This is first-class: on a plane stuck on the Beijing airport tarmac for three hours yesterday, a quartet of musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestras took out their instruments, gathered in the aisle, and serenaded passengers. The music starts at the 1:11 mark in the above.
Ken Tanaka, one of the directors of the funny skit "What Kind of Asian Are You?," which we featured here last week, has sent us a follow-up that features actors Stella Choe and Scott Beehner reading YouTube comments. If you think you already know how this is going to go, you're more or less correct.
An ostrich escaped from a zoo in Zhangzhou, Fujian province recently and proceeded to run, ostrich-like, against traffic. It knocked over a motorcyclist before twice being hit by cars. Each time, it picked itself up, shook off the cobwebs, and continued running, because it's an ostrich.
The cop interviewed in the above video says they enlisted the help of the zoo to catch this bird, because "we're inexperienced, we don't know how to catch it."
We reported yesterday morning on the miracle baby in Pujiang, Zhejiang province who survived being flushed down a squat toilet. The latest report is -- while not necessarily more shocking -- just as incredible.
Turn your attention to the above newscast, which says authorities have identified the child's mother -- in fact, had basically known who she was all this time, since she was the one who alerted her landlord to the infant in the toilet in the first place.
Via YouTube as part of its comedy week, here's "What kind of Asian are you?," co-directed by David Neptune and Ken Tanaka.
An enthusiastic jogger finds herself sucked into a conversation with a very white and very American fellow jogger. Joking and misunderstading ensue... before payback.
Look at this van. How many young children can fit inside? (No, this isn't a variation of a dead baby joke.) At least 40? At least 40. Because it's a clown van, and the gimmick is there's always room for one more than you'd expect.
A possible abuse of police power is being investigated.
In Guizhou province, a Party chief and police officer are accused of handcuffing a 13-year-old girl last month after she allegedly splashed water on a government car. She was then paraded around town for 20 minutes. Reports Xinhua:
This Shanghai Daily article is just slightly jaw-dropping:
Police are searching for a woman who flushed her newborn boy down the toilet in a dormitory building on Saturday afternoon in Pujiang County, Zhejiang Province, local media reported today.
The baby, however, got stuck in the L-shaped pipe and his cry alerted other tenants in the building. Firefighters arrived after receiving a call and spent two hours to saw off the pipe to free the baby.
We know laowai song-and-dance videos are passe -- thanks, Jesse Appel, et al. -- but the effort in this latest one is simply too rich to ignore. Matt Sheehan -- who you recognize around these parts as the China Eastern airport rumble writer -- teamed up with his friend Matt Allen to write, direct, shoot, and produce "We Livin in Xi'an," and the result is a perfectly outlandlish little paean to the capital of Shaanxi province, and perhaps the foreigner experience in China.
Oh geez, more adventures on buses. In Suzhou, Jiangsu province on Saturday morning, an old man began striking and kicking a young woman he felt should have given him her seat. Of course it's traditional in China for passengers to offer their seats for elders -- we are constantly reminded of this via prerecorded messages on public transit -- but why was this one particular girl singled out?
