The NY Times's photography blog, Lens, has just published 20 stunning pictures from the Cultural Revolution, a "panoramic view" that includes Little Red Books, an execution, and an elongated dunce cap. The images were taken by Harbin photojournalist Li Zhensheng, "perhaps the most complete and nuanced pictorial account of the decade of turmoil ignited by Mao Zedong," says NYT. That is where he did his life’ ...

Now you see her... ...

Click to enlarge The first day of school can be rough. There's this strange and combustible mixture of anxiety and giddiness and despair and pent-up energy, to say nothing of the fact that no one knows anyone else's name. In Shenzhen, one set of parents have come up with a remedy: shaving identifiers into their children's heads. In this case: quadruplets, with the identifiers being 1, 2, 3 and 4. This is co ...

The source of this screen-grab will be revealed at the noon hour. The caption reads: "No wonder Air Jordan is black." Come back at noon for the full story. Update: here it is. ...

The Globe and Mail's East Asia correspondent Mark MacKinnon tweeted this picture last night of Egyptian president Muhammed Morsi and Chinese president Hu Jintao at the Great Wall, and boy is it asking to be meme-ified. "Asshole," says the bubble cloud floating above Morsi's head. "Dickwad," Hu ripostes, the bubble-cloud arrow pointing up his nostril to signify it was muttered under his breath. Alternatively ...

Don't know how or why that Mao portrait and CCP symbol are there. But good on this barber. He probably could've used this client to break the monotony of giving crew cuts. [tt.mop, via Alicia] ...

Gaming can be -- nay, often is -- tiring work. Luckily, the chairs inside Internet cafes are so ergonomic, one can practically sleep more or less on or against them. (H/T Alicia) ...

A couple of days ago, we linked to a Buzzfeed collection of funny pictures of brand-name knock-offs and noted that a lot of the images came from China. Well, yesterday the website China Whisper decided, Why not devote an entire post to Chinese brand-name knock-offs? Some of the more notable images appear after the jump, but head over to China Whisper if you want the full collection of 20. ...

I can explain this. Some people's minds have not been corrupted by the unseemly elements of our indecorous times. They glimpse a work of art such as this and think of the lessons a mother can pass to her child, who is not at all uncomfortable with her exposed tit. Um. PIETY. By unseemly elements, by the way, I mostly mean liberals, but also pranksters, and middle-aged men who have lost hope, and those young ...

A Buzzfeed community contributor has compiled a list of "20 Hilariously Wrong Knock-Offs Of Famous Brand Names," and they are indeed hilarious, more so for us because we think we've identified at least eight images that are most likely from China. They appear after the jump. Enjoy. ...

Via Imgur, at the Bawangfen South bus stop near Dawanglu in Beijing. Atari, yo. That's the new old image of badass for the 2000s generation. What's that, that's not the Atari logo? Fuck it, I'm a pimp. Gonna go back to reading this now. (H/T Alicia) UPDATE: Picture by Natalie Litofsky! ...

This one's not as spectacular and awe-inspiring as this, but it's worth a chuckle. Thanks to Alicia for finding it on Sina Weibo. ...

A bona fide work of art, this. Found by Alicia in Xinhua’s "Funny moments of those eccentric kids," attributed to nen.com.cn. ...

This woman has no idea whatsoever what these words mean. Finally, a world without racism, where words are just words. Via Reddit user jjjmills, who notes his wife took this picture last week in Beijing. (H/T Candice L.) ...

Can a European who never leaves Europe ever have the slightest clue what China is like? It turns out the answer is maybe. Olfert Dapper (1635-1689) was an Amsterdam clergyman and doctor who never traveled abroad but nonetheless produced literature and art about places far, far away. Yesterday, the website BiblioOdyssey -- linked to by io9 -- posted several of Dapper's 17th-century engravings of China, which ...

BBC Magazine has an incredible slideshow of photographs from the Republic of China period, before the Cultural Revolution destroyed so many of these type of images. The accompanying story also details Robert Bickers's efforts to reclaim rare photos as part of the Historical Photographs of China project, which "aims to locate, archive, and disseminate photographs from the substantial holdings of images of mo ...

They don't package Chinese firecrackers like they used to, that's for sure. Mike McHenry, aka Mr. Brick Label on Flickr, has been collecting fireworks labels since 1968, when he was five years old. He's posted 360 of them, divided into seven time periods, some of which are sampled after the jump. It's a gift for collectors everywhere. And, remember, kids: "Lay on ground - light fuse - get away." (Via Buzzfe ...

If suffering is a wellspring for art, there are no greater artists currently living than defectors from North Korea. Witness: this forum, which has compiled drawings from survivors of the country's brutal concentration and work camps (more are sampled after the jump). The commenters over at Gawker have put China at the top of their dialogue on its post about these drawings. North Korea is a reality that no ...

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 don't need to say the darndest word to get your attention. Just witness: ...

It's easy for non-fathers to joke about what they're going to do when they have kids, e.g., "When I'm a dad, I'm going to punt my kid around the house like he's an Aussie football," or, "I'm not going to spoil my kid, he's going to sleep in a toolbox underneath the kitchen sink." But for a father to actually do it -- "My child will be put in a plastic crate and dragged behind my moped via rope" -- is really ...