Extra! Extra! Wikipedia, Jia Zhangke and streetgirls

• The Observer runs a story entitled "Wikipedia defies China's censors," and therefore Wikipedia remains blocked here. Kind of.
• In a surprise win, Chinese film director Jia Zhangke took this year's Golden Lion, the top award at the Venice Film Festival, for his film Still Life. Even more surprising: Ben Affleck won an acting award.
• Gay students "too shy" to attend class on homosexuality at Fudan?
• The Chinese lose more than 600 billion yuan each year from gambling. During the World Cup, an estimated 50 to 100 billion in bets were placed. Such gambling has been illegal on the Mainland since 1949.
• Leather shoes -- more than 2,000 years old -- were discovered in Gansu Province. "We can see that leather shoe-making skills of that time was quite close to that of today," one of the discoverers said. Really?
• How many packages of instant noodles does China produce each year? If you guessed 45 billion ... you are wrong. The correct answers is 46 billion.
• The ethics of eating: "China’s turn towards meat will not only be bad for the environment and bad for animals. It will also be bad for the health of its people."
• Want to sign-up for a "millionaire dating agency" in Hangzhou? All it requires is a non-refundable 50,000 yuan registration fee. It appears the agency assumes all millionaires to be male and ...

  That dating agency has also set up a so-called "beauty bank" for the registered millionaires, which puts very strict requirement for the women who want to apply for it. They have to be "pretty, over 160 cm tall, well-shaped in figure and replete with feminine charm." They must have a steady occupation; if not, they must be undergraduates. There is also a requirement for their language skills, that they must be at least bilingual. Last but not least, they must be single Chinese women over 18 years old.

• It's not too late to catch part of the Shanghai Rugby Sevens. (A friendly reminder to organizers of local events: You can add your event to Shanghaiist's Public Calendar, visible on every page on the website, absolutely free of charge.)
• Mao Zedong: Chinese folk god. But was the anniversary of his death officially ignored?
• A survey suggests that sexual harassment is rampant in the Chinese workplace. No surprise there, we suppose. And guess who is to blame? That's right -- the women, for wearing "sexy clothes."
• Warner Bros. International Cinemas wants to build a "film metropolis" in Shanghai.
• Those cinemas won't be showing any films from Chinese director Lou Ye, no doubt. He's been banned from filmmaking for five years for submitting his latest work Summer Palace to the Cannes Film Festival without government approval. Summer Palace follows "a sexually explicit love story set against China's pro-democracy protests of 1989."
• If you need to take a dump in the middle of a terrorist attack and do not want to be disturbed or blown up, go to Beijing.
• Add Atlanta to the list of US cities that want direct flights to China.
• Meanwhile, Continental Airlines continues its push for Newark-Shanghai flights: "Continental (NYSE: CAL) said the New York/Newark-Shanghai market is nearly five times larger than the Dallas-Fort Worth-Beijing market, which American proposes to serve. The airline added that the New York/Newark-Shanghai market is nearly as large as the combined Washington, D.C.-Beijing that United is proposing and Northwest's proposal for the Detroit-Shanghai market."
• Want the dirt on Chinese government officials? Ask a Beijing taxi driver.
• The Shanghai Maglev just became cheaper. Unfortunately, it hasn't become any more convenient.
• More on Shanghai's huge pension fraud scandal from Forbes and The New York Times.
• If you buy a shirt in China that says "streetgirl" in English on the back but you don't know what "streetgirl" means until you look it up in the dictionary, sue the shirt's manufacturer.
• Chinese sportscaster Huang Jianxiang, the guy who made a fool of himself during the Australia-Italy World Cup match, still doesn't get it: "If I hadn't shouted in a hoarse voice, the problem wouldn't have been so serious. Reviewing the recording, I don't think I stepped over the line too much."

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