In honor of Cyber Security Week in China -- that's this week, whereupon "China's Internet police are stepping into the light," according to WSJ -- I thought we'd take a glimpse at the state of Chinese Internet smut through the lens of a recent happening, photographer Wang Dong's now-infamous Forbidden City photo shoot featuring nude models.
Do you know what is considered pornographic? Can you differentiate between sexual and sexually explicit? Do you have experience looking at a lot of porn? Because there might be a 200,000 RMB job for you.
China's anti-porn crackdown -- its latest, I mean, in a long line of many -- isn't going as well as planned, because apparently porn is hard to block and everyone watches it, so the propaganda spinners have gone into overdrive to frame the story in a new light. If you want to see Chinese state media at its best / worst, these are the moments you cherish, when it completely jumps the shark.
People's Daily has had an eventful week. Last Monday it called the New York Times "circling vultures" for an article on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370; on Friday it sought "immediate rectification" from a parody Twitter account, @relevantorgans; then, somehow, it got a guest editorial out of Bill Gates. But PD truly tops itself with this next thing, because these are words that someone actually wrote. Via Reuters:
Discourage, suppress, and censor it as you may -- and lord knows authorities try, try, and try again -- you'll never rid the world of porn, porn, porn. Some Chinese health department officials discovered this recently firsthand.
We're still awaiting word from Astrill support, but in case you're wondering, yes, the popular VPN service is down -- both the website and service itself. We don't know if it has anything to do with China, but probably not -- "technical problem," says Astrill.com. Look at that emoticon - that is the sorriest goddamn sad-face I've ever seen.
A book called Those Who Don't Read It Upside-down Are Pigs, among others, has been seized for "spreading pornography," according to Xinhua, as edited by Global Times. And two publishers, China Pictorial Publishing House and Shaanxi Normal University Publishing House, have been suspended for three months.
In the above picture, a doctor is about to administer a lethal injection to the woman being strapped to the bed. It's a stark and somber scene, only more shocking because a cameraman was allowed to document, close-up, the stages of a real-life execution.
At least, that's what Xinhua, the official press agency of the People's Republic of China, thought when it published a slideshow titled, “Actual Record of Female Inmate’s Execution – Exposing the World’s Darkest Side.”
It's been a while since our friends at Xinhua have done something truly absurd, but today, China's official state-run news agency has really outdone itself. The culprit this time is not Xinhua's English-language slideshow, but a Chinese edition, which recently published 40 pictures that appear to be screenshots from a fetish porno.
Today, barbarians of the unruly and unruled Internet are less dangerous. Today, your sleep will be sounder, your dreams more colorful, your future freer. For today, Britain, you are one step closer to achieving China's harmony-promoting, children-protecting Net filtration system, which we lovingly refer to as the Great Firewall. And how great it is: no porn, because it can be eradicated like rats; no discussion of historical events, so as not to offend the sensibilities of certain mothers who would prefer to forget those things ever happened; no YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, New York Times, or Bloomberg, because screw 'em; and no dissent (and why would there be dissent?). Hadrian's Firewall, we'll call it. You'll love it, as we do.
Hundreds of onlookers, like flies to light, were entranced by a public showing of pornography on a big-screen near a railway station in Jilin, Jilin province last Wednesday, reports SCMP. This is not the first time something like this has happened.
We talk about censors as if they weren't real, but SCMP serves us this useful reminder that the people deleting your videos, expurgating articles, handcuffing artists, destroying the TV and entertainment industry, and -- the of course of "of courses" -- blocking porn, are made of flesh and blood, with intellectual capacities, however stunted, and human desires.
Well, some used to have human desires, before they were forced to watch porn all day. Desensitized, sex is but gymnastics with bad theatrics, something to pass the time, like a run on the treadmill.
Bo Jiang, the suspected Chinese spy who was pulled off a plane on March 16 just as it was preparing to fly him out of the country, downloaded more than just classified NASA documents and sensitive information, as revealed by Bloomberg. Actually, let’s back up a bit. Did he actually possess classified NASA documents and state... Read more »
You know this already, we’re sure, because you surf the Internet, but if not, here’s the quick and dirty: Melissa Murphy is a makeup artist who does work with porn stars and nude models, making them look like plastic sex objects instead of human beings a regular person might shake hands with. (Read her interview with... Read more »
I don’t want to steal pageviews from Sina English, which has just published probably its funniest set of captions ever, so go over there and check out “Zoo plays AV to help pandas mate.” They run a total of three pictures, the captions to each are as follows:
The Internet is for porn, but until I came across this Shanghaiist post, I hadn’t realized there’s a search engine that cuts out the chaff and takes you straight to what you’re after. Check it out: PornMD, which is safe for work until you write anything in the search bar, after which you should lower... Read more »
China ostensibly hates porn — hates it with a passion and hates it despite reason – but its state news organization links to it and — as the running joke with us goes — one particular porn site, the 39th most popular in the US, remains unblocked. To clarify: that’s 39th most popular website, not just porn site, and 65th... Read more »
The art of eroticism has come a long way since 2000 BC. Check out these petroglyphs from the Bronze Age – the Kangjiashimenji Petroglyphs — found in Xinjiang. Slate’s Mary Mycio reports they were discovered in the late-80s by archaeologist Wang Binghua, with Jeannine Davis-Kimball being the first Westerner to see them.
We know porn's a no-no in China, but did you know that in its "extreme" form it's also illegal in Britain? One former CCTV presenter does -- now that he's facing up to three years in prison.
"Sen Luo, 40, had more than 800 videos on his laptop and hard-drives and claimed he needed them to 'research' a Sex and the City-style book," according to The Sun. "But jurors found him guilty of two counts of possessing extreme pornography."
Porn, which is banned but easily downloadable in China, was projected onto a large LED display in Zhongshan, Guangdong province on Saturday, above a KFC in Fuye Square. Playtime unknown. Movie title: purely guessing from the image, Deepthroat Virgins 37.
