Something for the weekend, sir? With Chinese cadres under official instruction to behave themselves for, perhaps, ever, the kind folks at Ccln.gov.cn, a website operated by the Central Communist Party School, have offered them a replacement entertainment to getting lobster-faced on baijiu, vomiting down their suit and curling up with a dead-eyed mistress.
The classics-quoting, picture-rich, cutting-edge “Learning China" app was launched yesterday, and is set to blow your mind – or your phone. Just three minutes after I opened the app, my two-year-old HTC had frozen up – like its owner, it was obviously having a hard time processing all the fun.
Our beloved China, the new social-political-economic butterfly on the scene, wowed at APEC before jetting off for the ASEAN East Asia Summit and the G20 Summit.
Hosting APEC for the first time since 2011, Beijing did things 大气, spending $6 billion on a lakeside campus, a new elevated expressway, and a no-costs-spared spectacular opening complete with fireworks. But how did they really do?
Time has released its most recent edition of the Time 100, its click-baity list of "the most influential people in the world in 2014." Among those on the list is -- no surprise -- Xi Jinping, who got a three-paragraph writeup from former US ambassador to China Jon Huntsman. The opening sentence should raise some eyebrows:
On Saturday, Chinese president Xi Jinping surprised diners of a neighborhood eatery in Beijing when he walked in and ordered a set meal that included steamed buns, some veggies, and a chitterlings. It was a modest lunch that cost 21 yuan, reports Global Times.
But what do we know about this place, Qing-Feng, located in Xicheng District?
Look at Xi Jinping eating lunch. When the story broke yesterday that the president of China was spotted in Beijing ordering steamed buns at a local restaurant called Qing-Feng, I noted that we'd be seeing more pictures, since if you can't take pictures of the president of China on your camera phone, you might as well never take another camera phone picture again. Well, here's a video, which surfaced on Youku about nine hours ago. It is wonderful in the following ways:
This certainly looks like Xi Jinping in a crowded Beijing restaurant. Weibo user @四海微传播 wrote at 1:20 pm today: "People, I'm not seeing this wrong, am I? Uncle Xi came to Qingfeng to eat steamed buns (baozi)!" The same user messaged again at 1:34 pm: "Uncle Xi queued to buy steamed buns, even paid his own bill, carried his tray, chose his own buns." The message was forwarded by none other than the official Xinhua Sina Weibo account at 1:38 pm.
