Last Thursday saw the publication of the China Story Yearbook 2013, the second in an annual series published by the China experts at Australia National University’s Center on China in the World. It was co-edited by the estimable Geremie Barmé and Beijing’s very own Jeremy Goldkorn. Disclosure: I’m partial. I occasionally write for the China Story blog, but don’t let that deter you. The yearbook is packed with insight and perspectives you won’t find in commercial media, with gems that will prove invaluable to any China watcher.

This year’s publication is called Civilising China, and takes as its focus the concept of wenming, which encompasses both grand ideas as civilization and the more everyday notion of civility. This wenming is precisely the one you see plastered around Beijing in connection with anti-spitting campaigns or, as I saw in a park toilet a few years ago, correct urinal usage: “One small step closer to the urinal, one big step for civilization/civility.”

The yearbook includes eight “forums,” in which authors from the Centre on China in the World and other journalists and commentators, such as Leta Hong Fincher, discuss topics including censorship, the rule of law, and the meaning of the “Chinese Dream.”

The expertise is apparent. Barmé, rather characteristically, provides readers with golden nuggets as the origins of “I was here” graffiti vis-à-vis Ding Jinhao:

In the classical novel Journey to the West (Xiyou ji 西游记), the Buddha fools the Monkey King (Sun Wukong 孙悟空) by promising that if he can manage to leap out of the Buddha’s palm, he can occupy the Celestial Throne. The overconfident Monkey King accepts the challenge, jumps into the Buddha’s palm and then does an almighty somersault, tumbling through the air for thousands of miles. Finally, coming to rest at a place where five massive pillars reach into the sky, the Monkey King promptly scratches the following characters into the middle pillar to prove he was there:

老孙到此一游 (Lao Sun dao ci yiyou ‘Old Sun was here’)

Throughout, the China Story Yearbook places news and current events in the context of thousands of years of Chinese history. Another great example is that the phrase “four dishes and one soup” — used by Xi Jinping in his call for frugality among Party members — which has its origins in the rhetoric of Ming campaigns against officials’ gluttony.

Such historical contextualizing reflects the China Story’s mission — in large part a response to the CCP’s desire to monopolize the narrative of Chinese history — to tell a diverse, plural story of China and the broader Chinese world. The entire site is a gem — hidden, by some accounts — for us sinophiles. In particular, there’s a fantastic section on Chinese intellectuals, old and contemporary, and a section called Lexicon A-Z, a dictionary of key terms such as “New China Newspeak” and “New Sinology.”

In short, download a copy of the China Story Yearbook 2013 and get reading. A year’s worth of stories will appear in a new and fascinating light.

Tom Baxter is a Beijing-based freelancer writer. He is also co-founder and editor of Concrete Flux, an online journal on urban spaces and the experience of urbanity in China. You can follow him @TomBaxter17.

Welcome to Three Shots with Beijing Cream, where local personalities spill their beans 1.5 fluid ounces at a time. Produced and directed by Gabriel Clermont and Anthony Tao.

Our guests this week aren’t local per se, but Beijing honararies by virtue of their attendance at last month’s Bookworm International Literary Festival. Writers from around the world converged on the Bookworm from March 8 to 22, but two were intrepid enough to plant themselves in front of our cameras’ uncomfortably hot lights to field ridiculous, droll questions that began, “If you could start an east-coast/west-coast-type feud with any writer…”

In a bloodsport dominated by the young, the foolhardy, the high-strung and hammy, CJ Bowerbird, a family man from Canberra, stands out with his incisive and topical insights, intelligence grounded in experience, casual humor and elucidating wit. He is also a champion: winner of the 2012 Australian Poetry Slam. Performance poetry often vacillates between art and presentation, but the best practitioners straddle that line so expertly that the air stills, as in the brief silence between one’s final line and applause, and in the aftermath the world grows blank and cold (to paraphrase Mark Strand). For a sense of that, check out Bowerbird on Tipping or Rocking May Cause Injury or Death and Clicktivism.

CJ performed at the Bookworm on March 16, and we caught up with him not long after. Shooting tequila like a true champ — sans salt, the condiment for the callow — he discussed the meaning of poetry in this day and age of hip-hop, and other stuff. We would kindly advise he stay off the mean streets.

Three Shots With CJ Bowerbird was filmed at the Bookworm (Building 4, Nan Sanlitun Lu).

Building 4, Nan Sanlitun Road, Chaoyang District 朝阳区南三里屯路4
号楼（老书虫）

Edited by Gabriel Clermont (@gabrieltrane). Special thanks to Kadi Hughes and Mengfei Chen of the Bookworm. Follow CJ Bowerbird on Twitter @CJBowerbird.

Previously: Three Shots With… Morgan Short

|Three Shots With Archives|

After winning the first set of the Australian Open final against defending champ and world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka, Li Na rolled her ankle — twice, the second time immediately following a 10-minute fireworks display in honor of Australia Day — before falling in three sets 4-6, 6-4, 6-3.

That Azarenka was on the other end of two medical timeouts was more than a little ironic. In the semifinal against American Sloane Stephens, it was Azarenka’s strategically called medical timeout that incited worldwide accusations of gamesmanship and “bending the rules.” Li Na commented on that situation as well before the finals, saying, “You know, everyone is different. Because for me, I would never use that (medical timeout). But I don’t know how (it) is (with) another athlete or another player because everyone is different. I couldn’t say, ‘Oh, it’s wrong’ or ‘it’s right.’”

Azarenka’s timeout in the semis came after no discernible video evidence of injury, and caused more than a few observers to howl that she was just buying herself a 10-minute break to settle her nerves. Everyone, however, could see Li Na’s injury: slow-motion video of her left ankle rolling was shown on Rod Laver Court’s big screens and every television.

THIS is why we have medical time-outs….

— Jon Wertheim (@jon_wertheim) January 26, 2013

Chinese announcers calling the match handled themselves very professionally. Fast forward to the 113-minute mark in the below video: the female commentator says right away that the 10-minute fireworks break may have caused Li Na to go cold and turn her ankle again. She immediately saw that Li Na also hit her head — a trainer ended up administering a concussion test on the court.

You can relive this bizarre but entertaining match in its entirety on Youku:

Ever since advancing to the 2011 Australian Open final, becoming the first Chinese player to appear in a Grand Slam singles final, Li Na has been somewhat of a media darling in Melbourne. The sixth-seeded Wuhan native beat Agnieszka Radwanska 7-5, 6-3 on Tuesday to advance to the semis against Maria Sharapova, but not before serving up a bit of comedy on the court and the mic. Watch as the 30-year-old explains that serve of hers.

Count USA Today’s Chris Chase, who wrote the following, as smitten.

Unlike most of my blogging brethren, who frequently like to say something “wins” the Internet or is “the greatest thing you’ll ever see,” I try to avoid definitive statements of rapturous praise. I’ll make an exception in this case: Li Na is the best.

Li Na’s hilarious excuse for her horrendous serve (USA Today)

Congratulations to Wu Di for qualifying for the Australian Open!

And congratulations to the Chinese education system for its success in instilling in Tennis Player Wu the notion that no matter where a mainland Chinese person travels, everyone else is still the foreigner.

As Reuters reports, Wu was shocked that laowai in Australia would actually cheer someone from China, thereby causing Wu to suffer from cognitive dissonance and require counseling upon his return.

“I was shocked,” Wu, who was mobbed after the match by fans wearing his country’s red national flag, told reporters. “In domestic tournaments, it’s hard enough getting Chinese to cheer me on, let alone foreigners.

“But there were foreigners here telling me to ‘come on!’. That was the first time that’s happened, so I felt really happy to have that.”

(Okay, I made up that last part about counseling.)

Wu was also impressed by fans wearing the Chinese flag as superman capes, though these “fans” were presumably not paid to attend by the Chinese Embassy. (They are also not, strictly speaking, laowai, so let’s call them “overseas Chinese” for perpetuity until the day they return to the welcoming bosom of the sacred motherland.)

Wu lost 7-5 4-6 6-3 6-3 to Croatian Ivan Dodig.

Fortunately for China, Li Na, the other member of the Wuhan tennis clique, is still in the tournament. She gave Wu sage advice via a pre-bedtime (oooh-la-la) text: “Don’t think about tennis.”

However, she failed to advise him not to play Happy Farms till four in the morning, refrain from watching Japanese porn prior to taking the court and remove that damn smiley face vibration dampener from his racquet.

(Image Reuters)

Yesterday, while writing about an Australian reporter who had become somewhat of a Chinese Internet star because of her Mandarin-speaking ability, I was most struck by something she said in English. At a press conference inside the Great Hall of the People, she mentioned she was representing “Global CAMG Media International.” I googled that phrase and found no results on the first page. The closest match was “CAMH,” which is completely different. That should’ve sent up a red flag, instead of a yellow one. But this was still the early stages of the story, and the news seemed to be the question itself, not the identity of the questioner, so I went ahead with the post.

Well, one short day later, the focus is now squarely on the questioner. Her name is Andrea Yu, and it turns out she’s far from a journalist. She was first tracked down by China Real Time Report, to whom she admitted that she gets called on at press conferences because “they know my questions are safe.” Hmm. If your eyebrows aren’t yet raised, please turn your attention to her second interview, with Stephen McDonnell of Australia Broadcasting Corporation (via Shanghaiist), who cut her a lot less slack. Ms. Yu, meet a journalist:

STEPHEN MCDONNELL: Is it a little disingenuous for you to be up here I suppose with the appearance of being an independent international journalist when really you’re working for a Chinese company?

ANDREA YU: Yes, that’s a good question. It is interesting, and a lot of people have asked me about that. The fact is, I chose to be employed by them, and I’m representing their company.

So when I ask questions in press conferences and anything like that, I’m representing the company as well as representing Australia.

STEPHEN MCDONNELL: The company though, it’s controlled from Beijing, right?

ANDREA YU: Ah, well we do have a head office in Melbourne, so…

STEPHEN MCDONNELL: The majority shareholding is from Beijing – that’s right, isn’t it?

ANDREA YU: Ah, yes, yes that’s true.

STEPHEN MCDONNELL: Because I mean you could say that it’s as if the Chinese government has brought you up here as a sort of friendly journalist to essentially ask itself questions that it likes about its own performance.

ANDREA YU: Yes, you could say that, but you could only say that if you knew who my company was and we are fairly, I would say, not very well-known at this stage.

STEPHEN MCDONNELL: Here’s the Chinese government, they’re inviting someone up here – they know that you’re working essentially for them, and you’re coming up here and asking them questions about their own performance. Isn’t that right?

ANDREA YU: I really don’t know if I can answer that question accurately, the way you’re wanting me to answer it. I know you’re looking for a certain answer here, but…

STEPHEN MCDONNELL: I’m not looking for a certain answer, I’m looking for your answer.

ANDREA YU: No, my answer is that I think it’s a very large system and I honestly don’t believe that people within the Chinese government knew beforehand who I am and who I’m working for.

STEPHEN MCDONNELL: But is it real journalism, what you’re doing?

ANDREA YU: Um, I’ve only just started. I’m very new to this, so I’m learning as I go.

STEPHEN MCDONNELL: So you’re not quite sure if it is?

ANDREA YU: Ah, no, I would call it – I wouldn’t call it hard news, I wouldn’t call it that, OK, I’m not going to be kidding myself there, but I’m very glad for the opportunity that I’ve had to come here and learn what I have.

STEPHEN MCDONNELL: You don’t feel though, potentially, that you’re being used by the Chinese government to show that there’s something going on that really isn’t happening?

ANDREA YU: It’s something that I think a lot of foreigners have to think about when they come here. It’s also very difficult because…

STEPHEN MCDONNELL: But what do you think about it though? Do you feel that you’re being used in that way?

This goes on for a little while, and her answers don’t get much better, nor do McDonnell’s questions get easier. What we have here, in Yu, is a mercenary who embarrassed the wrong profession. It’s one thing for a Chinese company to hire a “white face” to do quality control in a factory out in the boonies, where no one will ask questions. It’s another for the Chinese government to employ a “white face” to lob softball questions at powerful people who deserve to be held to account. Political reporters — particularly foreign correspondents — are too cynical, too bitter, and too intolerant of bullshit to give fraudsters like Yu a free pass, and if they can’t ask questions of Chinese politicians, they’ll find other outlets for their withering inquiries. So it is that Ms. Yu, who by all accounts seems like a decent individual, had to be dragged through the grinder.

You know what, though? With all the publicity that CAMG has gotten, googling “CAMG Media International” now actually turns up a result. Its main office is at Jianguomen Wai, just down the street from the Great Hall of the People. Here’s its website, and the About section:

CAMG is a media star emerging out of Oceania, implementing media and cultural projects covering the entire Asia -Pacific region.

CAMG’s main area of development is the integration of media resources in Asia and Oceania, producing high-quality content for audiences of different countries in line with the local audience listening habits and tastes

Since their establishment in Melbourne, Australia on September 12, 2009, CAMG Media Group has been committed to building a cross-cultural bridge between nations and encouraging international trade. CAMG’s mission with their partners is to develop effective ways to facilitate cross-cultural exchange and to build well-known media brands.

After more than 2 years of development, CAMG Pty., Ltd. has built a strong international team of media professionals, using the most advanced and up to date hardware and facilities. Currently, the company has subsidiaries registered in New Zealand, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Nepal, as well as in a number of other countries.

These last two years of excellent growth are only just the beginning. CAMG is continuing to grow and step-by-step is building a world-class media brand.

UPDATE, 11/15, 12:26 am: Just saw that Eric Fish of Sinostand wrote about this too. I offer it here, including the following excerpt, as a counterweight to my sentiments.

Some of my experiences and those of several acquaintances at Chinese companies (not just media) were just like this. It’s not as if you’re told up front what your real job and unethical responsibilities will be. It comes in ways that aren’t immediately obvious and in steps so small that it’s easy to descend into something you’d never intended. What seem like opportunities (ie – covering the biggest political event in China) are in fact situations where you’re being exploited. By the time you look around and realize what you’re doing, you’re in too deep and it’s hard to climb back out without seriously disrupting your life.

Will anyone ask a question better than this 11-year-old's at the #18PC ? http://t.co/iT3GEobY

— Beijing Cream (@beijingcream) November 11, 2012

Turns out, nope — at least in terms of content. But on Saturday afternoon, one reporter attracted an equal amount of attention at an 18th Party Congress press conference. She stood up, took the mic, and asked a nearly minute-long question in Mandarin, and then wryly said, “I’ll translate for myself.” A few chuckles came out of the erstwhile catatonic crowd.

“I’m from Global CAMG Media International based in Australia,” she said. “The Australian government has recently released an important white paper on Australia’s relations with Asia in the 21st century. It discusses Australia’s relations with Asia over the next 25 years, particularly Australia’s relations with China. Mr. Zhang, please tell us what policies and plans the Chinese government will be implementing in cooperation with Australia. Xiexie, thank you.”

And then, National Development and Reform Commission Chairman Zhang Ping, a native of central Anhui province, said in an Andre the Giant accent: “You speak very good Chinese.” Chuckle. “I understood everything.” (Or as the translator put it: “I can get your point properly.”)

UPDATE, 11:03 pm: The reporter’s name is Andrea Yu, and she was interviewed by WSJ’s China Real Time Report:

Ms. Yu told China Real Time, who says she has been called upon four times so far. She says her secret to being tapped is sitting in the same spot at every official meeting. She also credits her ability to make across-the-room eye-contact with moderators.

But there’s one more reason, she says: “They know my questions are safe.” Ms. Yu said her questions are pre-written by her Chinese colleagues and that she is not allowed to ask her own questions. “I’m representing a Chinese-Australian company, so I need to ask questions they want me to ask,” she said, adding: “Believe me, I would have other questions to ask if I could.”

With all due acknowledgements that this reporter’s Chinese is actually pretty good, we’d like to say there is, of course, a Laowai Comic for what happened, and that Laowai Comic is this:

Go visit his site already.

On Sunday in Yantai, Shandong province’s Golden Sands beach, a young man surnamed Ji swam a bit too far into the sea and went under. As Tencent Online tells it via 365jia (pictures from there), an Australian named Jason relaxing a few hundred meters away saw this and sprung to action.

After Ji was pulled from the waters with help from an inflatable raft, Jason performed CPR on the man and was able to resuscitate him. The Aussie’s golden retriever was by his side for the whole thing, too.

And once again, we have seen that CPR really can save lives.

For all his efforts, Jason was unfortunately labeled the “foreign Lei Feng.”

(Just kidding – good on Jason, et al.) More pictures after the jump (H/T Alicia).

Finally, some pointless comments found on Sina Weibo:

“Popularizing emergency aid knowledge is very important,” wrote Sina Weibo user @Leon—LEE. “Dog is also excellent,” said @小新童鞋2012. “Super!” said @蜜糖de小宇宙.

UPDATE: Per commenter Jess, I acknowledge the man is probably Australian the headline has been changed to reflect the man’s probable identity.

I don’t know why, but this made me laugh. Maybe it’s the extra-nasally way the man pronounces the J in Beijing. Maybe it’s because I feel like he’s ready to vomit the words “chicken burger,” such is his rising disdain. Maybe the title of the video itself – Crazy McDonalds employee sells Sloppy Beijing Burger. Or maybe it’s the idea of him turning off his camera, getting out of his car, and marching straight back into the McDonald’s to return the burger, like he said he would… or the thought that he just might not turn the camera off while he does this.

I don’t know. Maybe you’ll laugh as well.

Incidentally, Josh Ong of the Beijinger wrote about the Beijing chicken burger earlier today, and for whatever reason, our very own RFH’s first piece for this site was about a McDonald’s concoction called the Big n Beefy. There’s no joke here — or, amazingly, anywhere in this post. Youku video for those in China after the jump.