Plus more links inside on China's first moon rover, Chen Guangcheng as Colonel Sanders, and breastfeeding. more ›

In a Mongolian section of the Gobi desert, William Lindesay and a team of explorers discovered a 100km section of the Great Wall which was last written about in a 12th century atlas that recorded the battles of Genghis Khan. more ›

Experts in Mongolian studies who have spent the last year compiling Genghis Khan's code of laws, which is believed to be the world's first constitution say the legendary Mongolian conqueror banned homosexual acts. Under article 48 of the code, the experts say, men who "committed sodomy shall be put to death". Other acts punishable by death under Khan included "damaging grassland with unauthorized excavations or starting fires". more ›

From Xinhua we learn that Ridley Scott has purchased the rights to two screenplays—Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇) and Genghis Khan (成吉思汗). According to that and other reports, Scott is intent on making a historical epic type film about China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, with the help of Zhang Yimou, whose film Hero featured the first emperor as a character. According to Chinese reports, Scott will probably get down to some serious work on this after the 2008 Olympics, in part because Zhang Yimou's a little busy with the opening and closing ceremony preparations. Though we respect Ridley Scott, we really can't feel an ounce of excitement about yet another historical epic full of grandiose themes that will ooh and ahh us for two, maybe three hours, and then you leave you feeling just about as empty as you did before. more ›

Shanghaiist is pissed -- the Chinese government has closed down three internet sites, one of which, Yannan, was one of our favorite sites for information and intelligent analysis of major social and political issues in China. The other two sites are Inner Mongolian, and theur only crime was to protest what they probably considered a racist cartoon that featured Genghis Khan as a mouse with a pig snout. We haven't seen these sites, but they have been accused of hosting "separatist" content and were summarily shut down and China warned it would do last week. more ›