Welcome to news.imagethief.com Sign in | Join | Help

July 2008 - Posts

And I suggest you put on a tie...

Posted Thursday, July 31, 2008 11:03 PM by will
Showing that there is no level of micromanagement too infinitesimal for the Olympics, the Beijing city government has issued detailed (and I mean detailed) instructions on personal grooming and behavior to millions of households. From the Times (UK): Read More...
21 Comments
Filed under: , ,

Free advice for the Democratic Party

Posted Wednesday, July 30, 2008 11:37 PM by will
Imagethief is a registered Democrat. I am such both because I feel it is my civic duty to vote, and because I was hectored relentlessly by a large woman with a clipboard when I went to go visit my old grad school in San Francisco a year and a half ago. Read More...
8 Comments

How parenthood rewires your head, barbarian edition

Posted Wednesday, July 30, 2008 10:15 PM by will
Conan the Barbarian, age 20 Mongol General Conan! What is best in life? Conan To crush your enemies. To see them driven before you. To hear the lamentation of their women. Conan the Barbarian, age 40 Mongol General Conan! What is best in life? Conan To Read More...
12 Comments

I don't care that China has more net users than the US

Posted Wednesday, July 30, 2008 7:46 AM by will
Seeing all the headlines about how China now has more Internet users than the US has given Imagethief the same unpleasant feeling that he gets when he runs a strip of nylon cordura between his teeth. Imagethief has no problem with China having more Internet Read More...
10 Comments
Filed under: , ,

China loves a good spokesman

Posted Wednesday, July 30, 2008 1:47 AM by will
Not much I can add to this Xinhua article : Most Chinese pay attention to govt. spokesmen, want more transparency BEIJING, July 29 (Xinhua) -- Wang Weitao, a PhD candidate at China's University of Science and Technology, said Premier Wen Jiabao's manner Read More...
8 Comments

E-Z steps to make your own Beijing air at home

Posted Wednesday, July 30, 2008 1:12 AM by will
Imagethief realizes that he and much of the journalistic and blogging community have been doing a grave disservice to our readers who don't live in Beijing. We beg your forgiveness. Living in Beijing is such an all-consuming experience that we sometimes Read More...
10 Comments

Summing up how the western world looks at China

Posted Monday, July 28, 2008 6:09 AM by will
After you swallow a fair dose of the Chinapocalypse coverage that tends to ricochet through western media it can be nice to have a little antidote. John Pomfret, the former Beijing bureau chief of the Washington Post and a long-time China correspondent, Read More...
7 Comments

Olympic complaints: Po-faced denials hitting their limits?

Posted Sunday, July 27, 2008 11:00 PM by will
From the Sydney Morning Herald : Organisers had repeatedly claimed that internet would not be censored during the Games but at the press conference a Wall Street Journal journalist produced his laptop and showed that sites such as the BBC in China and Read More...
18 Comments

BDA's Duncan Clark: "WeTube"

Posted Sunday, July 27, 2008 6:39 AM by will
Via Thomas Crampton , Duncan Clark, of telecoms consultancy BDA , has written an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal Asia on the recent regulatory woes of China's video sharing sites: [In] a sign of the ebb and flow of Chinese Internet regulation, Read More...
1 Comments
Filed under: ,

Why doesn't my gym offer pole-dancercize class?

Posted Saturday, July 26, 2008 12:17 AM by will
From the New York Times , which is apparently pulling out all the stops in its peri-Olympic lifestyle coverage, comes this article about a woman who offers pole dancing classes for fitness here in Beijing. It has possibly the best lede/quote combination Read More...
7 Comments

Illegal baby part 1a: The Singapore embassy sends a fruit basket

Posted Friday, July 25, 2008 11:58 PM by will
About a month ago I wrote about the long time it was taking the Singapore embassy in Beijing to produce our son's Singaporean passport. Reflecting my frustrations about various aspects of Singaporean citizenship policy, and what I see as the conflict Read More...
5 Comments

Jack Ma's e-mail as internal and external communication

Posted Friday, July 25, 2008 7:04 AM by will
Via the Wall Street Journal's China Journal , Paul Denlinger at China Vortex has translated an internal e-mail that Alibaba founder and CEO Jack Ma wrote and distributed to his staff recently. The e-mail promptly found its way to Sina and was duly published. Read More...
4 Comments

I am the guy that everybody in line hates, plus the decline of America's airlines

Posted Thursday, July 24, 2008 7:32 AM by will
Imagethief has been leading a glamorous life of international travel this week. If you've never done it, you should know that by-and-large it sucks. Last week I flew to the US for a series of media training sessions with a client. They generously sprang Read More...
20 Comments
Filed under: , , ,

Hopeless adventures in vulgarity control

Posted Thursday, July 24, 2008 5:04 AM by will
The downside of scanning something like thirty Google alerts a day is that you lose productivity and fill your head with random crap. The upside is that you sometimes notice strange juxtapositions of news. For example, the following two Reuters stories: Read More...
0 Comments

Enzaji Leer is caught red handed with the bomb!

Posted Thursday, July 24, 2008 4:23 AM by will
Accompanying the Wall Street Journal's article about the special Olympic protest zones are seven pages of scans of the notorious English phrasebook issued to Beijing police. It is well worth a look just so you can see what constitute typical Olympic scenarios Read More...
8 Comments

One world, one dream, no visa

Posted Thursday, July 24, 2008 1:59 AM by will
A few days old but worth a read is this heartfelt post on CNReviews from Meg Stivison (an occasional Imagethief commenter) on why she and her boyfriend won't be in Beijing for the Olympics: I’m not going to stay in China without Chris, so I’m going back Read More...
12 Comments
Filed under: ,

Imagethief video interview from ChinaICT

Posted Thursday, July 17, 2008 1:52 AM by will
During last May's ChinaICT conference Imagethief was interviewed by the Christine Lu of the China Business Network . I spoke mostly about my background, the blog and what I thought people interested in working in China should do. The video is online at Read More...
5 Comments

Attending the Olympics as a PR exercise

Posted Wednesday, July 16, 2008 12:59 PM by will
The Wall Street Journal's Mei Fong writes on the parade of corporate grandees attending the Olympics . A couple of quotes frame the imperative of attending for those execs who have big business in China: Lured by the growing importance of the Chinese Read More...
15 Comments

Off on barnstorming travels tomorrow

Posted Monday, July 14, 2008 9:20 AM by will
Imagethief heads to the US for work tomorrow. I'll be in San Diego for three days, then in San Francisco for a night to see my family before accompanying Mrs. Imagethief and Zachary (who are already in the USA) back to China on Saturday. We arrive on Read More...
3 Comments
Filed under:

Don't conflate censorship with astroturfing...

Posted Monday, July 14, 2008 7:47 AM by will
... says Paul Denlinger at China Vortex , reacting to Thomas Crampton's recent online video discussion with Oiwan Lam on the 50 Cent Tribe: The biggest difference between astroturfing and censorship: astroturfing is a PR term and censorship is a political Read More...
7 Comments

The new "That's Beijing" and the art of stench management

Posted Monday, July 14, 2008 12:45 AM by will
Beijing residents may know that a few weeks ago there was something of a rough spell for local English language magazines. The local version of entertainment magazine Time Out was shut down at least temporarily for mysterious reasons. Also, the publishers Read More...
39 Comments

Yet more of the AP Great Wall dive trip video

Posted Wednesday, July 09, 2008 7:34 AM by will
The Denver CBS affiliate has more of the AP video of our trip to dive the Great Wall on Sunday. This clip includes two brief segments of me in full cold-water regalia talking about the experience. Somehow I appear to have upstaged Steven, who actually Read More...
2 Comments
Filed under: , , ,

Hurting the feelings of the Chinese people

Posted Wednesday, July 09, 2008 5:42 AM by will
As a PR person you're always alert to formulaic messaging, where talking points or messages are repeated by various spokespeople in various forums. Skillfully executed, this kind of approach can saturate media channels with a message. The Bush administration Read More...
27 Comments

Some video from our weekend dive on the Great Wall

Posted Monday, July 07, 2008 11:57 PM by will
Along with Sinoscuba impresario Steven "Commando" Schwankert, Imagethief hauled himself and approximately four tons of gear out to Xifenghu on Sunday to dive a sunken section of Great Wall. Xifenghu is a reservoir near Tangshan. It takes about three and Read More...
8 Comments
Filed under: , , ,

Introducing the Jinan precision Segway assault squad!

Posted Thursday, July 03, 2008 5:45 AM by will
An "anti-terrorism" drill in Jinan: Yeah, these guys won't be difficult to target at all... Also featured in this quite clearly made-for-TV exercise, a demonstration of that most selective and discriminate of urban pacification weapons, the flame thrower Read More...
16 Comments
Filed under: , ,