Interview: Grace Before Meals post-rocking Shanghai
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Around Shanghai: No more airplane temperature checks, but we're getting a Wall St. Bull and Linkin Park!
Despite some pretty damning arguments regarding the plausibility of blending cardboard and caustic soda into baozi, steamed pork buns, the internets are chattering again: Government conspiracy and cover-up! The fake buns being fake is itself fake!
It's a bit like unpicking the speech of an 8-year-old who has just discovered double-negatives-- It's not not Opposite Day, not!-- but we'll do our best.
Officials searched Beijing high and low for cardboard buns, and concluded that overzealous TV reporter Zi Beijia staged the whole thing. One very brave Japanese guy even made cardboard buns in his kitchen and testified that they taste totally gross (link to ESWN for translation). Zi's bosses issued an apology, and Zi has been taken into custody pending as-yet-unknown criminal charges (AP coverage here).
But wait-- there's more! Danwei reports the latest in nattering nabobs of netizen dissent:
What is not being reported in the press is that many people in Beijing believe that the news about the cardboard buns story being fake is itself fake (e.g. see these posts by Chinese journalists Ping Ke and Milk Pig). The way the authorities have gone about stopping the story is exactly the same way they clamp down on real news stories that they don't want circulating.It makes sense to us that, after decades of clamping down on real stories that they wished were fake, authorities would use similar tactics in the suppression of an actual fake story.
But dissent rages on.
Upon returning to the site of the already-acknowledged-to-be-fake fake bun story, Hong Kong reporter Ming Pao returned to the number 13 courtyard of Shizikou village, location of Zi Beijia's original story, and had a strange reception (translation via ESWN):
At the scene yesterday, our reporter observed that there was a high level of security outside number 13 in Shizikou village. There were uniformed security guards as well as unidentified men keeping watch.When the reporter asked a cleaner where number 13 was located, the cleaner was immediately warned by a man not to talk. When the men found out who the reporter was, one of them came up to push the reporter around while threatening: "If you dare to go in, you better be careful that someone will beat you up." The reporter called the Taiyanggong town government for assistance. The town deputy party secretary named Huang said that he does not know about what is happening. When the reporter asked the town government to send someone as company, the deputy party secretary said that all their party cadres are in meetings and therefore nobody can be dispatched. He asked the reporter to go by himself. He said that they would inform the village and the reporter can call the police if he feels that his personal safety is at risk.
When the reporter returned to Number 13 courtyard in Shizikou village, a woman told him that the town leader had just telephoned to warn them not to let any reporter in.
Standard-issue government secrecy and subsequent citizen defensiveness? Or conspiratorial cover-up in the face of fake-product overexposure in the international media?
Related links
Danwei: Is the fake news story fake news?
ESWN: Why do people think that a fake news story is real?
Picture via ESWN
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I am exercising my right to say this as a guest beacuse I am embarassed to say this: Shanghaiist
F**K YOU. You take what is probably the most important story of the year: FOOD POISONING and you turn it into a joke. Despite this , despite that? Why don't you try the caustic soda experiment yourself instead of acting so damn smug? What have you done for this story except repeat what every other China blog has said with more conviction and insight than you have?
Whatever the real conclusion to this issue is, you have contributed nothing but empty conjecture.
Lazy lazy lazy.
Shanghaiist has turned the story into a joke??? I'm not sure what you found so funny in this story Guest #1, so fuck YOU. I thought this story was every bit serious.
Why have all the comments here gone so bitchy everyone? Truth be told, Nanheyangrouchuan makes more sense than some of the idiotic and imbecilic commenters around here like the nincompoop above me.
"exercising rights" - in China? Go home guest, excuse me, g**st #1.
Can't I just write FUCK as many times as I want? Who censors their own posts like this? A W*SS I bet.
Anyway, did the reporter get fired or promoted for this story? ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW MOTHAFUCKAAAAASSS and fuck once more
Obviously nobody is censoring you here, but I sure wish they did, JACKASS!
Why so I don't break your ear hymens yet again?
I mean eye hymens
I am sick and tired of all this motherfucking cardboard in my motherfucking baozi!
Just goes to show how badly China, Chinese culture big commie all migh tee truly suck the big one.
nanheyangrouchuan
Who gives a flying toss? It's just crap peasant muck I wouldn't feed my dog.
i heard from a beijing taxi driver that he also thinks the story is true, but the government is clamping down for a different reason. and it made a whole lot of sense to me.
the bun makers can decide to put cardboard in the buns at any given time. of course when the story broke, these guys aren't dumb. they're not going to keep putting cardboard in the buns. so obviously when the authorities go to investigate, they don't find any cardboard buns.
so what they do is, they force the reporter to apologize, wait for the cardboard bun makers to lower their guard and then catch them in the act.
Funny how Chinese people and Non-Chinese people see the same story in two different ways. I choose to believe that just because the Chinese government is communist, it isn't inherently evil and trying to feed it's citizens with cardboard buns for the sake of loss face.
but that's just me.
um sorry im japanese and i actually saw the video of the guy making the buns, he didnt say they were disgusting but actually good.. i donno who your translator is but they are WAY off...go get a new one please so that you dont relay the news wrong.