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August 2008 - Posts

Excellent gallery of late '50s Chinese political cartoons

Posted Sunday, August 31, 2008 2:58 AM by will
Via Boing Boing , Ethan Persoff's website of political and counterculture cartoons (and other interesting things) has an excellent gallery of 35 late '50s and early '60s Chinese political cartoons. Unfortunately the cartoons are not translated, but the Read More...
1 Comments

Would sir like lung cancer or deafness with his old age?

Posted Thursday, August 28, 2008 9:53 PM by will
Like a giant kid who's been holding a fart in during a three week elevator ride, Beijing has apparently relaxed its many industrial sphincters and let a big one rip. That's the only way I can explain the lighting-fast deterioration in air quality. In Read More...
10 Comments

Really, we're just editing for word count

Posted Thursday, August 28, 2008 9:29 PM by will
Black and White Cat compares an August 10th New York Times article on Beijing's preparation for the Olympics with a heavily "improved" version run in translation in the Beijing Evening News (with attribution). The Cat creatively shows the omissions and Read More...
6 Comments

All hail the Olympic Games, except for those who praise them

Posted Tuesday, August 26, 2008 7:35 AM by will
Xinhua headlines from the last 36 hours, almost all of which came to me in one Google news alert: Swiss media praise Beijing Olympic Games World leaders, media praise Beijing Olympics U.S. media praises "truly exceptional" Beijing Olympics Iranian media Read More...
25 Comments

Beware the woman carrying a box of Fuwa

Posted Friday, August 22, 2008 7:13 AM by will
Those who live in Beijing and commute on the subway will know that bags are now X-rayed on the way into the station. The security is already fairly porous in several ways. For instance, they only seem to cover one of three entrances at the station by Read More...
8 Comments

A bit twee

Posted Friday, August 22, 2008 1:40 AM by will
From a typical "Great Firewall" article from The Canadian Press, this delicious quote on the Power of the Interweb: "We face so many shared global problems right now, you need some kind of global communications medium through which citizens around the Read More...
8 Comments
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Foreign media vs. Wang Wei II, plus the trouble with transcripts

Posted Friday, August 22, 2008 1:36 AM by will
Via the China Digital Times , this outstanding excerpt from the transcript of Wednesday's IOC/BOCOG press conference (the ninth in a wretched series, we are informed). I've excised some back and forth between the question and response: South China Morning Read More...
5 Comments

Foreign media incidents during the Olympics: So much for detente

Posted Friday, August 22, 2008 1:27 AM by will
The latest incident report from the Foreign Correspondents Club of China is out. It doesn't make for pretty reading: BEIJING: OFFICERS ROUGH UP AP PHOTOGRAPHERS, SEIZE MEMORY CARDS August 20, 2008: Two Associated Press photographers attempting to cover Read More...
3 Comments

More debate on He Kexin and "babygate"

Posted Thursday, August 21, 2008 6:29 AM by will
"Babygate" being the best sounding label I can come up with for this controversy. First, interesting posts from the Stryde Hax blog on "Google hacking" information about He Kexin. Essentially this involves using Google's advanced search features to target Read More...
37 Comments

Olympic pavilions deconstructed

Posted Thursday, August 21, 2008 5:43 AM by will
For those who are a bit weary of the whole idea of corporate pavilions, Media magazine has a witty review of the pavilions of all of the Olympic TOP sponsors. Each is helpfully compared to the Olympic athlete or icon that it most resembles. Two examples: Read More...
1 Comments

Good to see Guangzhou has its priorities straight

Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 6:53 AM by will
From the "you couldn't make it up" department here in Imagethief Towers, an old-school China Daily gem: City gets tough on foreign jaywalkers By Zhan Lisheng (China Daily) The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou is taking stern action against foreigners Read More...
12 Comments

Nationalism in the news: Jon Ansfield on the Global Times

Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 5:56 AM by will
Take some time and read journalist Jonathan Ansfield's post on Newsweek's China blog recounting his participation in a meeting with the editors of the Global Times ( 环球时报 ). The Global Times is the fiery, flag-waving, tabloid companion to the Party's Read More...
3 Comments

Olympic match-up II: Foreign press vs. BOCOG spokesman Wang Wei

Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 1:11 AM by will
This New York Times article is a few days old, but I didn't have time to get to it when it first came out. Apparently some of the press conferences got a little scratchy as journalists got frustrated with BOCOG's oblique responses to any question not Read More...
36 Comments

An angry-youth asks who you're calling brainwashed

Posted Tuesday, August 19, 2008 1:50 AM by will
Two or three weeks ago the New Yorker carried a good article by Evan Osnos on the phenomenon of China's "angry youth" ( fenqing ). Much of the article was a profile of one young man in particular. In truth, he sounds more passionate than angry. It's worth Read More...
26 Comments

Could the Bird's Nest become the Coca-Cola National Stadium of China?

Posted Saturday, August 16, 2008 11:46 PM by will
Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on efforts by the operators of China's gleaming, new Olympic sports facilities to sell the naming rights. According to the article, six multinationals are competing for naming rights to the National Stadium/Bird's Read More...
13 Comments

Gymnasts, now and then

Posted Thursday, August 14, 2008 7:03 AM by will
Now: China's gold medal team . Their talent is not to be doubted. Their ages...perhaps: Then: The 1956 US national squad : Things sure have changed. And not just the fashions. Read More...
41 Comments
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Why child-singing-gate is a PR perfect storm -- Amended

Posted Thursday, August 14, 2008 2:52 AM by will
Amended: Sorry--this wasn't meant to be published. It was a placeholder and a few notes for a possible full-length post. Apologies to all those who thought I'd got lazy and decided to move the tweet format into my regular blog posts. However, for posterity, Read More...
11 Comments

21 Olympic edicts from the Chinese propaganda department

Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008 10:29 PM by will
As published by the Sydney Morning Herald . No link to a Chinese version, no citation of a source, and no way of confirming if these are genuine. But they look pretty credible and consistent with prior guidelines from the propaganda bureau. Nothing surprising Read More...
3 Comments

Olympic match-up: Brooks vs. Fallows

Posted Tuesday, August 12, 2008 8:21 PM by will
First go to the New York Times website and read David Brooks' column about collectivism and the opening ceremony: The world can be divided in many ways — rich and poor, democratic and authoritarian — but one of the most striking is the divide between Read More...
19 Comments
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Why I don't care about the opening ceremony's fraudulent footprints

Posted Tuesday, August 12, 2008 6:56 AM by will
Or so you would start to believe from the press reports over the last day. Some have dwelt upon the lip-synched singing of hyper-precious Lin Miaoke , the impossibly apple-cheeked munchkin girl who "sang" the laudatory and self-referentially titled "I Read More...
23 Comments

How the iPhone ate my Sunday

Posted Monday, August 11, 2008 6:22 AM by will
Having heard much about the new legit apps available for the iPhone (in addition to the apps already available for unlocked iPhones through Installer.app), I decided to take the plunge and upgrade my jailbroken 2G iPhone on Sunday. Here are the steps Read More...
12 Comments
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An unfortunate glimpse into my Olympic stream of consciousness

Posted Monday, August 11, 2008 12:35 AM by will
This probably counts as an abuse of blogging, but for posterity, here is the stream of 40-odd tweets I posted during last Friday's opening ceremony for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. I've flipped them back into chronological order and removed the extraneous Read More...
35 Comments

Video--Imagethief and the top-secret dam of Panjiakou: A Great Wall diving adventure

Posted Saturday, August 09, 2008 10:53 PM by will
Regular readers will recall that Imagethief recently accompanied Steven Schwankert of Sinoscuba to dive a section of the Great Wall that lies underwater in a reservoir at Panjiakou, near Tangshan. A prior blog post about that trip is here . We had an Read More...
5 Comments
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The Onion: The Beijing Olympics: Are they a trap?

Posted Friday, August 01, 2008 2:34 AM by will
A hysterical, must-watch video "news" segment from satirical newspaper The Onion , which excels at humor that stings because it skirts the edge of first-glance credibility. Hat tip: Brendan O'Kane . Read More...
6 Comments
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