Results tagged “chairmanmao”

Photo of the Day: How Many Mao?

More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here).

China's 60th anniversary plans include giant blockbuster movie

Of course there were going to be official speeches, a PLA march or two, and tons of fireworks... but did you know the Chinese government was also planning on celebrating its 60th anniversary this year with a star-studded blockbuster movie was well? How delightful!

So the story goes: When Chairman Mao visited Shanghai he asked, 'I know there is a Shanghai (上海:on the sea), but is there a Xiahai (下海:under the sea)?' We assume that this was followed by uncomfortable forced laughter as none present (save possibly Zhou Enlai) had the heart (read: cojones) to tell him that the joke stunk.

Available in either a Day or Night versions, this motorised marvel displays images of the Bund drifting by for a maximum of 8 hours. Leave the DVDs alone for a while and enjoy the music of your choice (the clip features "Carbon Dating" by the Super Furry Animals) as you try to understand why on earth the Pinyin is written from right-to-left.

... and spotted doing menial tasks like sweeping the roads, picking up the trash, cooking and putting up pictures of Chairman Mao. No, really, it's just the Red Laowai in his latest incarnation. Tired of singing Chinese commie propaganda songs, he became Jay Chou for a while before donning on his uniform again to become Comrade Lei Feng, the soldier in whose footsteps the youth of China have been indoctrinated to follow. In this latest...

We didn't know whether to laugh or to cry when we saw this one — a shirtless white guy with a picture of Mao Zedong in the background singing patriotic songs such as “My China Heart"《我的中国心》, "Without the Communist Party, there is no New China"《没有共产党就没有新中国》and "Oriental Red"《东方红》which can be best described as a love song to Chairman Mao. He looks like he's got a chest that would make the ladies swoon and the guys jealous, but apart from that — boy, does he make our hair stair on end!

The video includes two images of Kevin Rudd cleverly photoshopped into old communist propaganda posters (yes, the type that you'd find in the Dongtai Lu antique market), and classic lines among the subtitles (which are supposed to the translation for the rubbish Chinese voiceovers) include "Rudd impress and frighten Australian person with his earnestness offensive," and "He unnerve decrepit Howard by deploying clever principle of 'similar difference'. Leader Rudd declares swift and violent Education Revolution." Ingenious. And as the Sydney Morning Herald notes, political parties with their multi-million dollar advertising budgets have a thing or two to learn from guerilla tactics such as these.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao on Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's meeting with the Dalai Lama [Reuters]:

"It's gross interference in China's internal affairs. The Chinese side expresses its strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition... This disgusting conduct has seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and undermined Sino-Canadian relations... The Chinese side demands the Canadian side ... correct its mistaken conduct, immediately adopt effective measures to eliminate adverse impact (from the meeting) and stop winking at or supporting anti-Chinese activities by Tibetan forces."

Recently, internet traffic ranking site Alexa reset the counters of a large number of Chinese websites that have been suspected of manipulating their rankings, including Zhanzuo.com, Kooxoo.com, Pomoho.com, UUSee.com and 67.com. Dating website Marry5.com was another hit by Alexa's move. At one time, it ranked 270 on Alexa (even higher than Match.com!). A China Business Post report also cited a source that said almost all Chinese video sharing sites were manipulating their Alexa rankings. Many new Chinese portals hungry for funding have all resorted to cheating through various means.

Color us excited. The "Lust, Caution" trailer is out!

Remember that Chairman Mao bag that you...your "friend" bought the first time you came to China? These bags are found all over China and they are easy to spot. The bags are dark green with a red star or red portrait of Chairman Mao on the flap. Usually, the bags will contain some quote from Mao's The Little Red Book (the second best selling book in the world, by the way), written in red Chinese...



  • "Video downloads of Guangdong Meng Tong Culture's licensed historical costume drama series "Zhen Guan Chang Ge" were found on Baidu space channel (hi.baidu.com). ... Meng Tone is asking Baidu to pay 440,000 Yuan in compensation."




  • "The disease has now been officially eradicated in China, but the villages remain partly because the patients were unable to rebuild their lives after being institutionalised for decades."




  • "Inspectors with the office of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said the natural river banks along some sections of the Jingjiang River, part of the Yangtze, could be at risk of collapse."




  • "Beginning last week, all foreign tourists to Tibet must be approved by the head office of the "Tibet Travel Service" in Lhasa. Needless to say, the PSB is a heavy presence there."




  • "And coffee grown in China is beginning to climb the quality ladder. Arabica from the southern province of Yunnan is now catching the eye even of specialty roasters such as Starbucks or Italy's Illy."




  • "Beijing authorities are to raise downtown parking fees by 150 percent to discourage motorists from driving into the congested city center. Motorists will have to pay five yuan per hour instead of two yuan for parking close to downtown commercial areas."




  • "In Chongqing, a sprawling municipality in central China, so many owners of private cars and trucks are using fraudulent toll-exempt military plates that one toll highway has estimated annual losses at roughly 10 million yuan, or $1.2 million."




  • "A Chinese policeman was stabbed and wounded on the edge of Tiananmen Square, police said on Tuesday, days after a vandal damaged the huge portrait of late Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong that hangs nearby."




  • "In an exercise to attract the attention of the world community, Tibetans in exile here will be organising their maiden 'Olympics' from May 15-25 next year."




  • "Among the hardest hit is Henan province, the country's bread basket, where rainfall since March has been down 70 percent on the average for the last two years, with no significant rain expected this month, Xinhua news agency said."




  • "The average disposable income of Shanghai urbanites hit 6,795 yuan for the January to March period, followed by 6,676 yuan in the neighboring province of Zhejiang and 5,901 yuan in Beijing."




  • "The chief surgeon, who removed the rusty bullet, was amazed it had remained in her head for so long without causing major problems." Wonder if this will spark a new wave of anti-Japan protests.




  • "The Beijing municipal government blacklisted the horror stories calling them 'illegal terrifying publications.'" The book is called .




  • "But it won't take long for parents to discover that Shanghai, with its many parks, markets and museums, can captivate the younger set."


  • For more del.icio.us links, visit the Shanghaiist Contribute page, which is updated throughout the day.

    Photo by Slow Boat to China found via the Shanghaiist Contribute page.

    This is a snippet from Reuter's report on yesterday afternoon's case of vandalism in Beijing's Forbidden City.

    We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week.

    Chairman Mao's wax doppelganger is probably turning over in its glass case. This Tuesday evening, April 3rd, at 9:30 p.m. local time, NASDAQ President and CEO Bob Greifeld, US Ambassador to China Clark T. Randt, along with representatives from NASDAQ listed Chinese companies will ring the opening bell remotely from … you guessed it …The Great Hall of the People. Meanwhile, back in the US, NASDAQ executives and PRC Consul General in New York Liu Beiwei will host a reception at NASDAQ Tower in Time Square to mark the occasion — no word whether fried dumplings will be served.

    Here at Shanghaiist, we think the Letters from China blog has been busy carving their own blogging niche by reporting on yet another novelty condom available here in China. Not content with sharing the news that police warrant card and Lei Feng frangers were to be found in China, they have now identified the big bopper — Chairman Mao condoms:

    DNA technology has lead many to ponder what could actually be in the world. For some of us, our links with DNA technology stays closer to a key tool in the endless variations of CSI and as a means to revive lost species in Jurassic Park.



  • "This, ladies and gentlemen, is the perfect example of how an otherwise intelligent person can make a huge, expensive mistake in China."




  • "Its author, the often wily and sometimes wobbly Winopete, has now relocated to Shanghai and turned his pen and liver loose."




  • "What distinguishes Collection' from those other shows is that Wang destroys any pieces that are found to be counterfeit."




  • "Shanghai will take measures to preserve and further explore the 19 uninhabited islands which scatter across the sea near the city ..."




  • "A limited number of train cars will be added next month, but they won't be able to fully handle the increased passenger load caused by the rapid expansion of the city's underground."




  • "Users will receive a barcode-like SMS after they purchase their air tickets."




  • "You can see from above, it's chicken soup, some garlic sprouts with pork, some really fatty meat - I was told it's good for your brain, and that it was Mao Zedong's favorite food, huh!"




  • "According to officials of the Beijing-based Whaleinside Culture Corp, which opened Asia's first dark restaurant in Beijing on December 22, the Shanghai outlet will be set up in one of the busiest commercial centers."




  • "The pornography was shown late January 16 and early the next day on a station in Pingshan county in Hebei province, the Beijing Morning Post said Monday, adding the broadcast 'caused a bad social effect.'"




  • The deceased reporter was going to report on the mine owner's operations, and apparently the mine owner wasn't willing to accept an interview, and sent as many as twenty men to deliver the message to the reporter and his colleague.




  • Out of the more than 150 species of fish living in the Yellow River, only 2/3 are left.




  • Yet another casualty of the Olympics.


  • For more del.icio.us links, visit the Shanghaiist Contribute page, which is updated throughout the day.

    Photo by kumo36 found via the Shanghaiist Contribute page.

    The Beijing News recently reported on the unveiling of a 24-carat gold-plated 7-metre high statue of Chairman Mao in Changsha, capital of his home province of Hunan.

    One of the art works you won't be seeing at the Beijing human rights exhibition is Andy Warhol's iconic portrait of an iconic guy, Chairman Mao. The painting found a new owner at a Christie's auction:

    The Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci died recently at the age of 77. Known during most of her career for aggressive, throw caution to the wind type interviewing, she's had an audience with movers and shakers from the Ayatollah Khomeini to Henry Kissinger and Deng Xiaoping. In the New York Times obit/article linked to above, we found links to several of her interviews, including one with Deng Xiaoping in 1980. The interview is interesting as it takes place at a critical juncture in Chinese history -- Deng had assumed control two years earlier and launched the reforms that set the country on a drastically different path than the one Mao had envisioned. The interview deals with the legacy of Mao, the Gang of Four, the Cultural Revolution, and what the consequences of China's reforms.

    In this week's edition of "Shanghaiist Trashes the Media" we have an article from the Sydney Morning Herald. Here's the premise:

    Shanghaiist has always been intrigued by the bits of Western history and culture that seep into the Chinese mainstream — the terrifying, ungodly mix of Buicks, Kenny G, and Da Shan gives us a headache, but is fascinating to behold. Though not quite as fascinating as washing your hair with birth control pills.

    Photo by Moriirom taken from the Shanghaiist photos page. To see your photos on our photos page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site.

    If you've recently moved to Shanghai and you like live music, you don't know how good you've got it. Sure, the scene isn't great yet -- some might argue that it isn't even good -- but at least there is a scene. Two years ago, maybe even a year ago, we couldn't say that. But now there are live music offerings almost every night of week here, and things are only going to get better. We watched Norwegian indie-rockers The Mayflies (not to be confused with The Mayflies USA) play at Live Bar last night, and they were great -- a legitimate band we would have paid to see at one of our old haunts back in Atlanta or Athens, Georgia, where we were never wanting for quality live music.

    Or, maybe not. At the risk of pissing off a commenter, we are posting about Mike Tyson yet again. (This is probably the last time, so it should be safe to check back tomorrow.) We didn't realize that Tyson made a side trip to Beijing during his recent stay in Shanghai. Danwei did, however.

    Spanish-language blog chinochano admits -- partly in English, for our enjoyment -- to being a little "flag crazy" and laments the fact that China only has one flag, the national one, and no regional or provincial banners. His solution? Let local beer labels symbolize the provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. Tsingtao for Shandong. Yanjing for Beijing. Dali for Yunnan. West Lake for Zhejiang. Hapi for Heilongjiang. And Lhasa for Tibet. He didn't mention one for Shanghai -- will we soon be standing and saluting to ... um ... REEB? (Did you know there is a REEB Dark now?) chinochano also directs us to this fantastic collection of Chinese beer labels. Hmmm. Perhaps we should swap out our REEB flag for this Shanghai beer label featuring the image of -- you guessed it -- French movie star Alain Delon.

    Geely Holding Corporation hopes to unveil its first hybrid car on December 26 of this year in honor of Boxing Day Chairman Mao's birthday. Geely's production center for the hybrids is in Xiangtan County in Hunan Province ... so is Shaoshan, Mao's birthplace. The Xiangtan factory can produce 50,000 hybrids a year.

    For all of you who are afraid of accidentally buying fake brand-name goods when all you really want is a pair of socks, this is your day. Having been to Xiangyang Market over the weekend, we heard from one of the “salesmen” that the yearly crackdown is going on as we speak and that it lasts until Wednesday.

    1 2