From the Shanghaiist:

It’s a shame that those fans weren’t actually North Korean. The almost touching displays of North Korean patriotism were in fact put on by Chinese actors, ahem, “volunteers.” Hired by the China Sports Events Management Group and the North Korean Sports Committee, the actors were brought in because few…

Continue readingWorldcup North Korean fans = Chinese hired hands!?

Lamma Island is one of the outlying islands in Hong Kong that is only accessible by ferry. All the namecards of businesses on Lamma have ferry timetables printed on the back. In this case the namecard folds out to show the schedule.

From an article about the man who spent decades researching the 35-40 million famine-related deaths during the Cultural Revolution and then ultimately publishing a book on the subject:

Yang had steeled himself for a backlash from the authorities in the wake of Tombstone. He was certainly vulnerable. He still lived with his wife in a Beijing apartment provided by…

Continue readingDecay and evolution in China

From James Fallows in the Atlantic:

[Google co-founder] Brin’s family experience with repression in the old Soviet Union is universally assumed to have shaped his uncompromising stance toward repression in today’s China. His parents brought him from Moscow to Maryland when he was a child; by all accounts, it was Brin who drove the recent change in Google’s policy toward China.

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Continue readingThe easy answer: Why Google stepped away from China

From Chinfographics:

Read the original post with some background info.

Photos taken 1-2 hours before the vigil started…

First: Wailing, playing, singing to encourage people to attend the vigil.

Right to the band: Man dripping red paint on the floor, and then doing push-ups (could see the beads of sweat on his forehead).

Then: A flyer for…

Continue readingA visual roundup of protest art around the 6-4 vigil

I’ve been a fan of Nciku‘s langauge learning services for a while now, most notably their core dictionary service. So when they came out with a new experiment today, I’m more than happy to plug it:

You can read Peter the Rabbit, online, for free, in English or Chinese. You can have…

Continue readingThe Tale of Peter Rabbit, english + mandarin, text + audio

From ESWN:

[ESWN comment:  Why do the Chinese media and Internet users seem to want to see Foxconn dead?  I cannot not help but go back to August 2006 when Foxconn sued a newspaper editor and a newspaper reporter for 10,000,000 yuan each on defamatory reporting.  They did not sue the newspaper — they sued the individual media workers…

Continue readingWhy the Foxconn hubbub? (A story about media ecology)

Just came back from ARTHK10, which is Hong Kong’s new annual art fair that promises to showcase artists and galleries, and connect with collectors around the world.

ArtInfo reports from the scene of yesterday’s VIP showings and continues to put up the open question of whether Hong Kong can become the art fair…

Continue readingHong Kong’s bid to become the pan-Asian art fair city