Results tagged “news”

In week one A.O., we've watched the press capitulate and rage some more for and against the quickly formed recaps and opinion pieces of last week. It's been a lot more rehashing of the same opinions, just with more breadth and depth. Of course, we like SNL news best, but here's some of the other articles on Obama in China making their way around the internet:

Oh god: we're not really sure how this is newsworthy, but apparently Nanfang Daily decided that a bunch of pictures of drunken foreign girls awkwardly passed out was good enough to at least make into a photo gallery. The pictures were taken from popular BBS site Huanqiu: we couldn't find the original post, though we did find pictures of another netizen getting a duck drunk, which are funny, and somehow more disturbing.

The latest Facebook Global Monitor report released by Inside Facebook has revealed, rather unsurprisingly, that China heads the pack of three countries that actually lost more active users than it gained for the month of September (the other two being Iceland and Cyprus). When Facebook was banned in July, the social network had one million monthly active users. That figure collapsed to half a million in August, before shrinking further to 41,000 in early September, and now as of the beginning of this month, only a measly 14,000 remain. Totally authoritative anecdotal reports suggest that these 14,000 diehard Facebook users comprised mostly of smart Shanghaiist readers who know where to get their VPN and other desperate expats who just miss their friends back home.

Everyone's excited about the upcoming 60th Anniversary: after all, it marks a significant milestone in the country's history. A lot has changed over the years, to say the least. To commemorate the many stages and changes of the PRC, in2marcom has a wonderful collection of China Pictorial covers.

It's a sad, sad day for economics news. One of our favorite business publications is now shuttering its doors as Dow Jones & Co. tries to reshuffle its properties - the Far Eastern Economic Review. According to their site, “the Far Eastern Economic Review will cease publication in December so opinion and commentary resources from Asia can be expanded across all Dow Jones properties. Unfortunately, despite several attempts at invigorating the brand, the REVIEW’s continued losses in advertising revenue and readers is now unsustainable.” FEER was first launched in 1946. Most of its content will now be continued through The Wall Street Journal Asia.

America's finest news source The Onion has a new owner! Since last week, readers have been bombarded with the good tiding, from the modified masthead, logo, and tagline, to news headlines, editorials, audio and video clips, and ads, lots of ads. The new owner goes by the appetizing name of Yu Wan Mei 鱼完美 Amalgamated Salvage Fisheries and Polymer Injection Group, supposedly a Chinese conglomerate from the inland province of Sichuan. The corporation specializes in fish by-products salvaged from the “ocean’s bounty.” Some of its finer samples are “Broiled Shark Gums,” “Multi-Flavor Variety Pack Of Pickled Fish Cloaca,” “Lightning Power Monkfish Cerebral Fluid Energy Drink,” “Mr. Steve's Safe And Natural Rhinoceros-Cure For The Inferior Male,” and “Yu Wan Mei Miscellaneous Flavor Paste.”

An earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale hit Yunnan Province's Guantun township, Yao'an County (姚安) in the mountainous Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture at 7:19 p.m. Thursday. The epicenter was about 200 kilometers from the provincial capital Kunming. Various news agencies are reporting more than 300 injuries and 10,000 collapsed homes. No deaths have been reported yet. News from this remote area is coming in slowly — CNN is just now calling the 12-hour-old earthquake "Breaking News" — so it is difficult to gauge the severity of the earthquake at this moment. Stay tuned.

• KFC adds shaobing to set menu [China Daily] From next Monday, all KFC stores will start serving shaobing, but only during breakfast period. Other details, like pricing, shape, taste, and what KFC is going to call it, are being kept under wraps till June 15.
• Ma calls for agreement on use of traditional Chinese [Taipei Times] President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday he hoped that Taiwan could reach an agreement with Beijing on the teaching of traditional and simplified Chinese characters at schools for overseas Taiwanese and Chinese, whereby students would be taught to read traditional characters and write simplified characters.
• Naked Escorts in Wuhan Bar [Danwei] In recent months, our newspaper has been receiving letters from readers reporting that the May Flower nightclub in Wuchang offers "naked escort" services.

That's what the Washington Post reported. Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two jailed American journalists, were working on a story about the trafficking of North Korean women in the border area of China and North Korea when they were detained. As you've no doubt heard, the two journalists have been sentenced to 12 years in a N. Korean labor camp, while people and governments around the world try their best to secure their release.

Well, that's not being ruled out as a possibility. Witnesses being interviewed have said that they smelled gasoline just prior to the bus going up in flames. They said that someone had probably spilled something flammable. It also seems that the only thing that was flammable on the buses would have been the seats, but the burning pattern seems to suggest that it wasn't the seats that first caught on fire. Chinese commentary has suggested that the bus driver was at fault for 1. cramming too many people on the bus (he and every other bus driver in China) and 2. not stopping the bus when people saw flames coming out the back. It's going to be awhile before we know what happened—if we ever know. In the meantime, the blame game is on.

ShanghaiPRIDE commenced with a bang and, thankfully, not a bust. Mainland China's 1st Gay Pride event kicked-off yesterday with over 200 people cramming into Vargas Grill. Attendees of the inaugural event were a mix of gay, straight, local Chinese, expats, and a lovely drag queen named Anita.

U.K. newspaper The Guardian has got China fever! Not only are they doing a week-long portrait of China series (the first of which looks at migrant workers returning to village life), but it's also actually offering Chinese translations of some of their articles now.

• Party Secretary Indicted, part of Spain's "Universal Jurisdiction" [Xinjiang: Far West China] "Last Tuesday Spanish Judge Santiago Pedráz requested authorization from the Chinese Ministry of Justice to investigate eight Chinese leaders, including the Party Secretary of both Xinjiang and Tibet, on charges of mistreatment of minorities, a charge that involves not a single Spanish citizen."
• Chinese anger at student ID theft [BBC] "There has been outrage in China over reports that a police official helped his daughter get into university by stealing another student's identity. The official, Wang Zhengrong, stole the name and ID number of his daughter's classmate, state media reports. While Mr Wang's child took her university place, the other girl had to spend a year re-taking the exam."
• Taxing fun with (yes!) cell phones [Shenzhen Noted] "One of the events being promoted by the Shenzhen Bureau of Taxation is citizen participation in the 3rd National Tax Collection Text Message Publicity Contest (第三届全国税收宣传短信大赛). I hadn’t realized that the first and second contests had come and gone, but the current contest is open until June 30, 2009. The particularly ambitious can also compete in the ring-tone competition and the multi-media message competition (basically flash for phone)."

From Jonathan Cruysberghs of the Facebook group "Daft fcked - hidden concert SCAM! info and update in here":

Hi All,

Continue reading "Update: Daft Punk scam"

Already properly leaked, rumored and reported, the International Federation of PGA Tours made it official Tuesday morning at a press conference at the Shangri-La Hotel in Pudong: Shanghai's HSBC Champions golf tournament has been elevated to World Golf Championship status. To many in the golf world, this immediately makes the HSBC event, which has called Shanghai home since its 2005 debut, the most prestigious golf tournament outside of the United States and the United Kingdom. That China — which opened its first golf course in 1984 and currently has no professional golfers in the global top 100 — has been chosen as the locale for such an event speaks volumes about China's role in the current global marketplace. It's also a strong indicator that golf's governing bodies realize globalization, with Asia being the primary focus, is the key to the sport's survival in an increasingly harsh economic environment.

Not to be outdone by the Danes who've decided to send away their Little Mermaid on a 6 month excursion to Shanghai next year, Singapore is now thinking of sending its Merlion to the 2010 World Expo too.

Shanghaiist reader Oliver Denton has been fact-checking the BBC over its recent story about Oasis canceling the China leg of their tour, which presumably happened because Noel Gallagher appeared at a Free Tibet Benefit Concert over a decade ago (as linked to in a previous post, the promoter insists it was for economic reasons).

Three people set themselves on fire in Downtown Beijing earlier this afternoon, according to Xinhua. The three sat in a vehicle and started the fire at around 3pm at the intersection of Chang'an Ave and Wangfujing Ave, a busy shopping area less than one kilometer from Tiananmen Square.

It's almost as though Shanghai restaurateur Kelley Lee is reading our mind. First she opens Shanghai's best Mexican place, Cantina Agave, a short stroll from Shanghaiist headquarters (and she always has the flat screen tuned into classic NBA games). And now, we learn (from her) that she is opening a Boxing Cat Brewery almost next door to us. (If next Kelley takes over the Iranian consulate building and turns it into an art house movie theater, the wife may start to get suspicious.)

Many Shanghai beer lovers have been wondering recently what happened to their favorite American microbrews. Lots of previously available beers have been unavailable in recent weeks and rumors have been swirling that American Craft Beer Partners, importers of some of Shanghai's best beers, are calling it quits.

A Shanghai Evening News article, called “New Heroes Rush Into the Shanghai Bund, No Restrictions on Their Place of Origin, They are All Elites,” has drawn protest amongst Shanghai residents. One retired national leader even called the city's party secretary, Yu Zhengsheng, to complain.

A human rights protestor, described as a Western-looking man with dark hair and in his early twenties, has been detained by UK police after he threw his shoe at Prime Minister Wen Jiabao while he was delivering a speech at Cambridge University. According to The Times, the young man blew a whistle as Premier Wen was about to wrap up his speech, shouting:

“How can the university prostitute itself with this dictator? How can you listen to these lies?”

“Stand up and protest, you're not challenging him.”

The CCP warned that 2009 will be "possibly the toughest year" to secure economic and agricultural development since the beginning of the century. A document issued jointly by the State Council and the Central Committee said that the world economy's slowdown would have an increasingly negative impact on the Chinese economy. The best solution for keeping growth up would be boosting rural areas using social security schemes and rural land and employment rights protections. Will 2009 be the year migrant workers actually choose to stay home? Source: Xinhua

Photo from arndalarm

• Shanghai is the most popular destination for Chinese students returning from abroad. According to the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security, 75,000 returnees have chosen to be in Shanghai, and the city also boasts about 4,000 enterprises founded by returnees.
• According to latest statistics released by the municipal government, Shanghai received a whopping 1.57 million tourists in the first three days of the Chinese New Year.
• Japan's NTT Communications will launch a data centre in Shanghai together with China Telecom to provide international wide-area ethernet service.

And, of course, Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister, continues to relish every opportunity he has to practice his Chinese.

• About 30,000 cleaners swept up 1,200 tonnes of fireworks debris left over from Sunday night's big celebrations.
• Originally scheduled for launch in August 2008, the much-touted luxury hotel Jumeirah HanTang Xintiandi Shanghai, will now be open for business sometime this year.
• Chinese government officials have denied U.S. Treasury secretary nominee Timothy Geithner's allegations that China is manipulating its currency.

Since when did this become a yearly political exercise, we wonder?

Because we know you've all been searching high and low for it, here's a video of President Obama's inaugural address with Chinese subtitles that we found on Chinese video site Youku. The video is complete and includes Obama's references to "fascism and communism" (censored by Chinese media) but the Chinese subtitles leaves "fascism" intact, editing out only the "communism" [insert whatever joke you like here]. For your convenience the full transcripts of Obama's speech, in English and Chinese are included after the jump:

The local government in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province has just passed what looks like a wide-reaching law making it illegal for people to publish someone else's 'private information' on the Internet. Offenders can be fined up to 5,000 yuan and could be barred from using the Internet for half a year! The news comes one month after a district housing bureau chief in Nanjing was dismissed after netizens posted photos of him wearing a RMB100,000 watch and smoking a RMB150 a pack cigarettes. The pictures spread like wildfire on the web because those items were seen to be beyond the means of someone living on a civil servant's modest wages.