Are you healthy? Are your parents alive? If you answered in the affirmative to these two questions, you're well on your way toward being happy currently, as a fun little People's Daily quiz tells us. But like a bad dictionary entry in which the word you're looking up is used in the definition, some answers are terribly misleading. One choice is "I am happily married." Anyone who clicks that one should be do ...

Valentine's Day is a lot of things, including fake, commercialized, contrived, and unworthy of intellectual consideration, but in China, it's also a "breeding ground" of "corruption and debauchery for a minority of party members," as SCMP puts it, paraphrasing People's Daily. A four-paragraph story in People's Daily said Valentine's Day had become a hatchery of decadent ideology, indulgent lifestyle, fraud ...

People's Daily Online is openly soliciting feedback for China's English-language newspapers, using language that doesn't even try to conceal the fact that papers such as China Daily and Global Times might be affiliated with the government. This is the shocking part, of course. Those of us familiar with China know how complicated the media environment here is, and put up with government editorials (i.e. igno ...

Yesterday, People's Daily published a front-page column calling for better behavior on the Internet, not sure whether with the window open or closed in its ivory tower. As translated by China Media Project (emphasis theirs): An open China requires a civilized and healthy online world governed by rule of law. Everyone, whether supervising government bodies or the masses of internet users, must treasure this ...

Alicia first saw this slideshow on China News, but it's since migrated to Sina, and if you thought a slideshow of scantily clad women doing Gangnam Style wouldn't make it to People's Daily, under the headline, "40 sweet beauties dance Gangnam Style in bikini," you have been living under a rock. Catch up. These ladies (and at least a couple of gentlemen) were out to promote Henan province on Saturday at the ...

By TAR Nation The flagship CPC newspaper People’s Daily is, well, it’s a bit, you know. It’s rubbish. The design is terrible, the editorials are as pleasant as a shirt of broken glass and Captain Crunch, they have military equipment on their flash home page every day and their non-CPC related stories have the detached insouciance of a disabled child petting a kitten too hard. But they’re still good for a la ...

Earlier this year, I gave a lecture to high school journalism students in China about the importance of citation, spending a good 10 minutes on the how and why of it. This may or may not surprise you, depending on whether you read Chinese publications and/or crappy blogs, but sourcing is often optional here; what's already been published is considered in the public domain, as incontrovertibly factual as, sa ...

The Associated Press succeeded in getting People's Daily on the line to answer for its slideshow, "North Korea’s top leader named The Onion’s Sexiest Man Alive for 2012.” An online editor said the 55-pic spread would be taken offline (note: it already has been), and also: "We have realized it is satirical," said the editor who works on the site's South Korea channel, one of the three channels where it was p ...

Remember when Chinese propaganda rag People's Daily confused an Onion spoof for real news, proudly touting that Kim Jong-Un was the Sexiest Man Alive? Of course you do, it happened yesterday, and everyone in the world is talking about it. It was only a matter of time, of course, that The Onion would talk about it too, surely to tip its hat to its comrades across the ocean. And here it is: UPDATE: For more c ...

This is too perfect. The Onion -- you know, that website whose lead story is currently, "42 Million Dead In Bloodiest Black Friday Weekend On Record" -- named North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un its "sexiest man alive" on November 14, writing: “He has that rare ability to somehow be completely adorable and completely macho at the same time,” Onion Style and Entertainment editor Marissa Blake-Zweibel said. “And t ...

"Look, a female!" exclaims People's Daily. We've been waiting for this. In March, we saw the Ouroboros of Chinese media, when journalists took pictures of other journalists in a slideshow for China Daily. But this year? The humor hasn't been handed to us on a platter, so we've had to dig a little. No longer. Here's People's Daily's "Beautiful Scenery" slideshow. Granted, the error is probably in translation ...

Venerable titans of journalism, People's Daily, published an attack piece on the New York Times yesterday (in Chinese) accusing the Gray Lady of deteriorating standards and bad breath. "In recent years, there has been an explosion in plagiarism and fabrication by its journalists," PD writes, highlighting two particular debacles involving infamous plagiarists Jayson Blair and Zachery Kouwe. Financial Times n ...

We don't know anything about Feng Qiuhong of Yangtze Evening Post, but he/she probably shouldn't be writing about PSY's Gangnam Style, a song that Chinese netizens -- in keeping with every person in the world -- rather like. As translated by People's Daily Online on Tuesday, it appears Feng isn't a fan (assume [sic]'s, obviously): Many netizens have have labeled the song as "vulgar". "With more than 300 mil ...

We're going to let People's Daily do the heavy lifting on this one. Take it away, boys (assume [sic]'s): On that day, the final of the 23rd Super Model of The World .Guangxi .China was held in Nanning, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. A total of 20 contestants competed in several awards including The Best Camera-Shy, The Best Stature, The Best vigor, The Best Talent and The Best Smile. No. 26 ...

[caption id="attachment_5289" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Photo/XINHUA - no, seriously"][/caption] While significant things happen outside the offices of People's Daily, and other people do real work (like censoring videos -- Youku, looking at you), People's Daily Online has teamed up with Xinhua to bring you important, possibly life-saving tips on dangerous bathing, in a not-at-all tongue-in-che ...

Whoa and nelly. The Internet's No. 1 North Korea fan site is apparently hosted by People's Daily. "Eyes on DPRK" appears to be a collection of slideshows highlighting China's neighbor to the east, and it is utterly befuddling. As in: why does this exist? How long has it been here? Why does it exist? Who's the audience? And that question about its existence... hmm? Here's one of the slideshows, called, "A to ...