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April 2006 - Posts

The startling truth behind my Xinjiang pilgrimmage

Posted Thursday, April 27, 2006 9:45 PM by will
O, serene one, share your savory wisdom with me! Imagethief announced yesterday that he would be heading to Xinjiang for the holidays. He was not entirely forthcoming about why he is going, and he felt that his loyal readers (both of them) deserved to Read More...
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Imagethief in Xinjiang next week

Posted Thursday, April 27, 2006 2:43 AM by will
Imagethief is flying to Kashgar on Saturday afternoon, and will be spending all of the holiday week stomping around various parts of Xinjiang with his camera, a big hat and a silly "I'm not at work" grin on his face. Readers can expect exactly zilch posts Read More...
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Building the new socialist afterlife

Posted Wednesday, April 26, 2006 3:09 AM by will
Imagethief has always had a soft-spot in his heart for both the Hungry Ghost Festival, which is observed during the seventh lunar month in Singapore although not in China, and Qingming, the grave-sweeping ceremony, which is observed in both. Imagethief Read More...
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Imagethief saves the Chinese newspaper industry

Posted Tuesday, April 25, 2006 9:42 PM by will
Imagethief's unquenchable thirst for knowledge leads him to consume* information from many sources** every day. As a result of this, Imagethief is often able to discern the connections between seemingly unrelated events and stories long before your average Read More...
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Worrying signs you have a volunteer army

Posted Tuesday, April 25, 2006 12:35 AM by will
Chief among them: you start rejecting snorers: China to ban snorers from military academies (AFP) Updated: 2006-04-25 06:54 BEIJING - China is reportedly looking to impose a soft-snore policy on its military officers with new recruits being judged on Read More...
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You kids shut up or we'll send your jobs to China

Posted Monday, April 24, 2006 9:21 PM by will
Now that the grand diplomatic dance has concluded (with two left feet very much in evidence) it's time to dip in and see if a new climate of understanding and respectful, un-charged dialogue has been cultivated between America and China. No, not really. Read More...
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Q: What do my Chinese colleagues think of Bush + Hu?

Posted Friday, April 21, 2006 7:57 AM by will
They think Bush is a protocol-impaired dweeb. I base this conclusion on an e-mail that was being widely circulated among the Chinese staff in the office today. This mail included a couple of choice photos from a post (in Chinese) on the CCHere forum, Read More...
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Guge a gufe?

Posted Thursday, April 20, 2006 10:54 PM by will
Google isn't getting much of a break in China. Last week someone who had been to their launch party sighed to me that, had it been any other company, people would have thought it silly and pretentious. Not being among the "in crowd", I have no firsthand Read More...
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Q: Why doesn't Chinese television show Hu's speech live?

Posted Thursday, April 20, 2006 9:57 AM by will
I'm not much for live blogging, but I am sitting here trying to watch Hu's and Bush's speeches on CNN right now. It's proving difficult because a woman in the audience is screaming some protest (we couldn't hear exactly what she said), which is causing Read More...
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Hu says Boeing kicks ass and other interesting links of the day

Posted Thursday, April 20, 2006 7:31 AM by will
A few interesting stories and posts that I stumbled across today. There are a lot as Hu's visit kicks the normally intense China coverage into overdrive. No time to comment in detail, but I thought I'd point to them along with a quick description, since Read More...
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Yes, it actually bursts into flame

Posted Wednesday, April 19, 2006 10:08 AM by will
Readers who have been with me for a while will know that I have written a bit about some of the issues with my apartment. I can't complain too much. The apartment has been comfortable, it's superbly located and it has courteous security guards and generally Read More...
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Bill Gates and Hu in the gaze of the mighty Thought-o-Tronic

Posted Wednesday, April 19, 2006 7:03 AM by will
Regular readers will know that Imagethief in his spare time recently invented a device called the Mighty Thought-o-Tronic that can read the thoughts of people in news photographs. I use this device sparingly because it has the potential to be extremely Read More...
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Extreme slowth

Posted Wednesday, April 19, 2006 4:46 AM by will
For such a go-go, fast moving country, China sure has a lot of situations in which time slows to a crawl. Most of these seem to revolve around transportation. I'm sure that's not coincidence. If disaster struck in the form of, say, a giant monster , and Read More...
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Your personal allotment of dust: 23.57 kilos

Posted Tuesday, April 18, 2006 9:46 PM by will
Imagethief was stupefied to read on Xinhua this morning that Monday's nasty dust storm deposited 330,000 tons of sand on Beijing. Assuming that figure is accurate, we can do some fun with math: I assume that they use metric tons here since the entire Read More...
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If I was Hu Jintao's PR man...

Posted Tuesday, April 18, 2006 8:25 AM by will
Made for each other This week Hu Jintao will rekindle his US visit. This was originally scheduled for last September, but delayed when a certain hurricane made salvaging an appearance of competence the top priority of the Bush administration. A schmooze Read More...
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Tank-Man's place amongst the iconic images of my lifetime

Posted Tuesday, April 18, 2006 12:43 AM by will
In the last couple of day's I've been slowly winding my way through Frontline's documentary, " The Tank Man ", which is now available online in its entirety. Only the first page is accessible in China, but the rest of the content and the video can be Read More...
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Hu's US Visit: The empty gesture of banning naked PCs

Posted Monday, April 17, 2006 1:18 AM by will
The diplomatic mating dance is well underway in the runup to Hu Jintao's visit to the US. Of course, from the Chinese point of view this mating dance may never be quite consummated, due to the refusal of the White House to throw a full state-banquet for Read More...
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The sandman cometh

Posted Sunday, April 16, 2006 9:39 PM by will
Imagethief is always mystified that any foreigner would go through the trouble to own a car in Beijing. I do have some friends who own and drive their own cars. I view them as dangerously adventurous and unpredictable, the way I'd view friends who owned Read More...
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Protest banners fly near new CCTV headquarters

Posted Sunday, April 16, 2006 4:13 AM by will
Coming... It seems not everyone is elated about the new headquarters building for China Central Television (CCTV), currently under construction at the corner of Guanghua Rd and the East Third Ring in Beijing. When completed, the Rem Koolhaas-designed Read More...
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Caution: Gratuitous scatalogical rant

Posted Friday, April 14, 2006 7:19 AM by will
So the managers of our office building are beginning renovation on the bathrooms. I am not sure why they are doing this. The bathrooms seem fine to me, except for the vaguely worrying sound of constantly running water that seems to come from the air vents, Read More...
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Dan's dish of disappointment

Posted Friday, April 14, 2006 4:40 AM by will
A funny tale of woe * from the Shanghaiist 's Dan Washburn, who laments the spotty performance of his (illegal) satellite dish: At the risk of sounding like another whiny spoiled expat, Shanghaiist is going to whine like a spoiled expat. Our satellite Read More...
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Thursday PR blog: No rest for Yahoo and Google on China front

Posted Thursday, April 13, 2006 6:43 AM by will
Yahoo continues to get no breaks on the China front. As CNET's Declan McCullagh writes , the company has found itself ambushed by Julien Pain of Reporters Sans Frontieres (blocked in China), a man who I am sure, in Yahoo's point of view, is aptly named: Read More...
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China website self-censorship (strictly voluntary)

Posted Wednesday, April 12, 2006 4:05 AM by will
You may have noticed that Imagethief spends a fair amount of time making fun of Chinese government news coverage. That is not necessarily what I set out to do when starting this blog, but, as The Master said, when fate hangs ripe cherries in your path, Read More...
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Museums Beijing ought to have

Posted Tuesday, April 11, 2006 5:47 AM by will
Imagethief was interested to read yesterday on MSNBC that China is on a regular museum building binge. I think this is great. China has lots of history, and someday it would be nice to find out what it is, exactly. Among other things, the article points Read More...
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Hey, did an Imagethief post disappear?

Posted Monday, April 10, 2006 9:43 PM by will
Yes. Yesterday evening a wrote a throwaway quickie and intended to save it without publishing it pending the verification of some facts. Unfortunately, in my fluster out of the office at 8PM last night, I accidentally published it for an hour or so; long Read More...
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"That's Beijing" column now online

Posted Monday, April 10, 2006 12:00 AM by will
"Journey to the West", the piece that I wrote for Kaiser Kuo's "Ich bin ein Beijinger" column in That's Beijing last month, is now online in its entirely. You can find it here . On a peripheral note, a debate about proper German grammar gave the post Read More...
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Weekend PR blog: Why do China flacks ignore foreign correspondents?

Posted Sunday, April 09, 2006 4:56 AM by will
On Friday, Imagethief got an e-mail from a Beijing-based correspondent for an international business newspaper. "Hey," he said, "let me know if you have any events coming up." An innocent query, but also a surprising one. When Imagethief was a flack* Read More...
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Book review -- Billions: Selling to the new Chinese consumer

Posted Sunday, April 09, 2006 3:59 AM by will
Imagethief doesn’t make a habit of publishing book reviews on his site because they distract from his trademark effervescent wit and lightweight tomfoolery. But he’s going to make an exception. In January I received an e-mail from the editor of a regional Read More...
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Drink more liquor, by government decree

Posted Friday, April 07, 2006 4:06 AM by will
I love living in China because the country regularly produces news that you couldn't make up even if you spent an evening smoking opium with Lewis Carrol and a magical typewriter that recorded your zaniest thoughts. Everybody knows that governments love Read More...
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Bingfeng retires

Posted Thursday, April 06, 2006 4:22 AM by will
For whatever reason --perhaps the 863 V!agra and C!alis ads I e-mailed him last week-- Bingfeng's site won't let me put up a comment today, so I'll post it here. He's announced his retirement from blogging today due to impending fatherhood. That V!agra Read More...
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China Daily tackles the hard issues

Posted Thursday, April 06, 2006 2:13 AM by will
It's good that we have China Daily to illuminate the great controversies of our time. Otherwise we might all flounder about in ignorance and darkness, doomed to life as unenlightened troglodytes with low foreheads and protruding brow ridges. And none Read More...
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Anonymizer's response to my post

Posted Wednesday, April 05, 2006 10:27 AM by will
Two days ago I put up a post questioning the motives of the announcement by the company Anonymizer that they were providing a free anonymizing service for Chinese web surfers. Anonymizer founder and president Lance Cottrell left a reply on that post today. Read More...
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Simple solutions for Chinese journalists' ethical conundrums

Posted Tuesday, April 04, 2006 6:55 AM by will
Shadenfreude filled Imagethief like warm gravy as he read an article in the China Daily agonizing about the tendency of in-demand Chinese spokespeople to charge journalists for interviews. Given the weirdly incongruous title, "Free speech? You have to Read More...
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Shock news: China admits Great Wall not visible from space

Posted Tuesday, April 04, 2006 6:29 AM by will
Yes, it's true. Xinhua has, once and for all, dispelled the old chestnut about the Great Wall being visible from space. Imagethief has heard many variations of this old-astronaut's tale over the years: only man-made object visible from orbit; only man-made Read More...
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Selfless charity or cynical exploitation of Chinese net censorship?

Posted Monday, April 03, 2006 10:13 PM by will
The world is full of foreigners who want to help the Chinese attain greater freedom, democracy and openness. Leaving aside the mixed (at best) feelings many Chinese have about these efforts, some of these people are well-intentioned saints who do good Read More...
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The Register: China buys Google

Posted Monday, April 03, 2006 7:27 AM by will
Relax, it was an April fools article in British technology website, The Register . However I thought it was worth re-posting the image they created for the article, which incorporates the faces of Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, into a Read More...
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Communist insurgents on long march to Long Beach

Posted Monday, April 03, 2006 6:46 AM by will
Commies to the left, commies to the right! Destroy all commies! Fight! Fight! Fight! Imagethief was reminded of this high-school football cheer (admittedly, when I was in high-school it didn't actually refer to "commies") by this "red-scare" piece from Read More...
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Annals of Chinese public art: Ass, ass baby

Posted Sunday, April 02, 2006 7:48 AM by will
It has been a long time since I've added to the annals of Chinese public art. Newer readers may not be familiar with this, but Imagethief has made it something of a project to document the world of Chinese municipal and public art. As any trip through Read More...
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The lake of doomed turtles

Posted Sunday, April 02, 2006 6:37 AM by will
About four weeks ago, Imagethief, Mrs. Imagethief and Asiapundit (who was in town to cover the NPC) took a stroll together past Beijing's central lakes. It was the lingering end of winter, and the ice on the lakes was receding quickly. It was also the Read More...
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高高兴兴上班去， 平平安安回家来: Photos from Beijing's northern hills

Posted Sunday, April 02, 2006 6:11 AM by will
Links under the picture above all lead to the thumbnails page . Imagethief, Mrs. Imagethief and some friends have taken advantage of the recent, lovely spring weather to go on some hikes in the hills north of Beijing. Imagethief always enjoys these trips. Read More...
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