We've seen NBA players -- namely, those on the Miami Heat -- try to speak Chinese before, to bad results. We wish we could say this video, featuring Dwight Howard and John Wall, was better, but why would we say that?
Actually, a few reasons:
Even if true, the following isn't something you want to be caught saying on tape if you're a government official:
“If the police don’t beat people, what’s the point of keeping them? The police are the government’s violence machine.”
Around 1 pm yesterday, a massive fire engulfed a row of warehouses near Changsha South Railway Station in Hunan province. Witnesses say they heard explosions, though the specific cause of the explosions remains unknown. There were no reported injuries. Firefighters needed two hours to put out the flames.
Next Media Group in Hong Kong, owned by the rabblerousing Jimmy Lai, says one of its distribution centers came under attack on June 30 as part of an assault that saw 26,000 papers get burned. A day earlier, Next Media's office was the target of a "drive-by knife-throwing," in which an unidentified man hurled a cleaver at the front gate. These and other actions, the company says, are part of a coordinated attack against Lai due to his support of the Occupy Central movement and outspoken criticism against China's Communist Party.
You may think this video is a bit too Japanese for a Chinese blog -- I mean that in the most neutral way possible; on second thought, what a regrettable opening line for a post -- but this work is a tribute to director Akira Kurosawa (Rashoman, Seven Samurai), who none other than China's Zhang Yimou called "the quintessential Asian director."
The video is by Ken Tanaka, who you might remember for the video "What Kind of Asian are You?"
You don't need a fan stampede to remind you that David Beckham is a global icon and remains adored in China. He and his wife visited the set of the Chinese show Football Night《足球之夜》recently, where they dazzled. Got 52 minutes to kill? Check out these stars at work.
Chip Starnes, 42, is having a hell of a week. He was able to send an SOS to Associated Press reporters on Monday -- through bars in a first-floor office window, apparently -- that he was being held captive by nearly 100 workers at a medical supply plant in Beijing who are demanding better severance packages.
"I feel like a trapped animal," Starnes told The Associated Press on Monday from his first-floor office window, while holding onto the window's bars. "I think it's inhumane what is going on right now. I have been in this area for 10 years and created a lot of jobs and I would never have thought in my wildest imagination something like this would happen."
A two-and-a-half-year-old girl is lucky to be alive after she fell from the fourth story of a building in Ningbo, Zhejiang province.
The toddler, identified as Qiqi, climbed on the window sill and -- sigh if you've heard this before -- crawled right on out. Her parents had left her home alone as she was sleeping, because toddlers never wake up when they're home alone.
We've never heard of death by shopping cart before, but two days ago in Shanghai, a man brought his own shopping cart to a supermarket, the kind that doesn't lock into the teeth of reclined moving walkways, and the result was fatal.
Ai Weiwei Studios has just released the music video to a second single, Laoma Tihua, which you can watch above. It's off Ai's forthcoming album, The Divine Comedy (music by Zuoxiao Zuzhou), which will be released on Saturday morning.
