Hu Jintao has some new year’s greetings to pass along, please give him your attention. “Ladies, gentlemen, comrades, friends, the sound of New Year’s bells…” zzzZZZzzzz.
China Central Television got itself a pretty good musical lineup for its New Year’s show on Monday night, headlined by the Wonder Girls and Leona Lewis. The entire show can be seen here.
Police estimate that about 2,600 protesters participated in a pro-government rally in Hong Kong on Sunday (or "as many as 40,000," if you believe organizers). It was the first half of a doubleheader of protests, with the nightcap coming yesterday -- the anti-government variety -- attended by 17,000, according to police. (In proportional hyperbole, organizers declared 130,000 people showed up.)
Hong Kong had fireworks at Victoria Harbor. Shanghai had a 4D light show on the Bund. Beijing had a beam of light out of the China Millennium Monument (a sundial you probably haven’t been to, because Haidian district). We love our home city, but am also kind of okay admitting that Beijing loses this round (though... Read more »
The new year is a time for hope, optimism, and the joy of new possibilities, even in places like Pyongyang, North Korea. Check out its New Year's fireworks display.
China Digital Times brings us this rap video by Gao Yuan, featuring cosplay, martial arts, and English subtitles… and the line “Go censor your own motherfucker ass.” Via CDT: Artist Gao Yuan has produced a video based on the song “Nunchaku” by Taiwanese singer Zhou Jielun (Jay Chou), rewriting the lyrics to curse government censorship.
On Friday, December 28 -- the birthday of jailed Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo -- a group of activists made a daring visit to the residence of his wife, Liu Xia, currently under house arrest.
You can watch them in the above video, uploaded yesterday to the YouTube account of Hu Jia, activist/dissident and director of the June Fourth Heritage and Culture Association. Hu writes that he and Hao Jian, Liu Di and Xu Youyu, among others, arrived at about 9 pm and basically overpowered a surprised guard.
Hong Kong and the mainland can’t seem to stop offending one another. The latest rumpus, as explained by Bad Canto, began after the Hong Kong TV series Friendly Fire depicted two pregnant women — one local and one from the mainland — arguing in a hospital. The controversial scene is above. Via Singapore Yahoo:
Security cameras captured video of a dog thief at work in Heshan, Guangdong province recently, and it’s frightening. Watch the speed with which the men operate: the van pulls up, a man leans out of the side with a hook, and it’s all over. It’s a snatch and go operation, and the poor pup —... Read more »
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR9ova4zG2M] If you haven’t already seen it, our Sunday film recommendation is BBC’s documentary on Ding Yu, host of the extraordinary Chinese talk show Interviews Before Execution. (The good folks over at Reddit recently found the above video.) For just over five years — more than 200 episodes — Ding interviewed prisoners on death row, often... Read more »
