the camera says, "Just like Chinese people, to fight over pictures."
But just over pictures? Or is this an expression of a deeper discontent, a deformity of neither behavior nor genetics but something more fundamental and universal?
Because Chinese tourists have a terrible rap, the National Tourism Administration has issued a 64-page guidebook on appropriate behavior, featuring some reasonable advice ("keep quiet when waiting to board a plane"), some common-sense advice (be on time), and and some head-scratchers ("do not call Africans 'Negros' or 'black'"). "Don't pick your nose is on the list," too, as everyone seems to be pointing out.
Our friends at Koryo Tours made the above time-lapse. Especially noteworthy are the scenes from the Mass Games and of Kim Il-sung Square, which appears completely empty at almost all times.
We're going to borrow Alia of Offbeat China's word for the crowds during National Day holiday -- "tourpocalypse" -- because these pictures make us judder, indeed as if the ground will swallow us, no longer able to hold the weight of all this humanity.
