Has unrest again hit Foxconn? New York-based advocacy group China Labor Watch reports that yesterday at about 1 pm in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, “three to four thousand production workers” went on strike after Foxconn demanded they work holidays and “raised overly strict demands on product quality without providing worker training for the corresponding... Read more »
I know it can be difficult sometimes to click on a 15-minute video, but this TEDTalk is both timely and worth it -- timely because Apple held its iPhone 5 unveiling yesterday in San Francisco, and worth it because Leslie T. Chang is awesome. She's best known for Factory Girls, by far the best book I've encountered about the people -- the actual people -- who live and work in the factories that churn out much of the world's retail goods.
Alicia saw this on Global Times today, a picture by CFP captioned: “A boy shows his Apple haircut at West Lake in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province on Saturday.” Must be nice to be that kid: didn’t do a thing, got into Global Times. But that’s how it is with toddlers, isn’t it? They usually... Read more »
Alert: If you're a musician who knows how to play the guzheng, you should make a video, because it'll have a very good chance of going viral. First there was the Adele cover, followed by the Titanic theme song, then that "cultured Chengdu guard." Now? Just a traditional Chinese guzheng song... on iPads.
We're about a day late with this story that's tearing up the Chinese Internet: a 17-year-old boy sold his kidney for 22,000 yuan in Anhui province, then used the money to buy an iPad2 and iPhone (model unspecified). The AP writes, rather understatedly, "The case has prompted an outpouring of concern that not enough is being done to guard against the negative impact of increasing consumerism in Chinese society."
This incredible footage was recorded as firefighters in China used an iPhone camera to seek out a two-year-old boy who had fallen down a well.
The child plunged into the 40ft shaft while playing with friends outside a small village near Mengzi City, in Yunnan Province.
Picture via Mark Gimein’s post at Bloomberg Businessweek in which he essentially retracts his original review: “Usually, ‘art’ is art and ‘journalism’ is journalism. When the two meet, it’s rarely on the same stage. An exception is the work of monologuist Mike Daisey.” Mike Daisey is not a China expert. This should be abundantly clear, because... Read more »
