In case you've forgotten, yesterday's CNN article was really shitty

China Daily headline, January 2: "Cyber cannibalism"

CNN headline, February 9: "'Cyber cannibals' spreading fear in China"

China Daily source, January 2:

"Wang Jieyu, a director with a Beijing television station, was publicly berated by two young women who recognized him in a restaurant. Wang left the scene immediately and now wears a mask in public to avoid future confrontations."

CNN source, February 9:

Wang Jieyu can tell you all about the cyber cannibals' devastating reach. The Beijing television director has had his life turned inside out.... Now this once confident, sharply dressed, successful young man is reduced to hiding, wearing a mask in public for fear of being recognized.

China Daily doing its homework and finding someone who thinks the Internet shouldn't be policed:

But there are voices raised that caution against too much exuberance in the control.

"Weibo needs the freedom of speech," says Qiao Mu, director at the International Communication Research Center of the Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Excessive government interference will be harmful and he argues that the micro blog must be allowed to find its own level.

CNN: ...

Nope, couldn't be bothered to do such a thing as even cursory research.

Here, again, is Stan Grant's kicker:

But on the web there is nowhere to hide from the prying eyes of china's cyber cannibals.

One hardly believes the article took CNN a month to push out of its poop chute.

"Oh yes," says CNN. Also: CYBER CANNIBALS! GAHHHHHHHH

Short of excerpting 1984, this is the most Americanized and utterly awful lede to a China story that I have ever seen:

Do you ever get the feeling you are being watched? Closed circuit cameras recording your movements, strange noises on the phone line, phone calls that suddenly stop, emails being monitored, and private computer files and Facebook being hacked into. Oh yes, secrecy is no secret in China. Privacy is anything but private.

Do you ever get the feeling that you are being watched... in the shower? DUM DUM DUM. You should probably invest in bathroom curtains.

Here's some good ol' Cultural Revolution-era fearmongering in addition:

But it isn't only the authorities that people in China need to fear -- they may want to be wary of each other. A neighbor, a boss, a former friend... anyone is a suspect, anyone can be a so-called "cyber cannibal."

Never mind that this CNN story is about two years out of date the moment it appeared on its website about two hours ago. Never mind that others have written about this topic -- more than a month ago -- with much more objectivity and depth. Just enjoy sentences like these:

But on the web there is nowhere to hide from the prying eyes of china's cyber cannibals.

Stan Grant knows nothing about the Internet, or China, or, it appears, the shift key.

Nicely done, CNN, for confirming my belief that you suck.

Gingrich and Romney [EDIT: Sorry, no Romney] try to out-dumb one another, and NY Times goes after Apple again

Via Shanghaiist, from the ATV 20th Miss Asia Awards in Hainan province

These are America's leaders:

"And I'd like to have an American on the moon before the Chinese get there." Newt Gingrich, everyone.

"I do not want to be the country that having gotten to the moon first, turn around and say, 'It doesn't really matter. Let the Chinese dominate space. What do we care?' I think that is a path of national decline. And I am for America being a great country, not a country in decline." Mitt RomneyGingrich, everyone.

THESE ARE AMERICA'S LEADERS.

Do you hear that, Chinese people? You have absolutely nothing to fear from the U.S. Now get off its back.

[Quotes via Shanghaiist]

EDIT: Well, that's embarrassing. Thanks to Kenneth Tan for pointing out my quote attribution error. But my feelings about the Republican field of nominees remains the same.

The NY Times on Apple, China... again. "People like Ms. White of Harvard say that until consumers demand better conditions in overseas factories -- as they did for companies like Nike and Gap, which today have overhauled conditions among suppliers -- or regulators act, there is little impetus for radical change. Some Apple insiders agree." Meanwhile, other Apple insiders designed to drink some orange juice. [NY Times]

The first thing that should signal something is awry is the subhead: "For China's rise to continue, the country needs to move away from the model that has served it so well." Stop doing what works... OK, gotcha. But I hate this headline for another reason. The Economist is implying that there are only two options: 1. Western, the model we know; 2. Anything else. And if you're doing "anything else," there's no chance of you succeeding, or mending the model so that it guarantees future success. Why? Because it's not the model we know. [The Economist]

Stan Abrams of China Hearsay then finishes the takedown. "Fourth, religion. Not surprisingly, I find this one laughable. China needs religion to help the poor and to offer people a meaning to their lives beyond economic growth? From reading The Economist over many years, I thought economic growth was an end in and of itself! // But seriously, the government is certainly capable of dealing with poverty on its own; indeed, modern China can boast of having lifted more people out of poverty than any other nation in the history of the world. Thanks, but no thanks, religion. As to the meaning of life, this was a throwaway line in the article not elaborated upon, so I think I’ll ignore it." [China Hearsay]

Paper Republic's Eric Abrahamsen writes about Han Han. "'When the drivers in China turn their high-beams down as they pass each other on the road, they will be ready for revolution,' writes Han Han. 'Of course, by then, revolution won’t be necessary.' Instead, he argues, the process will be a gradual one, in which the cultural values conducive to democracy evolve along with democracy itself. 'Democracy is a long process of negotiation.'" [LA Times blog]

The death penalty. The Economist reports on netizens' support for 31-year-old Wu Ying, sentenced to death for "illegal fundraising." Really, China should practice more leniency, and judging by many of the comments in these two China Smack posts, it seems the people feel the same. I know the government really, really hates drugs and all, but smuggling doesn't warrant a death penalty. Sorry, it doesn't.

A glowing review of James Palmer's Heaven Cracks, Earth Shakes. [The Peking Duck]

NON-CHINA READ: "The accelerating rate of incarceration over the past few decades is just as startling as the number of people jailed: in 1980, there were about two hundred and twenty people incarcerated for every hundred thousand Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to seven hundred and thirty-one. No other country even approaches that. In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. Ours is, bottom to top, a 'carceral state,' in the flat verdict of Conrad Black, the former conservative press lord and newly minted reformer, who right now finds himself imprisoned in Florida, thereby adding a new twist to an old joke: A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged; a liberal is a conservative who’s been indicted; and a passionate prison reformer is a conservative who’s in one." [New Yorker]

The New York Times on Apple, Foxconn

Here's your read of the day from the New York Times:

In 2007, a little over a month before the iPhone was scheduled to appear in stores, Mr. Jobs beckoned a handful of lieutenants into an office. For weeks, he had been carrying a prototype of the device in his pocket.

Mr. Jobs angrily held up his iPhone, angling it so everyone could see the dozens of tiny scratches marring its plastic screen, according to someone who attended the meeting. He then pulled his keys from his jeans.

People will carry this phone in their pocket, he said. People also carry their keys in their pocket. “I won’t sell a product that gets scratched,” he said tensely. The only solution was using unscratchable glass instead. “I want a glass screen, and I want it perfect in six weeks.”

After one executive left that meeting, he booked a flight to Shenzhen, China. If Mr. Jobs wanted perfect, there was nowhere else to go.

And we can frown upon guanxi -- it's technically a term that refers to interpersonal relationships among those doing business, but often it could be a way of saying "greasing the palm" -- but here's proof that it works:

For years, cellphone makers had avoided using glass because it required precision in cutting and grinding that was extremely difficult to achieve. Apple had already selected an American company, Corning Inc., to manufacture large panes of strengthened glass. But figuring out how to cut those panes into millions of iPhone screens required finding an empty cutting plant, hundreds of pieces of glass to use in experiments and an army of midlevel engineers. It would cost a fortune simply to prepare.

Then a bid for the work arrived from a Chinese factory.

When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant’s owners were already constructing a new wing. “This is in case you give us the contract,” the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.

The Chinese plant got the job.

An all-around fascinating read.

And now, an unrelated anecdote:

I'm in a bathroom at Hong Kong International Airport (Chek Lap Kok) earlier this evening when I go to wash my hands. There are two nozzles, both with sensors: out of one comes water; out the other comes a sticky, cummy colloid.

Now, obviously the latter is soap. Right? But trust me when I tell you: when you're expecting water and get the alternative, your only inclination is to think, What the fuck?

Choose wisely.

Wukan update: you don't really know

A few interesting points to take away from the two New York Times articles yesterday about Wukan (Canny Villagers Grasp Keys to Loosen China's Muzzle; Demonstrators Who Took Over Chinese Village Halt Protest).

The villagers have been very welcoming of reporters. They even set up an impromptu "press center":

On one wall of the living room was a portrait of God staring down from the heavens. Below that was a small wooden cross with a figure of Jesus. And below that, taped to the wall, was a white sheet of paper with a statement in Chinese and English. It beseeched reporters not to call the protest an “uprising.”

“We are not a revolt,” it said. “We support the Communist Party. We love our country.”

Of course. In a country whose citizens are as outwardly apolitical as here, no one wants to risk their livelihoods over ideology. People would much rather cooperate, get what's theirs. In this case, we're not exactly sure what that is. Perhaps to keep their homes or be properly compensated? Though that seems like an unlikely result, for land disputes never end well for the majority of people. Expect a compromise in which some profit while most get just barely enough to begrudgingly stop their demonstrations.

You know how sometimes, at the scene of a fight or an accident, everyone rubbernecks it or gathers around to watch? This happens all the time here. Public disputes are a spectacle, a free show. But ask someone to intervene, and watch them turn their heads. Anyway, I wonder how much of what's happening in Wukan is simply a spectacle for the villagers. They don't actually want to risk anything, and you can't really blame them, or say "too bad," for there's a measure of hypocrisy in that sort of response -- we too just want a spectacle, don't we? Because we're safe and sound wherever we're at, and god forbid we're the ones asked to make the real sacrifices in the name of change.

In midmorning, as officials began arriving outside the village, hundreds of residents lined the roadside. Dozens held up a red banner that welcomed the officials “to come to Lufeng to resolve the Wukan incident.”

And the central government's stance?

On Thursday, People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, criticized local officials for letting the situation spiral out of control while praising the efforts of Mr. Wang’s team to resolve the dispute. The provincial officials “created the basic conditions for stability and harmony” in Wukan, the newspaper said.

And finally:

There was relief that the blockade of the village was ending, but also fear among some residents. What would happen, they wondered, once all the outsiders decamped and the spotlight shifted away from Wukan?

“I’m afraid they might come and take people away,” said Huang Rongrui, 40, a construction worker. “The local government always says one thing, but does another.”

NYT journalist in DPRK

If Edward Wang got that crappy hat for three US dollars, he got ripped off. Same hat at Yashow in Beijing sells for $1.50. Less if you can bargain well.

The most hackneyed article about China you will ever read

You know how some poets write with a thesaurus or a rhyming dictionary, and end up endlessly churning out couplets that rhyme "light" with "bight"? No? Right, of course not, cause that's FUCKING RIDICULOUS. You would have to be in third grade to do that.

Well, someone at Fox News decided to write a story about China -- sorta -- using a list of cliches that is FUCKING RIDICULOUS. Let's examine the first five paragraphs, shall we:

It could be said that China has engaged the west by fighting without fighting.

Which is why the Georgetown University men's basketball team received a Shanghai Surprise in its game the other night against the Bayi Rockets in China.

The game devolved into a fight worthy of the spectacle at the Palace at Auburn Hills, rather than the Great Hall of the People.

The only thing missing was an appearance from Ron Artest.

So much for ping pong diplomacy. Try KO diplomacy. All of the punches, kicks and chairs that were thrown represented a Great Leap Forward into what some dubbed "The Great Brawl of China."

Okay. We got:

• Shanghai Surprise (game was in Beijing)
• Great Hall of the People (game was nowhere near the Great Hall of the People)
• Ping pong diplomacy (I believe they were playing basketball)
  
• Great Leap Forward (next time the Atlanta Braves lose a game, I'm going onto my Royals blog and leading off a post with, "War is hell.")
  

But of course, no article written this poorly could go without a reference to ...

Bruce Lee called it the art of fighting without fighting.

Bruce fucking Lee.

I'm wracking my brain here, and I can't think of five comparable cliches for America. I mean, maybe "You're not in Kansas anymore," but you would have to REALLY TRY to write as lazy and cliched an article as the above. Like, you would have to google "most obvious references to American pop culture as seen in other countries" or some shitty phrase like that to get the list, then you'd have to print out the list, then put it in front of you as you build sentences and paragraphs around those items. You would get something like this:

War is Hell.

The pitcher was quickly reminded he wasn't in Kansas anymore. First there was a home run, then another. Someone should have called Social Services, because this was the Invasion of Normandy.

So much for the Four Horsemen.

Phillies 5, Braves 2.

Here's how the Fox News article ends:

Perhaps the era of fighting without fighting is over.

Enter the Dragon.

On Charlie Sheen and Global Times (and al-Jazeera, et al.)

I didn't want to comment on this. I think satire's best left uncommented on, lest you become, unwittingly, the butt of the joke (see: Alessandro; Alessandro, fallout to; my friend's buzz thread; those in bullet points below). But now that Global Times' Charlie Sheen piece is out in the way-the-fuck open, I think it's time for me to throw in a couple cents.

But first allow me this detour: Charlie Sheen is an American hero. Can we all agree on that? Not because he lives the social liberal's dream life with three blond porn stars, but because he's been able to say, clearly and resoundingly, FUCK YOU to an establishment that includes prudish CNN and Wall Street Journal types, overly serious journalists trying to "make sense" of him, conservatives who are disgusted by him and anything resembling non-missionary-position sex, and amateur psychologists all the world over. Charlie Sheen is to be enjoyed while he's still with us (I don't say this with insensitivity) because he's the sort of one-in-a-million personality who, given the platform to communicate with wider audiences, eschews the phony in favor of brutal honesty and entertainment as if to say it actually is possible to be yourself and absolutely right-fucking okay ... okay to be interesting, okay to be funny, okay to have a laugh at everything staid and cliched. Because surely we must recognize how much of our lives are spent wading through the marshes of cliche, right? That we live trapped in houses within houses built by predecessors and ancestors and god-knows-whom, and that people like Charlie Sheen (and poets) open a window ever so slightly and allow us a whiff of freshness. Surely we must understand that the opportunity to diverge from our lockstep march toward death is an opportunity that deserves to be celebrated -- not crushed by loathsome words like "mental" and "unstable." Yes, I know Charlie Sheen is a tragedy wrapped in a comedy, but in all honesty, we have him to thank for giving that to us. Giving himself. America has allowed him to do that. He's the epitome of America in so many ways.

So any news media that uses Charlie Sheen (and they're all using them, those sluts -- worse than any of the porn stars Charlie's loved) in any way that is in the "Charlie Sheen spirit" is off to a good start. So Global Times deserves kudos off the bat here. Charlie Sheen as vehicle for satire. Charlie Sheen as net to catch the hypocrites, even long-time "China watchers" who really, really should know better.

Remember when I implied up top that the best satire ensnares as much as it incites laughter? Well, here is a compendious list of GT's victims:

• Shanghaiist's Kenneth Tan
  
• At least three people on my friend's buzz thread, linked above.
• Al-Jazeera's Melissa Chan
  
• At least he admitted to being "punk'd": Foreign Policy's Daniel Drezner
  
• Richard, Peking Duck (disappointing...)
  
• Snark, NICE! (I might have to spell it out for him: "nice" is in all-caps = sarcasm): former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors Robert Stein, who, instead of admitting he didn't get the joke, replied: "Yeah, as I remember. Chairman Mao had us in stitches for years."
  

Here's the thing with all these people: they failed to get the joke even after it was explained to them by a Global Times editor (from Shanghaiist):

The answer is, it’s a spoof column, with full editorial connivance, and was intended to amuse as well as gull a few “Western” readers who’ll believe either a) any mad crap a Chinese commentator says or b) failing that, that the Chinese are incapable of humour or being “in on it” and therefore must be having a prank played on them. Either view is patronizing and/or offensive, I think you’d agree but - even if you don’t - in this case, you’re wrong.

Kenneth Tan's response to the above was essentially: we're just a blog, don't get mad at us.

But Kenneth, you're a blog of some repute, and even after the joke was explained, the best you could offer in reply was a defensive-sounding, "Yes, it didn't quite cross our minds that your bosses were in on the joke. But seriously, can you blame us for that? Have you read some of the jackshit that's published on the other pages of your paper?" You're not necessary wrong for not assuming the best in people, but your tone conveys a strange lack of awareness of who the enemy is -- if there is one.

The other things you say -- which I'll spare you the humiliation of re-reading on this blog -- sound even more defensive. You're the Shanghaiist. You probably blog out of an office -- unlike me, I'm blogging in my pajamas right now. You have influence. Act like it.

And here's al-Jazeera's Melissa Chan: "And so The Global Times editors signed off on a piece ostensibly about Charlie Sheen, probably believed there was some merit to the argument for Eastern values, recognised the reality of how business and mistresses are dealt with in China -- and in doing so, published a piece that was also mocking The Global Times itself."

I learned my lesson a while back with Alessandro: don't assume. In this case, don't assume that Chinese people don't "get the joke." And certainly don't conflate, as people are wont to do, the dispassionate and seemingly unbreakable veneer of the authoritarian government that controls China with the people who inhabit this country. It's one thing to say the government doesn't like joshing around -- though didn't Wikileaks show us the goal of international diplomacy for basically every country is to establish as elaborate a facade as possible? -- but it's another to say that the Chinese just don't "get" it.

Alas, I fear if we delve further, we're going to lose some readers. As Thomas Roche of Techyum puts it in a good but sorta roundabout piece: somehow we've reached the stage of "a hoax within a hoax within a hoax." And that's not a good place to be.

Try as I might, I can't really angry at any one person. But I'm going to use Melissa as an illustrative case here. The target of the satire was not the U.S. It wasn't China, really. It was ... you ready for this, Melissa Chan? ... YOU! (I'm channeling the spirit of Time, please excuse me.) YOU, Melissa Chan! I think balloons are falling from the rafters! Confetti is rocketing up to meet them in starbursts of color! The lights are flashing, Melissa, the lights, the hot lights of fame and glory!!! You are winning!

Chinese police and Western media dance at Wangfujing

This is very cute. On one side, state police, like school girls wearing bonnets waiting for their young knights; on the other, Western media types, horny and hormonal and needing but a little punch to work up the nerve to approach. All to the backdrop of Wangfujing, where soirees are are often attended by the grand duchess herself.

There was no revolution, but you know this already. By now -- if you've been in China for any length of time -- you understand that no one cares about these sort of things, by and large. But the police showed up in force, because you can't be too careful in either sex or statecraft, and the Western media types lived up to their reputation. Consider the rabble roused. Perhaps next time ... smile?

The only losers here? As Adrienne Mong of MSN reports:

Ordinary Chinese were bewildered. “What’s going on? Why can’t we walk here?” they asked.

Some were more belligerent. One woman started shouting, “Why can’t I go down here? Why are you stopping me? Stop pushing.”

The consumers, who only wanted to spend a few hundred kuai and be on their way. But, again, you know this, too: consumers rule China.

Well done, everyone. Well fucking done.

Meanwhile, Chinese Internet buzzes over Richard Li and Isabella Leong.

so much depends / upon / a red rain / coat

glazed with rain, etc.

My sincerest apologies to William Carlos Williams.

The big news out of China tonight -- and this is ALL over the motherfucking wires -- is that Chongqing's police are wearing colorful raincoats to "improve their often hard public image."

Like -- sarcasm alert -- in the photo here (below), an AP pic that ran on Yahoo, NPR, et al.



Uh, let's see, what's wrong here... a cop dressed in all black on a fancy, technologically advanced -- I daresay futuristic -- piece of equipment in a picture with a shallow depth of field with the blurred background image being -- well, what the fuck else? -- a portrait of Mao...

Oh.

Great job, Western editor. Bravo. You've conflated "China" with "Chongqing" and in the same fell swoop brought authoritarian imagery to a story about RED FUCKING RAINCOATS. What's that, you're chuckling? Okay, I get it. You were being IRONIC.

You. Are. Such. A. LOUSE.

You know what, on second thought... William Carlos Williams would have given you a goddam standing ovation. Like fitting form to meaning, you've fit an image to the China narrative. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.

Well, that didn't take long

I wrote about iPads on the Beijinger a couple weeks back, so it's good to see that the Chinese are on the ball with this: reports Reuters: "Just three weeks after the global launch, bootleg versions of Apple Inc's hot-selling iPad tablet PCs have begun showing up on the shelves of online and real-world shops in piracy-prone China."

I especially liked this quote:

"This is just the first rough version," says Lin a crew-cut agent speaking in bursts of quick-fire Cantonese.

"While the shape isn't quite the same, the external appearance is very similar to the iPad, so we don't think it will affect our sales that much," he added, explaining the difference was due to the difficulty sourcing matching parts because of the quick two-month turnaround time for the first version's development.

Good to see the people are working hard to improve their craft. Can't wait for the second gen knockoffs of the first-gen product.

Links: Quick-and-dirty edition

Hot or not? Hmm...

• China Hush, which supplied the above picture, notes that Japanese AV idol Sora Aoi is causing quite a stir in China, perhaps single-handedly driving a citizen- (or Netizen-) led campaign to -- with apologies to Chris Jericho -- break down the Great Firewall. Interestingly, if you Google "Sora Aoi," you quickly come to the website Bukkake TV. Um, NSFW.
  
  
• Lead (also from China Hush): "Not long ago, Dr. Zhang Hongyan encountered an embarrassing moment at the hospital emergency room: a woman dressed in rags was sent to the hospital with her lower body attached to her pet dog’s genital." Apparently the woman had her nine-year-old son help her make the call to the hospital. Believe it or not. Perhaps the only thing more bewildering than this article is the top comment, from Samuel, a first-class example of missing the point: "great article. thank you so much for sharing. this is a social problem that needs to be address in the future as China emerges as an influential power.
  
  
• More women of China, via Danwei.
  
  
• Kunming isn't all sunshine and that tourist-guide shit. Here, GoKunming exposes the darker side of the city's management officers.
  
  
• Just for fun: some really harsh words from China Daily letter-writers.
  
  
• Because good sites deserve recognition: Sinosplice.
  
  
• Reuters's China blog has again changed URLs as it's merged with the Japan beat into a "Global News Journal."

KFC: do not like; these new blogs, however...

One of my biggest frustrations from traveling to Shanghai and Ningbo was with KFC. I know how weird that sounds, and you have every right to question why I'd go to KFC -- seek it out, even -- when I'm in a region known for xiaolongbao and zongzi, both of which would make better meals and snacks. Anyway, long story short, let's just say the service was slow and unreliable, and SEVEN kuai for a crappy sundae when I can get a bigger, better one at McDonald's for five? Ridiculous.

Anyway, then I got home and read this from the Beijinger, and feel much better.

***

A few blogs to pass along: apparently Beijing Notebook, an award-winning China travel blog, is back in action; Round-the-World Barstool Blues, the writer of which is based in Beijing; and Froogville (these last two blogs both recently commented on the Gulou-demolition ordeal, so check that out if you're interested in the fate of that neighborhood).

Also, if you haven't already (and why wouldn't you have?), check out New York Times Magazine's feature about China's cyberposse, i.e. human flesh search engine.

The power of one unnamed source

UPDATE, 3/23, 1:26 pm: Google's statement, China's (via Xinhua) response.

I'm glad to see not ever news organization has jumped on this, but ever since Wall Street Journal quoted one unnamed source on Sunday as saying that Google will announce its imminent departure from China, lots of folks have taken it for truth. If it happens, it happens, I suppose. I won't get into the details in this space (you can read TechCrunch's excellent summary of the situation from January) except to say I would much rather have seen Google forced out, as then maybe China's state media can stop harking on the "Google is just making a selfish business move" angle.

Google very well may be looking after its (domestic) business interests by pulling out, but that seems beside the point. The issue none of the state-owned op-ed sections wants to scrutinize is censorship, something that takes a dramatically different form here than in the U.S. (let's just say there're a couple media personalities in the U.S. that make me very much want to apply China's censorship policies to that country).

According to WSJ's unnamed source, an announcement of some sort is happening later today. Stay tuned?

Gutless: Global Times's response to Sky Canaves

UPDATE, 3/12: I've since re-evaluated my initial response. I've kept the below for posterity, but here's my apology to Jacob Li and the Global Times editorial team.

Well, the "impending death" alluded to in my Alessandro post turned out to be an indefinite suspension, as Global Times's Jacob Li tells us in today's issue:

The most frightening piece of writing I've read recently is a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) blog about my colleague Alessandro. He, together with our newspaper, was accused of projecting a vulgar voice by discussing vaginas amid the Chinese ambition of gaining a bigger voice among foreign audiences.

You, sir, are a pussy. No, not pussy... vagina. You are a big fat vagina dripping with vagina juice and you deserve to be stuffed back into the vagina from whence you came, you stupid vagina.

Admittedly, the joke is sophomoric and perhaps should have been killed with better judgment...

Vagina.

...Oddly enough, I feel more frightened than ashamed after reading the blog titled A Vulgar Turn in China's International Media Ambitions...

...written by a humorless vagina...

...and its more fearsome Chinese translation Chinese Media's Vulgar Voice Irks Reader...

...written by vaginas who take humorless vaginas way too seriously...

...thanks to last year's anti-vulgarity crusade during which...

Vagina, vagina, vagina.

The joke was just about the vagina, not about China. It was not even about Chinese vaginas – the one who raised the question was a foreign woman.

[Vagina joke.]

Still, I would like to apologize to those who have been offended by Alessandro's occasional vulgar language during the last three months.

Have I mentioned how much of a vagina you are?

I decided to discipline the foul-mouthed Italian...

You HAVE to understand that by keeping up the ruse that Alessandro is 1) real, and 2) actually Italian, you're undercutting your message, right? Or is that your point?

If you're really apologizing, why not out "Alessandro"? Grand plans for the future? If that's the case, ignore the rest of what I have to say. Email me off-blog and explain how a creative, free-spirited, subversive, hilarious voice was able to get a job at your publication, because by God, the writer of Alessandro was actually good.

...by canceling his advice column until he realizes how wrong he is and how he has jeopardized Metro Beijing, the first daily English language local news provider in town.

So let me get this straight: you're canceling the column because some prude working for the Wall Street Journal hates humor and has, with the might of all that is holy in the name of the Western press, derided it in a fucking blog post, and as a result you think your action -- this cancellation -- will save Metro Beijing? VAGINA, how chicken-hearted are you? The equivalent of this would be MSNBC issuing an apology for everything Keith Olbermann has said in the past three years because Rush Limbaugh called him "offensive." Apparently, however, hell has no wrath like a vagina in the Western press scorned.

As I read more of the blog, I did start to feel ashamed of being incompetent, particularly when I saw the appellations Miss Canaves of the WSJ gives us: An arm of the People's Daily, the Communist Party's official mouthpiece and the "government-run" epithet, and calling us on our so-called great ambition of gaining a voice abroad.

Oh, Ms. Canaves, spank me harder, I've been a bad boy, I've been real incompetent, oh please shame me, Ms. Canaves, oh please give it to me, tell me I'm an arm of the People's Daily, oh yes! yes I'm a mouthpiece, oh yes I'm a mouthpiece, oh yes the mouthpiece! the mouthpiece! yes! yes! yes!!

Is the "fake" Italian a spy who has sneaked into the "government-run" newspaper, trying to sabotage our mission of making the official voice roar in the West? Have I been trapped in his well-designed snare?

I'm a bit confused. Your mission is to make the official voice roar in the West? Are you being sarcastic here? Are you saying you believe you DO represent the "official voice," i.e. you ARE a mouthpiece of the government? And furthermore, that you want that voice to "roar"?

If you are being sarcastic, shouldn't you be, um, PROMOTING Alessandro? Maybe you are promoting Alessandro. Maybe this is all a joke, and I've fallen for it. Maybe you are much wiser than I've given you credit for. Maybe I've failed to read between the lines. Maybe I will be retracting everything I've said in two months when Alessandro makes his glorious return.

Then again, maybe you're just milquetoast.

And yes, you have been trapped, you vaginisitc vagina.

All the anger and doubts, however, disappear when I recall the statement we made in our launch issue: We simply aim to provide reliable and fast news and become a communication platform for expats living in this country.

I'm confused again. Fill in this blank: My anger and doubts disappear because ___.

I think you would say -- and forgive me if I'm wrong, I'm not practiced in reading the minds of namby-pamby vaginas -- that your anger and doubts have disappeared because you've realized you're a vagina whose diet consists of high-energy, high-fiber, low-fat vaginas.

The column was becoming a communication platform for expats, which means on top of being a vagina, you are a vaginaing vuhgina vagina.

We're clear about who we are. This is simply an English language newspaper run by Chinese people, with the help of some foreigners.

You're a fucking China Daily wannabe.

But if objectivity and plurality happen to build up our country's soft power, everyone who is involved should feel proud.

You're a milksop.

Anyway, we should thank Miss Canaves for pointing out the inappropriateness of some of Alessandro's advice.

You're a douchebag and a groveling idiot.

It helps us, a fledgling English language newspaper, to find the boundary.

Define your own fucking boundary and find your own fucking voice, you conforming vagina.

But the spirit of Alessandro will live on, in a good way.

If by "spirit" you mean as the 17th century poets meant it -- cum -- and if by "a good way" you mean "in my vagina," then yes, good sir, you have redeemed yourself and your column was a worthwhile use of our time which we shall never want back even if we would eat maggot-flecked goat testicles to get it back.

Well done, Global Times. Vive le Western media!

p.s. Fuck you, Sky Canaves.

The impending death of Ask Alessandro?

Alessandro is a man. He lives in Beijing now. Earlier he was Italy's greatest character actor in advertisements, at which time he was known as Marlon Brandex. He has loved many women, very much.


The picture of "Alessandro," after redesign.


Alessandro, before redesign. Way to decide to crop him, Global Times.

*

Many months ago, I came across Ask Alessandro, a humor column in the Global Times, through a friend's gchat status message. This, by way of example, is one of the many posts that made me laugh out loud. Forgive me for excerpting liberally:

Dear Alessandro, Ever since I got to Beijing, it's like my boyfriend doesn't even notice me anymore! He spends all of his time looking at these Chinese girls, and they are looking at him! And then he tries to tell me how beautiful they are! It makes me feel so angry! Why is he like this, and what can I do to make him love me again?

Sincerely,

Monica

Hello Monica,

When I first see this letter, forgive me I make an assumption. You are obviously not a very beautiful woman. But I mention this to my friend Beppe, who is analyst. He tell me some things, like one time, a woman came to his o. ce – maybe 40 years old, but still scorchio – and he says you can see the line of her suspenders under her skirt while she was talking! Serious! Amazing he get paid for this.

Anyway, he say some times there is beautiful women come to him and their lover doesn't try to satisfy them. He study this and fi nd some men so lazy in their lovemaking they actually give the woman a "negative orgasm". I don't know what they waste all their energy on, maybe they like jogging very much or something. But serious, it seem all the woman getting negative orgasm have something in common: they married to British and German men. So maybe not so surprising after all. I guess maybe your boyfriend is British, ha ha. Or German. Sorry, is not funny.

Beppe writes a thesis on the condition at the moment, what he call "Deprivation of Any Vaginal Ecstasy", or DAVEgasms for short. Don't bother to read, is mostly boring. My advice to you is become more like Italian woman. If your man can't satisfy you, get drunk, scream, throw things at him and tell him if he don't make you feel like a real woman you will cut yourself and fottere his dad.

"You are obviously not a very beautiful woman"? Scorchio? DAVEgasms? Wow.

Wait, there's more!

Dear Alessandro, I'm a single, white, North American female between 30 and 35 living in Beijing, and I can't find a date. What should I do?

Signed,

TCAMF (The Cat Ate My Face)

There is old saying in my tongue, which is Italian. We say, "Il mio fronte sta fondendosi," which translates literally as "my face is melting," though often we use as metaphor for when someone has told a ribald joke. For instance, we might say, "I am standing too close to this tanning bed, il mio fronte sta fondendosi." But that a very literal way to use the saying, and standing too close to tanning bed is no joke. Can get skin cancer. But it is important that you realize that the phrase can be taken literally or fi guratively, as I assure you, when I first came to China, il mio fronte sta fondendosi. Literally. I don't know why this be. Maybe pollution.

Instantly, I knew four things about this column:

1. This was among the funniest, most creative recurring pieces in ALL the serial print world, not just Chinese media.

2. The editors of this column -- surely Chinese, if such editors existed -- were NOT in on the joke. (Unless, now that I think about it, I haven't given been giving Chinese editors enough credit.)

3. This was great satire.

But beyond a shadow of a doubt,

4. This wasn't going to last.

Yet somehow, someway, the column persevered, thrived, even. And that made me happy in the same way that small surprises, like blue skies in Beijing, made me happy. It made me perk up the way you might if you walked into a random neighborhood bar in Brooklyn and discovered an absolutely brilliant band playing in front of six people.

No one I've spoken to about this column has expressed dislike -- most, in fact, have given it a ringing endorsement, even if they didn't always find it funny. Surely, I thought, whatever subversive expat penning this and laughing his her ass off was a brilliant, daring, reckless scribe who gave a damn about neither censors nor authority. She was, in a disguised manner, showing the world that China did not utterly lack a sense of irony (though it does, really). It became easy to believe that there was hope yet for Chinese media to loosen its shackles, laugh every once in a while at itself.

More to the point, the Ask Alessandro column defined Global Times, made it unique. It might not have been enough for me to actually seek out Global Times and buy a copy, but it gave me a reason to talk about the paper. It added to its identity, which, while still in its formative stages, can be roughly defined as not-China Daily. If there's one place to NOT find humor, it's China Daily.

But now I fear Ask Alessandro has met its match and may soon come to a crashing halt. And for that we have the prudes over at the Wall Street Journal to thank.

At 9 p.m. earlier tonight, WSJ's China blog's top post was one titled, "A Vulgar Turn in China's International Media Relations."

The piece is so clueless, I cannot think of a way to summarize it for anyone with a sense of humor. I will, however, provide a link. (Suffice it to say, it involves an over-sensitive business reporter.)

As I commented at the end of the WSJ post (with less-than-exemplary grammar):



Here's to hoping -- to really, really hoping -- that Ask Alessandro's next column makes due mincemeat of this unjust attack on its Italian machismo.

POSTSCRIPT: This is the offending column that got the WSJ writer (who does good work normally, I must say for the record) so upset. In all honesty, I was expecting to see that Alessandro dropped the C word. UPDATE, 3/11: The editors have since taken down the column, and all his rest.

POSTSCRIPT 2: RIP, Jon Swift.

UPDATE, 3/11: My response to Global Times's response.

Roger Cohen: The self-immolation of Tang Fuzhen

NYT, 1/25:

On that day, Nov. 13, as Tang Fuzhen yelled at the demolition brutes to stop the violence against her siblings, as she pleaded with them to leave her house intact, she doused herself three times in gasoline, saying she would set herself on fire, right there on the roof, if the beating of her family continued.

The blows continued to rain down and the self-immolation of Tang Fuzhen, 47, was added to the long list of victims of explosive Chinese development.

The nexus of that growth often comes down to real estate: Who owns it, who gets the sweet deals on it, who gets ousted, and who among Communist Party officials and their developer cronies pockets the big bucks from the infrastructure, business and residential projects that have turned China into a monumental construction site.

POSTSCRIPT: Also from the NY Times, a different subject but also one I closely follow: Education as a Path to Conformity. Quote:

Starting at 6, children are buried under an avalanche of studies until they graduate from high school. Twelve-hour days (less on weekends, but no days off) are common among first-graders. For his first Chinese New Year semester break, my 6-year-old son was given 42 pages of math and 42 pages of Chinese homework to complete in four weeks. The goal? Entrance to an elite college like Peking or Tsinghua University.

Yet once there, laziness can set in. Many students kick back, relying on their elite network to smooth a path through life. After the slog of the previous 12 years they feel they deserve a break. Perhaps they do. But it’s no incentive for academic brilliance.

Links of the day, and a note about China Geeks

Haven't done this in a while...

• Wall Street Journal on chaiqian (拆迁), i.e. demolish-and-relocate (or "remove," as WSJ translates it.)
  

  The struggle between small homeowners and property developers has become a recurring theme in contemporary China, leading to increasingly dramatic protests against local officials and even inspiring a novel Chinese interpretation of the hit film Avatar.
  
  Aiming to reduce the social tensions inherent in the process of urban redevelopment, Beijing has been planning to revise the regulations that govern the tearing down of people’s homes to make way for new real estate projects. A draft of the new rules is expected to be released for public comment in the coming weeks. In the meantime, experts, lawmakers and officials have been meeting to discuss proposed changes.

  
  
• CN Review's Kai Pan, writing in classic Kai Pan style, summarizes the Google debate, offers a viewpoint and links to every article that was ever written on the subject here.
  
  
• The Peking Duck: Censor Me
  
  
• More about Google, from Fifty 5 (56minus1)
  
  
• Danwei: Dirty jokes by mobile phone
  
  
• Bokane: on Confucius (the movie) and the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (and via a comment from that post, The Warring States Project from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst).
  
  
• the Beijinger: pictures of masked civilians (Shredder look-alike contest, as the authors call it)
  
  
• And finally, via Shanghaiist, this article from Business Week says "modern" doesn't necessarily equate to "Western."
  

  We also asked young Chinese to choose one wish that would make their life happier. Surprisingly, 82% chose to do something for their parents, most commonly to provide them an easy life.
  
  

And finally, I have absolutely no idea how I could've missed this -- and I'm appalled, trust me -- but China Geeks, which has been active since at least May 2009 (and possibly before that -- forgive me for not being able to check at the moment), has to be one of the best China blogs active today. It's only getting stronger with the addition of one of ChinaSmack's team members.

James Cameron is China's Eywa

I saw Avatar a few days ago at a Cleveland 3-D theater and must admit to really liking it. The highest superlatives don't do justice to the beauty of the visuals -- which, it must be duly noted, cover up the paper-thin storyline, the much-too-obvious Native American vs. Colonialism/Blackwater allegory, and unpaid homages to Dances with Wolves, The Last of the Mohicans and Lawrence of Arabia -- and I was exceedingly touched by a few of the scenes.

That said, I don't think I'd ever have waited in line all night to buy a ticket for a showing three days later. From Wall Street Journal:

In Shanghai, to get an IMAX ticket for Avatar can mean waiting in freezing weather all night for a show three days later. Shanghai local media reported that on Friday, around 500 people were queuing for tickets at 8 a.m. in front of the downtown Peace Cinema, including some who had waited for 12 hours. Movie fans came equipped with quilts, wooden stools and snacks, in a scene reminiscent of that at train-station ticket windows before the Lunar New Year holidays in China, when huge numbers of Chinese travel to be with family.

A friend of mine at China Daily also wrote about Avatar a few days back, in a front-page story no less.

The WSJ article also says:

As the year’s first foreign movie in China, the sci-fi film has grabbed the imagination of tens of millions of Chinese. China Film Group Corp. Estimates are that the total box office take may ultimately top 500 million yuan. So far, the Hollywood disaster film 2012 has fetched the most at the box office in China’s history at 460 million yuan.

Not sure if the writer was punning on "disaster film," or smirking at least. I thought 2012 was pretty good considering its genre.

POSTSCRIPT: I also saw The Road, which is, of course, based on the Pulitzer-winning novel by my favorite author, Cormac McCarthy. There's less-than-zero chance that film will ever make it into Chinese theaters, but if you see it at a DVD store, consider buying it. (Please keep in mind I'm hopelessly biased towards all things McCarthy.)

Top 10 of China Daily's Top 10 Everything 2009

On the Beijinger's website today I have a top 10 list -- though I disdain catalogs -- which I submitted in order follow the footsteps of my journalism heroes over at China Daily, who have compiled twenty-six top-10 lists as of this moment (that number may change by tomorrow -- they've been posting new ones every day; in the story, you'll see that the number I quoted was "21").

My editor rightly cut out a couple inflammatory references that would've created unnecessary trouble for the company, but because this blog gets far fewer readers -- and since Blogspot's blocked anyway -- I have no qualms about posting the references here. Very simply, they were the following three links, which were among the best China-related stories from this past year:

• Foreign Policy: Christina Larson on China and Xinjiang
  
  

  Ultimately, China is more adept at creating fearsome impressions in the moment -- grand like the Olympic Opening Ceremony, or cruel like the crackdown on protestors -- than at maintenance. When you look close, it's apparent how much muddle there is beneath the surface, especially when authorities attempt to formulate policy around something they don't truly understand.
  
  The Uighurs, as well as Islam itself, mystify China's secular leadership. In Xinjiang, a vast western province -- three times the size of France and bordering eight countries -- China's long-term policy toward minorities is puzzled in principle, capricious in execution, and the result is much suffering on the part of both Uighur and Han. Far from containing tension, the heavy-handed approach fans the flames. It is a brutal kind of confusion.

  
  
• Boston Globe: National Day celebrations
  
  
• James Fallows on Liu Xiaobo
  
  

Also see: Evan Osnos's Top Ten China Myths of 2009

There were, of course, many more stories worth revisiting, including Newsweek's coverage (sample here) and Time's (whose China blog is no more) (and Reuters, Wall Street Journal, et al.) and Danwei's and CN Reviews and, well, I do have an extensive blogroll off to the right.

For those in China who're still awake -- drop me a line and tell me how it is in 2010. I'll join you in the new decade in about ten-and-a-half hours.