"Several Western journalists who faced expulsion from China were issued renewed visas by the Chinese government Thursday, ending a months-long standoff," writes William Wan for Washington Post. Yay!
"Austin Ramzy, a journalist who previously worked for Time magazine, has not been given press accreditation or a permanent visa since he joined the Times, according to journalists in Beijing."
Well shit. Read more »
According to a recent study by the communications consultancy MSL Group, around half of Chinese women would rather abstain from sex than give up their mobile devices. Read more »
Around 3:20 pm on Sunday in Tangshan, Hebei province, a woman named Ms. Cheng was exercising in Nanhu Park when she saw some teenagers playing on a frozen lake. She and her exercise partner, Mr. Liu, were about 15 meters from the shore when the ice suddenly cracked, swallowing up the young revelers. Read more »
Xu Xin’s monumental 2010 film, Karamay (below, with English subtitles), is a meditation on the relationship humans have to failures within Modernist political projects in our current historical moment. Using long-takes and repetitive framing, Xu Xin draws out the long duration of trauma and feelings of injustice following a horrific fire that killed hundreds of children in 1994. With the exception of a minority of Uyghurs and Kazakhs, the majority of Mandarin speakers featured in this award-winning 356-minute film came from elsewhere. Read more »
Check out these diners at a McDonald's in Kowloon City -- photo via Apple Daily -- "wailing," according to Coconuts Hong Kong, at the sight of a seven-inch rat scavenging for food. Read more »
H&N, Zare, Hugo BGSS, SFFCCCKS Coffee: these are just some of the counterfeits of famous brands -- not the same as "famous counterfeits"... or is it? -- you can find on a shopping street in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. Read more »
Eccentric Chinese millionaire Chen Guangbiao admits to facing "obstacles" in his bid to purchase the New York Times (translation: no way the Ochs-Sulzberger family is selling to him), but that's the old story here. The much more important story we'd like to highlight is the one about his business card, namely how utterly INSANE it is. Read more »
Dennis Rodman sang Happy Birthday to Kim Jong-un, who then watched as his country's basketball team beat Dennis Rodman's USA team on Wednesday in Pyongyang. That's according to Koryo Tours general manager Simon Cockerell, who reports that "the DPRK team emerged triumphant" in a 20-minute game, played as two 10-minute halves. Read more »
