SpongeBob in China

Mix Lynx

Ha!  Get it?  Links/Lynx?  (Alright, I'm done.)  A batch of links today, because I know if you're reading this you're probably bored.  Or a fan of my bad jokes.

• They just found a woman in southern China that's been pregnant with a miscarried baby for 60 years.
• China has fake everything.  Including Disneyland.  (Though the real Disneyland is apparently coming to Shanghai soon.)  Watch a crazy Japanese video about it here .
• Some crazy guy called Matt Mayer made it his mission to hit every subway stop in Shanghai (all 9 lines) in one day.  It took him 10 hours, 14 minutes and 42 seconds.  Let's see him do that in 2020.
• Starting June 1st this year, the human flesh search engine will be outlawed in the city of Xuzhou.
• Some poor Chinese kid has been laughing for 12 years straight.  He can't even talk.  This is straight out of a "would you rather...".
• The transcript of Obama's inauguration speech was apparently censored on some Chinese websites.  Apparently it's not cool to say "communism" in China anymore.

China: crazy as ever.

Bruce Lee Can Kick Your Ass. In Ping Pong. With Nunchucks.

What can't he do?

China's Stolen Children

"I think there must be something wrong with treating children as goods, but I can't figure out what it is."

100% twisted.  According to the 2007 documentary China's Stolen Children, 70,000 children are kidnapped every year.  Police just recovered five children and arrested their 13 abductors Wednesday; the kids were apparently sold for anywhere between $126 and $3,800 USD.  The price, I'm sure, depends both on the new family's ability to pay and the sex of the baby (boys go for more).

Cynics will blame the One Child Policy for the existence of this warped child-trade, and well, I guess I can't really disagree.

The World's First Plug-in Electric Hybrid...

...is Chinese.  And the most impressive thing about it is its battery: half-charge takes only 10 minutes, while a full charge is 8-9 hours and allows the driver to go 100km before it taps into its fuel reserves.  The car made its North American debut at the Detroit Motor Show this week, and is expected to be available in the Western world by 2011.  It's already been on sale for a month in China though, and Business Week has already gotten the chance to take it out for a test drive (video).

The F3DM is built by BYD ("Build Your Dreams"), a Shenzhen-based, HK-listed company that used to specialize in batteries.  If you've heard of BYD before, it's probably because Warren Buffet bought a 10% stake in it for $230 million last September.

China's Moneyboys

What's kind of funny is that in Chinese, girl prostitutes are called 鸡女 (ji nu), or "chicken-girl", while (heterosexual) guy prostitutes are 鸭子 (ya zi), "little ducks".

The Human Flesh Search Engine

It's not really all that well named, but man does it work well.  Basically, if something you do gets posted online and the Chinese netizens really want to find out more about you, the picture/video of you will get passed around different message boards, with everyone chipping in just a bit of information, until someone can track down exactly who you are.  Takes a few weeks maybe, but it almost always gets done, whether you're a kitten killer (warning: it's pretty graphic) or a faceless hottie (warning: not so much of a hottie).  Pretty amazing and scary all at once.  And yes, Chinese people can be very nosy.  (Especially the women.)

Wang Fei, the adulterer in the video, actually won his court case against the woman who identified him online and the website that hosted the message boards, and collected 8,000RMB in damages.  It's the first successful lawsuit of its kind, and it's prompted the Chinese government to start looking into just how they can crack down on this kind of thing in the future.

Perhaps in response to the threat of punishment, the ""Human Flesh Search Informal Alliance" just released the "Human Flesh Search Pact version 1.0 beta". It states:

In order to reinforce the Internet moral awareness of netizens and to improve understand the proper meaning of human flesh search so that it will progress in the right direction to serve the people, this pact was written.

1.  Love the motherland, love the Communist Party, obey the laws, follow the regulations, support and love each other, maintain Internet harmony.
2.  Human flesh search should be follow the principles of honesty, safety, openness, fairness and justice in the pursuit of knowledge that will benefit people.
3.  Internet morality should be abided and the privacy of individuals should not be intruded upon.
4.  Exposure of privacy should be protected with the utmost effort and not disclosed to the public.
5.  Anything related to "corruption," "graft," "praising the good" and "denouncing the bad" is not restricted by articles 3 and 4 above.
6.  Human flesh search must yield accurate and trustworthy information, and the persons who provide the information must assume responsibility for its accuracy.
7.  Civilized language should be used and malicious human flesh searches should not be highlighted or distributed; under suitable circumstances, the affected principals and the websites should be informed about what is happening.
8.  Continuous effort will be made to increase proper awareness of human flesh search.

Update: The flesh engine is now busy at work looking for the killer of "Garfield".

If You're Happy And You Know It...

Another day, another report of the government rigging a survey. This time, officials in Nanjing's Pukou District are being accused of fixing a phone questionnaire by putting out a list of "sample" answers and then cutting the phone lines of some of the poorer families (y'know, just in case).

The December 20th survey, run by the provincial Statistics Bureau, was intended to measure the well-being of the area's residents. However, days before it was expected to take place, officials distributed a list of "correct" responses to the sixteen questions, and offered residents 2,000RMB if they played along. Among the sample answers:

Item 3: "What was your total family income in 2008? Answer: more than 8,000 yuan."

Item 16: "If you were to measure happiness on a 100-point scale, how many points would you give yourself? Answer: between 90 and 100."

The town finished the survey with a satisfaction rating of 96%.

Reporter Chen Wen of the Nanjing Morning Post caught wind of the story and got the chance to question the town's Vice-Secretary on the accusations.

Wen: I noticed that every household here has a government-issued set of sample questions and answers to the well-being survey. When village officials passed them out, they told the people that they had to use these responses. Why was this done?

Secretary Zhu: Achieving overall well-being was a major task for Pukou District this year, so like other towns, we treated this inspection very seriously to make sure we'd pass. The samples were for educational purposes, so that people wouldn't make mistakes if they received a survey call.

Reporter: Many villagers said that on the day of the inspection, some poorer families suddenly discovered that their telephones weren't working. They said that this was done by the telecom office at the government's request out of fear that those poor families would tell the truth on the phone and influence the inspection. We'd like to know whether the government really asked for those lines to be cut.

Zhu: No, the government would never do that. The phones could really have had problems on that day.

See the full interview and Wen's article on Danwei.

Shanghai Metro

This is what the system looks like now, with 9 lines:

The city plans to add 12(!) new lines in the next 12 years.  So, by 2020, the metro system will look like this:

Insane.

Internet Banned-It

When I first got here last March, navigating the Internet was a real hassle.  Wikipedia, Blogspot and Wordpress blogs were all blocked, while Youtube just kinda-sorta worked.  Even Fanhouse.com, a sports website, was completely shut off.  (I got here right when the Tibet riots broke out.)  Things opened up pretty steadily during 2008, owing mostly to the Olympics and the huge influx of visitors/journalists, but the government has come back in 2009 by cracking down on websites that distribute or otherwise direct you to "vulgar" content.  But last week, 91 domestic websites were shut down , including popular Chinese blog-hosting site bullog.cn.  Coincidentally, bullog.cn is also the home of several prominent bloggers who signed the pro-democracy Charter 08 .  Search sites like Google, Baidu (Chinese Google) and MSN were also chastised (presumably for letting people look up porn) but not formally punished.

 
According to Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN correspondent and current assistant professor of journalism at Hong Kong University, this type of thing happens pretty regularly:

There are crackdowns from time to time. Generally, before Chinese New Year, there is some sort of anti-porn crackdown that takes place. It's a seasonal thing, not many people are entirely shocked. There was a crackdown on an online video site last March, which resulted in a 24-hour shutdown. Companies in China have expectations of these sorts of things and prepare to deal with it.

-CNN Asia

Beijing Graffiti

It's generally pretty hard to find graffiti in China, but, as you can see, there are definitely places where this type of thing is still alive and well.

The 798 Art District is a central hub for Beijing's art community.  Artists moved into the area some 15 years ago, and turned the district of abandoned factories into a haven for contemporary Chinese art.  All pretty cool, but from what I hear, it's starting to lose some of its original spirit as it becomes more popular and the the whole thing becomes more gentrified.  (I'd write more but I've never been.  It's definitely on the list though.)

There's a similar area in Shanghai called TianZiFang, which gone through a total transformation since I arrived here.  Set in an old-school neighbourhood of Shanghai, tiny art shops, cafes and art galleries are mixed in with locals who've lived there for decades.  I spent a lot of time there in the summer, but between then and my last visit was in December, the entire back section of the area had been developed and settled by new storeowners.  It'll only get worse as the city builds it up to be a feature site in the 2010 Expo.

Weird Asian News

"The man had apparently thought it would be fun to have sex with one of the steel sit-up benches  around the park.  The bench had numerous holes in it, which Xing used to satisfy himself."

Weird Asian News is probably the greatest website ever, because, well, Asian people are weird.  Don't believe me?  Check some of this out:

• Man Almost Loses Penis Humping Steel Bench
  
• Chinese Girl Has Basketball for a Body
• Vagina Ripped Apart by Water Fountain

And that's pretty much all I have to say about that.

...and I'm Back

So yeah, I slacked a bit/a lot in December.  Was a pretty busy month, and I ended up going home for half of it, so for at least that part of it there wasn't much to write about.  I'm back in town now though, and my New Year's Resolution is to update at least three times a week, hopefully more if I'm up for it.  We'll see how long it lasts...and yes, I do realize I already botched the first week.  That's over 200 new posts if I keep it going until the Shanghai Expo (478 days and counting, and someone should tell the Americans).

Some assorted notes from my December meanderings...

• Every time I go to Hong Kong, I can't escape the feeling that it's what Shanghai eventually wants to be.  For a city of 7 million, HK has a lot going on: it's a financial hub and a fashion capital, and it's got a booming entertainment industry that pumps out a disproportionate number of movies and albums each year. In fact, the only Cantonese anyone knows around here is from HK movies or music. The Shanghai/National government keeps pouring money into the city to push it in that direction, but there's just no substitute for the huge head start HK got in opening up and westernizing itself.
• Hong Kong is waaaay expensive, even compared to Shanghai, the most expensive Chinese city.  If you go by the Big Mac Index, the two cities look pretty similar, but the difference is that McDonald's isn't the cheapest meal in Shanghai (you can pay Y5 for noodles on the street); it is in HK (Y18 for noodles). 
• There are as many foreigners in HK as there are Asians in Vancouver.
• The characters for Tokyo are cribbed from Chinese: 东京.  Pronounced dong jing, it means 'Eastern capital', and is named just like Nanjing (Southern capital) and Beijng (Northern capital) are. 
• Vancouver's airport has free wifi, and so does Hong Kong's.  Tokyo (where I had a layover) makes you pay, but it has internet booths set up and desks if you want to pull out your laptop.  Shanghai has nothing. Not a good showing for a city that considers itself world-class.

Back soon with more...