UK Prime Minister David Cameron arrived in Beijing yesterday to boost China-UK relations — to “appease” Beijing, as Western media types would put it — and to back a new EU-China free trade agreement. A few days before, on November 29, Cameron opened a Sina Weibo account, with the first message reading: “Hello my friends in China. I’m pleased to have joined Weibo and look forward to visiting China very soon.” That’s some high-level international diplomacy there. We’re all sufficiently impressed, yes?

Perhaps there is no need to talk about “sincerity” in terms of Sino-British relations. What Cameron does is out of his own political interest and the UK’s national interest. His visit this time can hardly be the end of the conflict between China and the UK.

Wha–? Where is this coming from, Global Times? The above, if you haven’t figured it out, is via a Global Times editorial published today. Can we throw in a veiled threat, GT?

Beijing needs to speed up the pace of turning its strength into diplomatic resources and make London pay the price for when it intrudes into the interests of China.

So the UK will definitely intrude into the interest of China? That’s Beijing’s assumption? What are we talking about here?

China has gained some achievement in countering European leaders’ moves of meeting with the Dalai Lama.

Right. The Dalai fucking Lama. That guy. China comes out of this episode looking comically immature. Never mind that, yes, the Dalai Lama is plainly a political figure who probably doesn’t deserve the attention he gets; the important point is, what does China think it achieves by bullying first-world leaders into not meeting him?

Is the Dalai Lama going to ask for weapons or a blackhawk? The article goes on to address Hong Kong, Global Times continues to be GT until the end:

China has believed in “diplomacy is no small matter,” while after years of ups and downs, we have acquired the strategic confidence that “diplomacy is no big matter.” China will act accordingly given how it is treated.

p.s. Where is David Cameron now?

After a day in Beijing I'm heading off to Shanghai #UKinChina pic.twitter.com/o36dMepTHa

— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) December 2, 2013

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.

David Cameron, your prime minister, is a wonderful man of principle with only the best intentions. He understands nothing is more important than children, who necessarily need paternal guidance, who need love and doting, yes, but also discipline and authority. For the world is a dark place, a scary forest, populated by evil. Against these unseen shadows, mortal parents are not enough, for they are fallible. There is a more perfect parent, one with the power to block the forces which would corrupt your village from the heart. Trust him, for no one loves you as unwaveringly and unimpeachably.

Surely you have heard that the Chinese company Huawei controls your Net filtration system. Pay no mind. Who cares about those critics who say the UK is, today, in one way more similar to Russia, North Korea, and other Internet-censoring countries than yesterday. You are one step closer to safety, to symmetry with the traditional values on which your island nation is built, to harmony, the kind that we enjoy every morning, and every night. Remember: autocrats love their children, too.

Look and listen to David Cameron, your most perfect father:

I want to talk about the internet, the impact it’s having on the innocence of our children…

The innocence of our children.

…how online pornography is corroding childhood and how, in the darkest corners of the internet, there are things going on that are a direct danger to our children and that must be stamped out.

Must be stamped out.

I’m not making this speech because I want to moralise or scaremonger but because I feel profoundly, as a politician and as a dad, that the time for action has come.

The time for action has come.

This is, quite simply, about how we protect our children and their innocence.

Their innocence. The children.

Now, of course, a free and open internet is vital. But in no other market and with no other industry do we have such an extraordinarily light touch when it comes to protecting our children.

Protecting our children. Their precious innocence.

Children can’t go into the shops or the cinema and buy things meant for adults or have adult experiences; we rightly regulate to protect them.

Regulate. Protect them.

But when it comes to the internet, in the balance between freedom and responsibility we’ve neglected our responsibility to children.

Everyone, together now, with a single voice: We are all children. We are all innocent. We have been neglected.

And all the actions we’re taking today come back to that basic idea: protecting the most vulnerable in our society, protecting innocence, protecting childhood itself.

We deserve that.

That is what is at stake…

A more innocent world.

…and I will do whatever it takes to keep our children safe.

(H/T Torval Lokison) (Image via)

Xuanyu Zhong, the son of a Chinese government official, stood before a British court recently on charges of sexually assaulting a girl at Northumbria University in December 2011. Daily Mail reports that Zhong, 25, spurred by an obsession with rape porn, spiked a girl’s drink with a date-rape drug one evening. At the court hearing, Daily Mail reports that he expressed his intent “to copy the videos” — the many rape videos he watched — “by raping his drugged victim.” Instead, he “changed his mind at the last minute and sexually assaulted her instead.”

This story takes an awful if not unexpected turn: Zhong’s father, the government official, reportedly called on friends to bully and coerce the alleged victim.

She was subjected to a campaign of threatening texts and phone calls after Zhong’s father – who is based in China – and friends tracked her down and tried to put pressure on her not to give evidence.

She would not be intimidated, however, and presented evidence to authorities. Zhong wrote a letter to the judge that Daily Mail says documents “what he had done,” although there’s no indication of what that might be.

His defense lawyer had this to say:

“His letter isn’t a complete acceptance but it is a substantial acceptance.

“It expresses remorse and explains the factors which made it difficult for him to put in a guilty plea at an earlier stage.”

We’re not exactly sure what that means.

But his case calls to mind two others involving the Chinese in Britain: a Chinese broadcaster who loved his porn to be a bit too extreme, and a University of Bath student who unsuccessfully tried to bribe a professor who gave him a bad grade.

To be fair, the Chinese in America are liable to do terrible things, too.

Son of Chinese government official drugged and sexually assaulted girl at British university… (Daily Mail, h/t Alicia)

UPDATE, 7/8, 2:20 pm: We’re not sure who exactly Zhong’s father is, but it’s not the deputy commander of Shenyang Military Region in Liaoning province, according to Sina.

Zhong Xuanyu, a Chinese student who drugged and sexually assaulted a girl at Northumbria University in Britain, is rumored to be the son of Zhong Zhiming, the deputy commander of Shenyang Military Region in China’s Liaoning Province. The military region clarified recently that the only son of Zhong is named Zhong Bo, who has never been abroad in his life, and has nothing to do with the hideous crime.

No other family bachground information of the student has been revealed yet besides the online rumor.

Pictured above is Yang Li (Li is apparently his surname; he appears to have a LinkedIn account under the name Jiao Yang Li). We don’t know much about him, but he made the news recently after allegedly trying to bribe a University of Bath professor — and carrying an “imitation firearm” into the meeting.

A court heard that Li, 26, was studying a masters degree in innovation and technology management and feared failure.

He was dismayed to learn he had been given just 37 per cent for his dissertation which was a fail – and would have meant him spending an extra year at the university.

That would have affected Li’s visa which he was hoping to upgrade from a student visa to a tier 1 visa.

Li, who was born and educated in China, asked to meet Professor Andrew Graves and Dr Stephen Shepherd to discuss his options.

Bristol Crown Court heard he told the pair ‘I am a businessman’ before placing £5,000 in cash on the table.

He then said: ‘There is a fourth option, you can keep the money if you give me a pass mark and I won’t bother you again.’

When that failed and he was asked to leave he picked up his coat and a 0.177 air pistol fell from the pocket.

The 26-year-old has been sentenced to 12 months in prison for bribery and six months for carrying a firearm, despite retaining excellent counsel, who said things such as:

Mr Li is someone who is used to carrying large amounts of cash with him…. He was not thinking straight, he made an impulsive decision to use the money he had on him, which was a ridiculous gesture and ill-thought through…. One of Mr Li’s pleasures is shooting in the garden of his house, and he intended to return to it after the meeting…. He had the gun in the pocket of his coat as he didn’t want to leave it in the car, he felt it was safer with him…. It was in no way connected to his meeting…. In his haste to leave the meeting, he picked up his coat and the gun fell to the floor.

Blake James, esq., also mentioned Li’s father is a “respected government official and businessman,” who we imagine is proud of his son. When Li eventually makes his way back to China, he’s going to find life so much easier. For now, though, a sobering reminder that he does not run the world, and money can’t buy him out of all his troubles.

Son of Chinese government official tried to bribe his Bath University professor with £5,000 (Daily Mail, h/t Nick Papa)

Just about anyone not holding a select diplomatic or South Korean passport can travel to North Korea. All it takes is money, which you give to a tour agency. They’ll even take you to the countryside if that’s what you’re after.

It’s only the hucksters who try to dress up their North Korean trip as an accomplishment, pretending it involved wile or subterfuge, not to mention danger. When a reporter does it — “undercover,” they all say (swapping a button-up and blazer for a hoodie?) — you can call him a fabulist, a penny-a-liner, one who dreams of the glory of war reporting yet would never leave the Green Zone poolside. Truly the bravest undertake such missions, brave as in unflinchingly shameless, and the latest courageous soul to do so is John Sweeney, who somehow convinced BBC Panorama to put him on a plane to Pyongyang.

Before we discuss the video itself, which aired on April 15 and can be viewed here, please allow me to offer this pro tip to news editors out there: if you need b-roll for your “real” North Korea story, just link to this. That’s the Vice Guide to North Korea, which remains one of the most popular films on the DPRK despite — or because of, probably — being unapologetically prejudiced and slanted. It already reinforces every perception and stereotype we harbor, so you don’t have to. To Vice’s credit, however, it was at least among the first to master this art of deceptive reportage. What does that make Sweeney, then? A shoddy copycat, a witless parrot.

Atop what appears to be the Juche Tower, wearing his best grave face, that magisterially solemn thumb-up-the-ass look which Brits have so mastered, Sweeney pronounces, “Something’s going on.” The clouds are moving. Way over yonder, a barge. A rig. A man breathes his last wheezing breath. A baby cries, and his mother, only a smile. Oh wait, that’s a bird. “We’ve seen loads more soldiers in town today” – compared to what, when you were here the day before? – “…you can feel the tension rising.” I see earthquakes and lightnin’. I see bad times today. Don’t go around tonight, well it’s bound to take your life, there’s a TENSION on the rise!

And then there are the lonely country roads, the squatting Korean, the sound of an off-camera voice exorting “no photos, no photos!” — one imagines this Panorama team had a wonderful time, over pub pints and hushed tones, planning these shots. Of course there’s barbed wire, which Sweeney sidles up to after “slipping out of his hotel” one morning (ahem, waking up before everyone else). It’s all too silly, or as one commentator described it on NK News: “It was revealed to be a pitiful, underwhelming collection of ridiculous clichés about the North, decontextualised, paranoid and strangely edited into something akin to a Stalinist horror movie.”

The worst part about this whole thing, the absolute worst, is that the overwhelming majority of the story was geared toward making one point: North Koreans are poor. The country features “landscrape bleak beyond words.” Its plants are quiet: “On the production line, no production that day.” Its farms, barren: “no animals.” Its factories, ironic: “Factory making electricty generators; no electricity.” The people, cripples, emaciated waifs, deformed beasts: “Our tour guides were anxious for us not to capture the poverty.” And yet, if one were actually looking — with eyes, as opposed to BBC camera lenses in which images run through the filter of Western narratives and bias — here’s what we’d see: people pushing bikes, digging next to roads, washing clothes, going about their daily lives. They are unquestionably poor, and have unquesionably been dealt a lousy hand, but they carry on as gracefully and humanly as they can, as humans are wont to do.

“So. Welcome to the real North Korea,” Sweeney says, wearing a sad face. The North Korea that you already knew: the poor one, the weird one, the one under the control of a barbaric, dynastic, totalitarian government, the one whose farms are yellow, and is cold during the early spring.

Actually, wait a sec. That’s not the worst part. There was also this:

As tensions escalated between North Korea and the world late last month, a small group of students from the prestigious London School of Economics crossed the border into the reclusive country for what was described by organizers as a government-sanctioned “week of sight seeing, meeting with ministers, government officials” and academics.

But among the students, the university announced in an outraged statement over the weekend, were three BBC journalists filming an undercover documentary. The BBC, the university said, “deliberately misled” the group to underplay the scope of the reporting, placed the students in danger and jeopardized its work in politically fraught nations.

The BBC has defended its actions, citing “overwhelming public interest” (have they thought about recommending Bradley K. Martin, Barbara Demick, Andrei Lankov, or any of the documentaries by VeryMuchSo Production and Koryo Tours?). Sweeney has doubled down on the piece as well, despite admitting, “I told a lie: I said that I was an LSE PhD.” Add that to the lesser journalistic sin of being a hack. Welcome to the real John Sweeney.

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.”

This being The Sun, we’re treated to paragraphs such as these:

Investigating Detective Constable Kim Negus had told the Old Bailey in London that she had to view Luo’s videos with the sound turned down to cut out the screams of the women.

She said: “These videos were disgusting and distressing. I viewed around 18 of them and had to have the sound down.”

Tell me more, Constable Kim.

“They featured oriental women but it is impossible to say how they came to be used for these images.”

The Littlehampton Gazette added, not sure why, “The jury was told that some showed women strapped to machines and tortured with electrodes, pins being pushed into their breasts or hot wax poured into their body.”

Luo will be sentenced next month.

So who is he, exactly? According to SCMP:

Also known by the name Edward Law, Luo joined CCTV as a presenter on the network’s BizChina show in 2003 after a career in corporate finance. His CCTV blog was last updated in July 2003.

According to CCTV’s website, Luo was born in London and worked for several financial firms including Prudential and Standard Chartered. He was posted to Hong Kong during the Asian financial crisis.

He left China for the United Kingdom in 2008 and settled in Dover, Kent.

Should’ve stayed in China, where there’s the occasional free public porn show.

And now, your supplemental literary reference: David Foster Wallace’s “Big Red Son,” found in Consider the Lobster:

THE AMERICAN ACADEMY of Emergency Medicine confirms it: Each year, between one and two dozen adult US males are admitted to ERs after having castrated themselves. With kitchen tools, usually, sometimes wire cutters. In answer to the obvious question, surviving patients most often report that their sexual urges had become a source of intolerable conflict and anxiety. The desire for perfect release and the real-world impossibility of perfect, whenever-you-want-it release had together produced a tension they could no longer stand.

It is to the 30+ testosteronically afflicted males whose cases have been documented in the past two years that your correspondents wish to dedicate this article. And to those tormented souls considering autocastration in 1998, we wish to say: “Stop! Stay your hand! Hold off with those kitchen utensils and/or wire cutters!” Because we believe we may have found an alternative.

Unhealthy quantities of porn is that alternative.

(H/T Alicia)

Manchester United recently announced sponsorship deals with two Chinese companies, Wahaha and China Construction Bank (CCB), the latter of which will produce Man U-branded credit cards. Considering China is one of the largest growth markets for any business, it’s no a surprise that the 134-year-old club is looking to strengthen its presence here. There are reportedly 108 million Man U fans in China — nearly double the size of England’s population — and surely plenty more to be gained in such a football-crazed nation.

Although I question how loyal these fans are, given that many tend to be of the bandwagon variety, switching club loyalty based on their favorite player (my guess is Van Persie, currently leading the EPL in goals scored, tops many lists) or the reigning champion (that would be Manchester City), the more fans a club can boast, the more revenue they can generate from ticket and apparel sales. Manchester United has always recognized the importance of the Asia market, in particular China, which explains why the team was in Shanghai last summer. Signing these sponsorship deals is the next logical marketing move to boost brand visibility, and it’s clear that Wahaha and CCB are strategic choices.

Man U already has its own credit cards in Asian countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. It’s not surprising that they would leverage their experience and success in this area, especially since domestic consumption, income and urbanization rate are all expected to grow in China. Analysts think credit card purchases will increase as Chinese consumers make larger, more expensive purchases. It might annoy the rest of us to wait behind someone using a credit card, but that seems to be the trend for the cool consumers. Cooler still? A red, white, and black card bearing the Red Devils’ crest.

Meanwhile, increasing numbers of Chinese are traveling abroad and using China-issued credit cards. During the London Olympics the Chinese were one of the largest group of spenders, leading many more stores to accept Unionpay.

There’s also this: the day Man U signs a good Chinese player (Dong Fangzhuo was on the squad from 2004-08, but notched just one appearance). In 2006 I visited Old Trafford – OK, here I admit I am a bit of a Manchester United fan – in the middle of a stormy weekday. I saw groups of Korean tourists crowding in the team store to buy the jerseys of Park Ji-Sung, who joined Man U in 2005. Imagine if the Red Devils sign a Chinese player with as much class as Park or his Asian replacement, Shinji Kagawa. Jersey sales would skyrocket. And all the purchases could be made with a Manchester United, China-issued credit card!

Wahaha, meanwhile, is a strategic local partner, especially for the rural areas. As the largest Chinese beverage company, it has a strong network spanning the country, and is particularly visible in bottom-tier cities. If you buy a bottled water, there’s a 25% chance that it’s Wahaha. Plus, its owner is the richest man in China – maybe one day he’ll buy the club? His reception can’t be worse than the Glazer family’s.

Finally, it’s been said that rural China is the new frontier for the development of youth football. If you build it, they will come — as this story about a basketball court in an ethnic Miao village shows. In rural China, if you build a brand, consumers will come — in this case, to the allure of Old Trafford and Manchester United.

(Image CNN)

In a 3,600-word piece, Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy of Britain’s The Sunday Times lay bare the myth of Neil Heywood. They argue that far from being an intrepid power broker living astutely within the inner circles of China’s elite, the murdered Briton was a “failed businessman,” a “chancer,” an “irritant,” and a liar who lucked into his connection with Bo Xilai, and was killed after a miscalculation on both his part and Gu Kailai’s. The piece, titled “Lost in China,” reads at times like a direct repudiation of the Wall Street Journal’s story last week, “Briton Killed in China Had Spy Links.” (Both are paywalled; we wrote about the WSJ piece here.) Writes The Sunday Times: “[Heywood's] 007 numberplate — even his mobile phone number ended with the same digits — fuelled fanciful stories that he had been an agent of British intelligence.”

After a year-long investigation for Channel 4′s Dispatches, based on numerous conversations with friends, business colleagues, diplomatic sources and a Chinese contact who knew both Heywood and the Bo family intimately, we can reveal the real Neil Heywood.

Far from being a top-level fixer or spy, he was a failed businessman who found himself caught up in a situation he could not control. He then made a fatal miscalculation that led to his murder.

According to The Sunday Times, Heywood arrived in China from England in 1992 and moved to Dalian in 1995, where he taught English. When he traveled to Beijing in 2000 to register a marriage with a Dalian girl by the name of Wang Lulu, he caught the attention of the British embassy, seemingly for no other reason than because he was a Briton in a place where there were few.

Kerry Brown, first secretary, was intrigued.

“At that time there weren’t a huge number of British business people based outside Beijing,” Brown said. “Neil Heywood seemed a pretty positive character, very British.” However, when Brown visited Heywood in Dalian months later and found him wandering about in jeans and a jumper, he wondered about his business acumen: “He seemed to just be drifting by.”

The story continues. Eventually, “after reading in a newspaper that Bo Xilai’s son had gone to England and was studying at Harrow, Heywood spotted an opening.” He got in touch.

The Sunday Times compellingly argues that Heywood did not, as has been reported elsewhere, help Bo Guagua get into Harrow. “Guagua was already at the school by the time Heywood came on the scene. In fact, he met Guagua and his mother in 2002 at a Chinese restaurant: the Royal China, in Baker Street, London.” But Heywood’s connection with the boy was nonetheless significant, because it would lead to his demise.

Nevertheless, Gu agreed to help Heywood out of his financial struggle, in acknowledgment of the years he had looked after Guagua. In late 2007, she introduced Heywood to a property developer who wanted to build a vast estate of Englishstyle houses outside Chongqing. “It was purely a gesture of friendship,” the source said. “She was never a participant in that project, nor a beneficiary.”

Everything Heywood touched seemed doomed. By 2008, he had been shut out of the development for failing to bring the British investment he had promised. That summer, when the bill arrived for his children’s school fees, a distraught Heywood sent an email to Guagua, asking that Gu “compensate him in cash for the failed project and for his years looking after Guagua”, according to the source. He asked for “tens of millions of pounds”.

The family was staggered. “It was absurd to ask for an extraordinary amount for merely having run the most convenient of errands, and even more extraordinary to ask Gu Kailai for compensation for the exclusion from a project,” the source said.

Sensing a growing crisis, Guagua sought to get his mother and Heywood together at a teahouse near Tiananmen Square during the Beijing Olympics of 2008. Heywood backed down. He apologised to everyone.

“Neil suggested that he didn’t really mean all the sum he asked and he was just seeing if they could lend him a hand,” the source says.

In April 2010, Heywood returned to Britain, after his firm had been temporarily struck off the companies register for failing to post its accounts. He was forced to pay for an expensive High Court appeal to get the judgment suspended so he could settle his debts without incurring a credit blacklisting.

We pause here to note that the picture we get is not of a cunning baron who wielded actual influence, but a bumbling, desperate expat who found himself suddenly knocked off his pedestal occupied by China’s many “exalted laowai” — those who, arriving early to the scene, were often overestimated by the many people they encountered simply because of their foreignness.

As it turns out, the Bo family also overestimated Heywood — wrongly — and that cost Heywood his life:

His debts mounting, in early 2011 Heywood emailed Guagua, again demanding money. This message was far more aggressive than the first. It was to prove a fatal mistake. Guagua, according to the source, told his mother about the emails in the presence of the Chongqing police chief, Wang Lijun, who had investigated Gu’s poisoning and become close to her. A few days after the Heywood conversation, Wang asked to see Guagua to talk about security. The source said Wang was determined to persuade the Bo family that Heywood was a dangerous character.

“When Guagua voiced scepticism that Neil could have been a threat, he [Wang] would reply something like, ‘You don’t know their tactics’ or ‘The people who seem the most innocent can be the most dangerous’.”

The Sunday Times built its story on a rolodex of anonymous sources, some sounding downright dopey with quotes such as, “[Gu Kailai] just doesn’t have a trace of violence in her,” but the article is internally consistent. At the very least, the image of Heywood as opportunistic foreigner is more recognizable to many of us than the image of him as suave businessman-cum-informant. RFH, in one of our earliest pieces on this scandal on March 28, alluded to this:

Heywood worked for Hakluyt, a corporate intelligence firm founded by former MI6 officers (so kind of like the Feather Men, then?) supposedly as what the Chinese poetically call a “white glove,” but we – you and me, guv – would call, more prosaically, a bagman. There’s nothing surprising about this. The British economy is run on agents, consultants, go-betweens, middle men and people who generally have nothing to offer except inserting themselves between mutually beneficial parties and making off with a fixer’s fee. The question here is, why are the likes of Bo running with this (apparently) small fry?

It’s a question that has, apparently, bothered The Sunday Times, too. If Heywood was so damn good, as other media would have you believe, how did he keep such a low profile, inspiring neither confidence nor, it seems, memory from most of his acquaintances?

The Sunday Times concludes:

All that is certain is that Neil Heywood, an idle, wellmeaning chancer, fell into a trap, partially of his own making, and that his death triggered the biggest scandal to hit China since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

You’ll believe it if you’ve known people like him. “Sunday Times piece on Neil Heywood only reporting I have read about him that rings true (laowai in China in 1990s small circle…),” tweeted Danwei founder Jeremy Goldkorn. The responses suggest that the story you choose to believe reveals more about yourself than anything else:

Yesterday Earlier in the day at Henley-on-Thames, a naked man holding a fake Olympic torch ran ahead of the real Olympic torch route, basically in front of the whole town. A streaker in England? How is that possible?

According to the London Evening Standard, the man had “Free Tibet” written on his back. He was quickly tackled by police, as you see in the above. There’s another video after the jump, from a different angle, in high definition. Both are borderline NSFW, but the HD one probably slightly more so.

Youku censors have blocked the video. I wonder: for the nudity, or that other thing?

This is an Olympics Countdown post. Sporadically, we’ll post England-related content ahead of this summer’s London Olympics. If you’re British, we want to hear from you: tips@beijingcream.com.

Remember the magic that makes Chinese traffic flow? It exists in England, too, but in circular form. The above image comes from Mike G of Real DuPont. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, you’re right that it looks like an eukaryotic cell.

(H/T Katie)

The jokes (and groans) are out today after Danny Boyle, artistic director of this summer’s Olympics opening ceremony, unveiled his vision, “inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest,” the Guardian tells us, and “ideas from Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein,” according to the Huffington Post. With a fair amount of Jane Austen’s countryside, I might add. Reports the Telegraph:

Boyle’s quirky sense of humour is evident in the ideas for the ceremony and the pastoral scene, which include 70 sheep, 12 horses, 10 chickens, three sheep dogs, real grass and a plough. There are also clouds with fake rain just in case the night is clear and a game of cricket.

And remember how Beijing set up cannons to potentially disperse rain clouds? Boyle is taking a slightly… diametrically opposite approach.

“If it doesn’t rain, we have created our own,” Boyle said as he revealed the latest details of the £27m ceremony, pointing to the four huge clouds suspended on wires overhanging a model set of the Olympic stadium.

Gawker’s Caity Weaver writes, “The World Regrets Letting England Plan a Party as Olympic Opening Ceremony Details Are Revealed.” Deadspin’s Erik Malinowski wrly notes, “For $42 Million, The London Olympics Opening Ceremony Will Resemble The English Countryside.” MSNBC stifles laughter as it reports, “Cows and sheep to star in London Olympic Games opening ceremony.” Those are just the headlines, by the way. And yes, they might be biased because they’re American, but it’s hard to not be a little snarky when the ceremony is being described as “Green and Pleasant Land,” right?

The Telegraph has a video of Boyle presenting his vision, in which he says:

When you sit down and start to think about what is it about the show, what is it about the ceremony that you want to actually do, you sit down two years ago with a blank sheet of paper and you begin with a [indecipherable to these American ears] philosophy, which I think is probably common to a lot of these shows, which is you think what were we, where do we come from, what’s the heritage, the historical, what are we now, and where are we going? And on that journey what are the values that we hold true and we want to hold up as being valuable, really?

So. A farm?

Contrast — however unfairly — to Beijing’s vision four years ago (which I watched from Ditan Park):

The Guardian, seeing an opportunity here, has asked its readers to “Email your photoshopped masterpieces to gallery@guardian.co.uk by midday on Wednesday 13 June, complete with a caption. We will share the best we receive in a gallery – and the top three will also win a prize.”

Frankenstein, The Tempest, and a pastoral scene, with cows and cricket (the sport). We can’t wait to see the results.

Lang Lang, who turns 30 next week, performed outside Buckingham Palace on Monday for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Concert, featuring Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Elton John and others. The main song in Lang Lang’s medley was Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody in Blue #6, which seamlessly transitioned into George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Kid’s got some skills. Youku video for those in China after the jump.