For the seventh consecutive year on Monday, the Chinese men’s ping-pong team won the Swaythling Cup. (Apparently familiarity doesn’t make the trophy any less awkward to handle.) It’s the 19th time they’ve finished first at the World Table Tennis Championships, which was held this time in Tokyo. The Chinese women’s team, not to be outdone, also won – also its 19th team title at this worlds competition. The women have lost only twice since 1975.

I mean… congratulations? No team title should be disparaged, especially since it looks like Team Germany gave China a bit of resistance, actually taking one game before falling 3-1. But, man, seven in a row and 19 total… maybe it’s time to give the Chinese a handicap? Like, smaller paddles, or ankle weights, or something. Look:

China’s domination of the sport extends to the Olympics. The kids here grow up with ping-pong and do stuff like this at the park, so it’s not a surprise that the rest of the world has no chance in international competitions.

Good luck next year, everyone else. But honestly, it probably won’t matter:

Meanwhile, via NK News:

Japanese customs officers on Tuesday confiscated North Korean table tennis players’ belongings, including souvenirs and equipment, at Narita International Airport, local media has reported.

The Sankei newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, reported on Tuesday that Japanese customs inspectors confiscated souvenirs and table tennis equipment – purchased in Japan – from 13 North Korean players at a special security check.

…Japan bars all trade with North Korea. It has banned all exports to North Korea and port calls by North Korean vessels due to Pyongyang’s nuclear tests and missile launches since July 2006.

The Japanese government generally prohibits any North Korean nationals from entering Japan, but issued the players’ visas under the principle of separating sports from politics.

Japochi = Japanese or Chinese. This is a thing that exists.

I did not do well. What’s your high score? Impress us in the comments.

(H/T Kevin Collier)

ISTANBUL WINS RIGHT TO HOST 2020 SUMMER OLYMPICS, reads the Xinhua headline on a September 8 edition of Changsha Evening News. There’s just one big, huge, obvious mistake:

Tokyo is hosting the 2020 Summer Olympics.

Oops. Regret the error?

A few things are happening here. First, it’s clear that Changsha Evening News feels no need to do fact-checking, because why would it ever fact-check Xinhua, the first and last source of all news in this country? Xinhua could send out a news blast that US missiles veered off course and landed in London, and at least one Chinese paper would splash US BOMBS BRITAIN across its front page.

Second: of all the cities to get wrong, it had to be Tokyo, didn’t it? The capital city of the country that just happens to have longstanding problems — which you might describe, depending on who you are, as “friction,” “acrimony,” or “hatred” — with China.

Finally, Xinhua doesn’t regret shit. It hasn’t acknowledged its error, according to Epoch Times. But it’s not as if people haven’t noticed. A couple of netizen reactions, via Epoch Times:

NJ-Peng comments “Isn’t this ‘speading rumors?’ Isn’t there a serious impact? They [the authorities] arrest [netizens] for ‘spreading rumors,’ regardless of whether or not you apologize. So will the police do anything? Can [the government] ensure equality before the law?”

Zhang Ming, Professor at People’s University of China’s Institute of International Relations, commented on Weibo, “When officials announce mistaken information, they should be held accountable unconditionally. When, however, the officials have no credibility and almost all information is false, then the system won’t question the officials’ lies and rumors.”

Changsha Evening News recalled thousands of newspapers due to Xinhua’s blunder, reportedly at its own expense. Its deputy chief editor wrote on Sina Weibo that Xinhua should “reflect on the mistake,” as SCMP phrases it. We don’t even care if that translation’s faulty, because just picturing that — Xinhua, reflecting on its mistake, what its editorialists have beseeched of countless others — is too rich.

SCMP continues:

According to people.com.cn, the website of People’s Daily, Xinhua sent a flash at 3.10am saying Istanbul had won the right to host the 2020 Games. A state-owned television station also initially misreported the win.

No one watches the watchers. Xinhua is everything that is wrong with journalism in this country, if you haven’t already figured that out from all our coverage of Xinhua’s fetish for porn and camel toes, bum cracks and floppy dicks, etc.

Xinhua Mistakenly Claims Istanbul as Host for 2020 Olympics (Epoch Times)

It’s 2.6 GB, but if you have the disk space and five hours to spare, go here to download Glorious Mission Online, a first-person shooter you’ll be hearing a lot more about in the coming hours and days.

Glorious Mission is the People’s Liberation Army’s military simulation, developed by the Chinese company Giant Interactive Group. A few years ago, it was used as a training and leisure program for real, actual Chinese soldiers. Now, it’s a free, downloadable game that lets players try their hand at defending the Diaoyu Islands.

The game was released on Thursday, on the anniversary of the founding of the PLA.

Reports Reuters:

The PLA was interested in having a 3D interactive game for simulations with virtual replicas of their weapons, said Richard Chiang, a spokesman for Giant Interactive.

“The military was 100 percent behind this game,” he said. “Rather than playing the same foreign games like Call of Duty and being American Marines shooting Russians or whatnot, Chinese can actually play as Chinese soldiers.”

A term you’ll hear throughout the game is guizi, referring to the “Japanese devils” who occupied China during World War II.

“The guizi are coming!” warns the game in a scenario where players are tasked with defending a World War Two-era Shanghai and its cultural artefacts from Japanese invaders.

“The guizi have been obliterated!” Glorious Mission congratulates the player after a grenade explodes under the last enemy’s feet. Shanghai’s museums are saved.

Yes, save the museums. Save the motherland. Capture those rocks in the East China Sea.

If you get tired of Glorious Mission (and why would you get tired of it?), we recommend Defense of the Diaoyu Islands. It’s not really the same kind of game, but when the objective is to kill Japanese, what does it matter?

UPDATE, 8/6, 12:32 am: Caveat emptor. As sent along by reader Joel M:

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.

As Kotaku reports:

On Global Times’ website Huanqiu.com, the text reads, “This appeared online today; it seems to be a concept for a Japanese Self Defense Force armed helicopter made by the Japanese military complex.” The paper also added, “One can see that because this type of technology is not yet available, it looks like something out of science fiction.”

The website sort of played up the story, with a full slideshow…

…without realizing or caring the picture is plainly, obviously watermarked DeviantArt, specifically Meganerid.deviantart.com.

This site. Which has stuff like this:

And this:

And one more:

Really, now, Global Times.

Kotaku continues:

On Chinese social networking site Weibo, people are baffled at how this helicopter would even fly. “This design looks cool but there isn’t anything special, does it even fly?” asked Weibo user hanyu_cger. “Without a tail rudder how does it maneuver?” Others thought it looks more like a comic book design than a military one. Some even claimed it was totally real, while others said it was a Japanese rip-off. Nobody really seemed to realize the DeviantArt URL (probably because it just looked like a string of English words).

It could be worse, we suppose.

Chinese Newspaper Confuses the Japanese Military with…DeviantArt (Kotaku)

Even Chinese television execs know when too much is too much, apparently. “China’s television regulator has ordered a crack down on dramas about the country’s battles with Japan during and before World War Two and demanded they be more serious, state media said on Friday, following viewer complaints about ludicrous storylines,” Reuters reports.

A television “watchdog official,” Wang Weiping, told People’s Daily (via Retuers) that, “The anti-Japan war is a great act of heroism performed by the Chinese people against the invaders, and is a valuable resource for film and television creativity,” which, I suppose, could be true if your definition of “creativity” is this:

Or this:

Or this:

But back to the topic at hand: in classic euphemism, regulators say television execs should pull dramas that are “too entertaining.” They want serious shows that are more historically accurate. Vikings with less blood splatter?

What will become of the Chinese actors who specialize in roles of dying Japanese soldiers? Will they work again?

China cracks down on over-the-top anti-Japan dramas (Reuters)

Authorities approved 303 new TV shows last year, according to Economic Observer, with more than half carrying a revolutionary theme. Would it surprise anyone that out of those, the majority expressed anti-Japanese sentiment?

But you can only be so anti-Japanese before people get bored. And thus, shows have to resort to other tactics to grab ratings. Like with naked girls.

The above picture, posted by Sina Weibo user @Happy张江, is from “some anti-Japanese war flick,” though which exactly, it wasn’t said. The post has gone viral, and reaction has been… mixed.

@执笔天地绘乾坤: Ai! I like watching anti-Japanese war dramas. But this? What is this? History is distorted and children are misled!

@阿杰1991的世界: Wow, she took it all over. Not worth it. This girl has sacrificed way too much for this kind of drama. Do people even watch old-fashioned shows about anti-Japanese war?

@jerry7亮亮  That’s what I call revolutionary spirit. Brava!

@lonemath: Lol, I didn’t know there’re adult videos on the anti-Japanese war.

@靖仑: What film? This is a true story, y’all! A peasant’s daughter is reporting to the chief that she was raped by his soldiers, and she is showing off the evidence.

@这蠢驴不听话1109在搜狐: The more films they shoot, the more retarded they become. Except for easy money, there is nothing good from this kind of film. A complete waste of time! The Chinese entertainment projects are again being raped by a bunch of idiots. Cannot believe this has been approved by the government. Speechless!

@ 轻云剑: OK, so she voluntarily took off her clothes and the soldiers just stood there and saluted and watched? They did not even approach her? Yeah, right!

@ Vwords: Quick, give me the name of this show!

@ 無良看客: The director must think we are fools! They would have a little 18-year-old girl fight against the Japanese? What is it that he is trying to say? That she is patriotic? That we should admire her? Come on! This is outrageous! I hate every time how they glorify the image of a heroine just to inspire people. Oh yeah, I love my country and I will die for it, just because a vulnerable girl would sacrifice her body for it. Give me a break!

@八路2010: Unbelievable. What is it about nudity that is so attractive? Regardless of if this really occurred during the war, what is their intention of putting it on TV? More viewers? Or more anti-Japanese sentiment? Honestly, I don’t see the relationship between a nude female and anti-Japanese whatsoever. She is just standing there, which serves no purpose.

@哥哥你别太瘦: Is this an anti-Japanese video or a Japanese video?

@ riomaster: Stop making fun of our honorable red soldiers. Solders are people too. They have needs just like the rest of us.

The growth of anti-Japanese movies has been a boon for actors — this guy dies up to eight times a day playing Japanese soldiers — but it’s also made for ridiculousness, such as this scene of an enemy being cut in half. Add the above picture to the collection.

It’s no wonder that a bit of viewer fatigue is setting in. Take it away, guy:

@作业本: Every channel is airing anti-Japanese shows. Please stop! We got it! You defeated the Japanese. One of you can kill ten bad guys. And a wounded Red soldier can still kill ten Japanese bastards. A Red soldier with 16 bullets in his chest still stands until the end. You never lose and the Japanese never wins. The Japanese had the best weapons, best uniform and equipment, you have nothing to eat or drink, yet you still manage to slay all of them. I cannot believe that with these superb skills, the war still took eight whole years to finish. Chiang Kai-shek is a total loser!

Xiao Yi is a travel enthusiast who tweets @ellies_day.

In a scene that would make even the producers of the Starz original series Spartacus reel, check out this Chinese warrior literally tear a Japanese soldier in half.

As described by Ministry of Tofu:

Chinese-made anti-Japanese patriotic television dramas have been the object of an awful lot of ridicule on Sina Weibo, the Chinese twitter, after netizens found much to their amusement that in one extreme example, a Chinese man tears up a “Japanese soldier”, or commonly known in China as “Japanese devil”, across like a piece of paper, with blood splashing all over the place.

Zhouxiaoniu, a net user on Sina Weibo, first posted the screen capture of the scene, “Tearing the devil with bare hands! I am on my kneels begging for the name of this television drama! So fuking awesome!” The tweet has got nearly 6,000 shares and 1,400 comments.

Reminds me of a line from Blood Meridian: “The old man raised the axe and split the head of John Joel Glanton to the thrapple.” This guy here went a bit deeper than the thrapple, wouldn’t ya say?

On TV, Chinese man rips ‘Japanese devil’ in half with bare hands; netizens call it ‘wet dream’ (Ministry of Tofu)

Cats have nine lives, but 26-year-old Zhejiang province-based actor Shi Zhongpeng has eight. At least, he does as an actor in Chinese movies featuring Japanese villains.

According to Qianjing Evening News via AFP, last year he acted as a member of the Japanese army more than 200 times, dying up to eight times a day — though his biggest wish was to act as a Communist soldier in the Eighth Route Army, which defended China in the Second World War.

Since he couldn’t play a good guy, he settled for the bad:

The secret to being picked by the casting teams, he was quoted as saying, was to “appear as sleazy as possible”, so he adopts a ferocious look at auditions, while stooping slightly.

Hengdian studio, where Shi Zhongpeng works, recorded 150 movies or TV dramas last year. One-third of them were about the anti-Japanese war. AFP reports that out of the 300,000 roles that existed for extras, 60 percent of them were as Japanese soldiers.

Given the ongoing tensions between China and Japan, Shi Zhongpeng may not have trouble finding work for a long time.

China TV extra dies eight times a day as Japanese soldier (AFP via SCMP; the video is unrelated to Shi Zhongpeng, though it does show Japanese characters dying)

Maryan can be reached at maryanwrites@gmail.com

It’s good to see such a public account of the Chinese and Japanese standing in solidarity for once… against an angry horde of 1,000 migrant workers demanding equal regulations.

Beginning early Friday morning, employees of Japanese electronic appliance maker Shanghai Shinmei Electric besieged a factory in Shanghai and held 18 Chinese and Japanese managers hostage, including company president Hideaki Tamura. The maneuver came “following the introduction of a new factory policy calling for heavy fines, demerits or immediate termination for workers who made a mistake, the Japan-based Asahi Shimbun reported yesterday.”

The standoff lasted until Saturday night, when 400 police officers — that’s a lot of cops — finally freed the managers.

Tamura told the Asahi Shimbun by phone that more than 500 workers besieged his office, and the managers were not allowed to use the toilet. Tamura was locked in his office with six other Japanese managers and five Chinese, while the remaining six were locked in another room.

The report said the factory’s new disciplinary policy was part of a reform scheme after the appliance maker was acquired by a Chinese company last year.

If you’re looking for the juicy detail in the article, however, you’ll find it in the form of a quote from an anonymous worker who claims that workers weren’t happy to see their Japanese company get acquired by a Chinese one.

Another assembly worker, who declined to be named, said they were also angry over the acquisition. She said workers feared that they would no longer enjoy the benefits accumulated in their previous years working in the factory after they signed a new contract following the acquisition by a Chinese firm in Dalian, Liaoning province.

Nationalism has its limits, we see yet again. It’s interesting to think that if it weren’t for a few stubborn Japanese politicians who refuse to visit the Nanjing Massacre Memorial and those damn rocks in the South China Sea, this country and Japan might actually become pretty good friends. Oh well. Keep the hope alive for the children at least.

1,000 workers hold managers hostage in Shanghai labour row (SCMP, h/t Alicia; image via)

Dina Manfredini of Iowa died on Monday at 115, passing on the mantle of “world’s oldest person” to Jiroemon Kimura of Tokyo, who was born on April 19, 1897 — 15 days after Manfredini — the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed yesterday.

But not so fast, says Xinhua. In a story published two hours ago, it reports that the world’s real oldest person is actually Chinese, and apparently 127 years old:

According to the report, Luo Meizhen, a 127-year-old woman of Yao ethnicity in southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is the oldest person living on the Chinese mainland.

The report was from the China Gerontological Society, which tallies 47,773 centenarians on the Chinese mainland as of October 16, with 80.1 percent of them being women.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, Luo’s claim is impossible to verify. As Yahoo’s Daily Buzz reported in September:

Luo Meizhen, who lives in China’s Guangxi province, reportedly celebrated her 127th birthday just days ago and if it’s verified she’ll be the oldest person who ever lived. However, that may be impossible because while she says she was born in 1885, birth certificates in the region only started to be kept after the 1949 Communist takeover. All she has is a faded copy of her identity card as shown in this video from 2011.

Luo’s county in Guangxi reportedly has more than 70 residents over 100 years old, so it’s not like Luo is that much of an outliner. Then again, we all know that the days begin to blend together as one gets older, so when one gets much older, maybe the years have a tendency to do the same?

Xinhua’s story doesn’t acknowledge Kimura, and The Atlantic’s write-up on Kimura, likewise, doesn’t mention Luo. Maybe for the better: the last thing we need is for these two to be used as symbols of China’s rivalry with Japan. One imagines that after you’ve been around the block a few times and seen history repeat more than once, all except the actual fact of living might seem trivial and petty.

(H/T Josh Gartner)

Bloomberg:

Japan’s incoming prime minister Shinzo Abe reiterated his country’s claim to islands at the center of a dispute with China, where state media called on him to repair bilateral relations frayed by the disagreement.

A day after his Liberal Democratic Party reclaimed power in a landslide, Abe called China “an essential partner for economic growth.” At the same time, he insisted that the sovereignty of the islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, wasn’t an issue.

Oh? Not an issue? AP:

In contrast to Beijing’s low-key approach, the Chinese blogosphere crackled with barbs for the LDP win and especially for Abe.

Some said Abe’s win would push Japan further to the right and bring about the country’s ruin. Others called for a boycott of Japanese goods after Abe was reported in postelection comments to have called for a tougher line over the disputed islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.

And finally, New York Times:

The perception that Abe’s forthright and confident approach breaks the mold of the consensus-based bureaucratic style of many Japanese leaders will please many voters and Japan’s security partners in the region.

This sentiment will not be replicated in Beijing. There is a groundswell of opinion within Japan that Tokyo should no longer be cowed by Chinese regional assertiveness. For many Japanese, Abe is the one willing to stand up to Japan’s larger neighbor.

Japan’s deep history of rivalry and conflict with China is well known. Part of this is currently being played out in the dispute over the Japanese administered Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. Of major concern is the realization that Beijing is prepared to link political and strategic issues with economic reward and punishment.

Eventful days are hopefully not ahead. We don’t need to relive this.

If you’re in Nanjing today, you probably heard them: sirens that began at 10 am and lasted 33 minutes to commemorate the 250,000 to 300,000 killed during the Nanjing Massacre.

The Japanese began their six-week assault on Nanjing, then the Chinese capital, on December 13, 1937, and the widespread looting, rape, and murder of mostly unarmed civilians has been well-documented. If you haven’t already read it, the most popular book on the subject probably remains Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.

(Chang killed herself in 2004, and as Kathleen McLaughlin reported from Nanjing: “Many wonder if the gentle, sympathetic young woman, known here as Chang Shunru, was the massacre’s latest victim.”)

Sure, it’s uncomfortable at times, especially around Guomao at rush hour. But it could be worse. Youku video for those in China after the jump.