Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Links of the month

I'm able to do this because I'm so far behind on my RSS that I'm encountering posts from earlier this month just now.

  • Evan Osnos on a social experiment: "Would China respond differently to criticism from abroad than it would to criticism from home?"
    As Wang sees it, people gave more credence to “Zuckerberg”’s appraisal than to “Wang”’s because China spends too much of its time on the hunt for prejudice, only to “find out what this prejudice is based on and give one’s own response or counterattack.” They “feel some kind of invisible threat—that a foreigner might understand China more deeply than ourselves.”

  • Oh traditional media... ["The Stink of Misreporting," by Jim Gourley of Absurdity, Allegory and China, among the better China blogs out there (be sure to click on the Shanghaiist link at the bottom)]
    I don’t need to remind anyone who has been in China for longer than it takes to clear customs that sloppy and/or false reporting can do a lot of damage. Today I read the blog post of a man in Shanghai, who was “quoted” by AFP concerning the most recent blocking of Youtube here in China. I am purposely not passing on either link, since I do not think the man in Shanghai needs any more attention, and the AFP needs a slap to the head rather than anymore traffic. The reporter “quoted” a blog entry from October 2007, called it “yesterday” and attributed it in an article dated today, March 25, 2009. The man who was quoted was neither contacted, nor was he even in China. He was very gracious in his follow-up blog post by entitling it Lazy Journalists. I may have taken a bit harsher title and tone. I have a particular dislike for this sort of thing. I have no idea if the ‘journalist’ who wrote the story is in China either, though it would not surprise me if he were not. This has become the nature of the biz.

  • Via Danwei: Layouts of People's Daily's coverage of the National People's Congress's opening day from the last five years. [Fang Kecheng]

  • The evolution of man in different cultures. [Shanghaiist]

  • Yet another victim of the global economic climate: the yellow fevered (accurate use of term?). [Shanghaiist]

  • Verboten: VIIIIXVIIV. [Tim Johnson, McClatchy]

  • In observance of International Women's Day (March 8), Crossroads posted about China's xiaojies.

  • Beijing Boyce wonders how Beijing's LAN got on the list of "world's 100 best bars."

  • China and Barbie; who isn't saying this these days? [L.A. Times]
    "There's no reason why in five to 10 years, China shouldn't be the biggest market in the world for us," said Richard Dickson, Barbie's general manager, sitting on a lattice boudoir bench on the store's fourth floor, where girls can design their own dolls.

  • Introducing: Insiders Out, written by Immersion Guides's Gabe Monroe (with his girlfriend, Shelley Jiang), about all the places in China you wish you could see but can't because it's out in Nowhere.

  • And finally, Earth Day 2009, via Boston Globe (check out the Water Cube). (Also: the Beijinger blog.)

POSTSCRIPT: No, wait -- one last link, courtesy of Kevin Reitz and his complementary Beijing blog, Kevin's Dim Summary: a post all about me.

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