On May 15, a 24-year-old nurse surnamed Wang was cut in half by an elevator after she found herself pinched between its closing doors.
That sentence is horrific enough, but what about more details?
The victim, a nurse surnamed Wang, was trapped in the elevator in Changhong Tower in Shenzhen's Luohu district, when it stopped due to failure. Since the door was open the woman attempted to exit, but the elevator started moving again. The elevator fell at least three stories, killing Wang.
Those details are definitely sufficiently horrific, but what about the video?
The news here is not that People's Daily did something ridiculous, because they do that all the time. It's the netizen response.
But before we get there, let's set the scene first with People's Daily's ridiculousness:
Dr. Monica Stephens, a professor at Humboldt State University, has created a series of maps that illustrate which areas of the United States are most likely to send tweets with certain hateful words. It's called Geography of Hate, and here's how it works:
The data behind this map is based on every geocoded tweet in the United States from June 2012 - April 2013 containing one of the 'hate words'.
Chinese media gets fooled by things occasionally. Usually it’s satire that gets them, but recently, the Chinese edition of Global Times discovered it could embarrass itself in totally new and interesting ways.
By mistaking DeviantArt for the real thing.
We all know the feeling of losing our cool, but how many of us know the misfortune of having a meltdown secretly filmed and uploaded to Youku, where it gets 390,000 views in half a day?
Check out the above, which happened recently in Chengdu, according to the Youku description. A foreigner, because he almost misses a bus, begins cursing at the bus driver in up to three languages, while everyone else watches in silence.
One of the most common questions I see posted on TEFL forums is whether X school in Z province is a decent place to work. There are ways to ensure that you aren’t walking into an educational Sarlacc pit by emailing current staff and properly vetting your contract. Still, there’s a good chance your first job will be in a shitty private language center — and there’s actually nothing wrong with that. But before we see why, a quick aside.
Remember the above? The picture appeared on Sina Weibo in March, with the accompanying message:
A group of laowai collectively pee on a Shanghai overpass, while smirking! Can only say __ doesn’t have national boundaries! Please fill in the blank!
The incident was investigated, with police eventually saying no punishment would come to the foreigners due to a lack of relevant laws.
Winsome goof Joe Biden, giving a commencement address at the Ivy League's University of Pennsylvania on May 13, delivered a few China barbs that probably shouldn't have come from a US vice president.
"It was a humiliating experience," Chinese citizen Zhang Tianpu, a graduating Wharton senior, told SCMP. "And how can a graduation speech be this political?"
