The above infographic, provided by the Gravity Group, is a brief summary of the hits and percentages that make up the Chinese box office totals for last year. more ›

A weib currently making the rumor mill rounds has it that Sister Feng (凤姐), a woman remarkable for the severity of her delusional demands on husbands-to-be being matched only by the severity of her overbite, is going to star in a Japanese AV film. more ›

For now, it appears as if Shanghai's powdered milk stock is safe from the radiation that has tainted Meiji co. powdered baby milk. Earlier this week the powdered formula produced by Japan's premier dairy company was found to contain traces of radioactive cesium 137 and 139, prompting widespread panic in Japan and China. more ›

When news first sprung up about the planned resumption of the Shanghai-Nagasake ferry, it was painted more as a bargain boat designed to get you there and back on the cheap. Which made the unveiling of a new(ish) cruise ship on the route's inaugural run last weekend very exciting indeed. Beginning in January, for only around 800RMB (one way) you can travel over to Nagasaki on a second-hand Greek cruise ship called the Ocean Rose. more ›

• Wen Jiabao spooked everyone out recently by telling a story that isn't heard very often, of how his own family was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution.
• A group of university professors at Yangtze University in Hubei recently got on their knees for NIMBY protests against a steel processing plant near their campus.
• Chongqing's leadership is all about giving to the 99%, while Guangdong's bigwigs would prefer to keep it amongst the 1%. A bit simplistic an explanation, but that's apparently all anybody understands these days.

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Just as Europe is hoping for China to be its sugar daddy financial savior, tourism industries throughout the Asia Pacific region are bending over backwards to court Chinese tourists and the revenue boost they represent. We thought a special round-up on the subject was in order. more ›

Sohu Vice-President Liu Chun (刘春) laments in a post on his Sohu Weibo profile about the anti-Japanese propaganda productions that are shown every September 18, anniversary of the Mukden Incident in 1931, which subsequently led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria:

September 18 -- I'd like to plead with China's film industry workers. Please stop making those obscene, mythological anti-Japanese films where a child destroys a dozen (Japanese) devils, a farmer hundreds, and a guerilla thousands. Are the (Japanese) short-legged or brain-damaged? Each scene requires hordes of cameos to act as (Japanese) corpses. Please, pay a bit of attention to history. Stop turning a 14-year-long brutal war which caused the death of tens of millions into a game. more ›

And by the looks of it, it's going to be pretty effing cheap too! Plans to resume the ferry after a 30-year hiatus were announced this week in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Revolution of 1911, because apparently Sun Yat-sen was real tight with a couple of Japanese friends from over there. more ›

• WSJ's Japan Real Time Report covers why Japan's new Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda, is boring at home and controversial abroad, especially in regards to the touchy subject of Japanese war criminals. Also amusing is the seeming list of demands issued by Xinhua in English at the new leadership.
• WSJ goes over a paper by Harvard University's Dani Rodrik explaining why despite anxiety over the issue, he believes developing countries like China aren't going to overtake the US and Europe any time soon. Rodrik argues that they must first overcome the "convergence gap”, or the gap in productivity levels often determined by their ability to absorb new technologies.
• Andy Hoffman writes a fascinating 5-page portrait in The Globe and Mail of Andrew Dawrant, the Canadian largely considered to be the top English-Chinese interpreter in China today. He is the only Native English speaker ever to be accepted as a Chinese language interpreter in the UN. He started learning at age 8 on his own volition, and by 15 he was couch crashing his way through Hong Kong. What a badass.
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Er, this dog will probably help repair Sino-Japanese ties, or something. The pup has over 65,000 Weibo followers! No? Not buying it? It 's Friday, guys. A pomeranian born in 2002 named 'Shunsuke', this little guy is the highlight of our day so far, and is apparently also very active on Twitter. Enjoy! more ›

Many of the journalists working on the Wenzhou train crash story are finding it hard to believe the railway ministry's denials that it's burying train bodies and parts to hide the truth. more ›

Here's an old video from President Hu Jintao's trip to Japan last year that we missed earlier and is making the rounds again on Sina Weibo. more ›

China's flying hurdler, Liu Xiang (刘翔) has done it again. Yesterday in Kobe, Japan, Liu clocked 13.22 seconds in the 110-hurdles event, re-writing the Asian Athletics Championships record. The first Chinese athlete to achieve the "triple crown" of athletics (World Record Holder, World Champion and Olympic Champion), Liu has been making a steady comeback since his shocking pullout from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. His world record of 12.88 seconds, set 2006 at the Super Grand Prix in Lausanne, was broken by Cuba's Dayron Robles two years later. Robles continues to hold the world record of 12.87 seconds today. more ›

A new maid-themed cafe has opened in the Hunan capital of Changsha, featuring a female-only waitstaff composed of adolescent-looking giggly schoolgirl types. Servers are outfitted in black and white French maid fetish cosplay outfits, and greet you at the door with a 'Is there anything I can do to serve you, master/husband?' (the term for husband is the same as master [主人] in Japanese). more ›

Uh-oh spaghetti-o's. Looks like it's time again for another round of harrumphing over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands: "China on Monday demanded Japan immediately withdraw its fishing ships out of the waters of the Diaoyu Islands. 'China has lodged solemn representation with the Japanese side,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei made the remarks in reply to a question saying some Japanese boats were sent to fish in the waters of the Diaoyu Islands. According to the Japanese media, about 10 fishing boats belonging to a fishery cooperative in Ishigaki, Okinawa Prefecture, left a local port Sunday to operate in the waters of the Diaoyu Islands, known as Senkaku in Japan. 'China has indisputable sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands that have been an inherent part of China since ancient times,' Hong said, stressing that any actions taken by Japan in the area were invalid. It is reported that the Japanese fishing boats have already withdrawn from the Diaoyu Islands waters, Hong said, without providing a time frame." [China Daily] more ›

In case you're like us and didn't believe that China would one day be bested by India for Heavyweight Population Champion of the World, this news graphic should put us doubters to rest. Then again, perhaps part of the disbelief stemmed from the difficulty of conceptualizing such a shifting of population rank, which we now understand to be a large circle becoming only a somewhat larger circle, with another circle usurping the other circle's diameter through a more substantial magical future expansion. more ›

Might we suggest that China or the United States dubs their future Japan-besting machine the OK Computer? "Japan now has the honor of being home to the world's fastest supercomputer, beating out China for the top spot on the list of the 500 most powerful supercomputers on the planet. The machine in question, called the K Computer, is capable of performing a whopping 8.2 quadrillion calculations per second, or 8.2 petaflops. By comparison, the K Computer has the equivalent power of about 1 million desktop PCs. It comprises 672 cabinets located at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan. It's said to cost about $10 million a year to keep running, and consumes as much power as 10,000 homes. The title of fastest supercomputer previously belonged to the Chinese Tianhe-1A system at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, China. That system now moves to the No. 2 spot, with the U.S.A.'s Jaguar supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee taking the bronze medal. Japan's K is about three times as powerful as the Chinese computer, and almost five times faster than the Jaguar." [PC Magazine] more ›

"Even though I've lost everything, it would be okay if she were still alive."
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The first Chinese fatality of the great earthquake in Japan has been confirmed by the Chinese embassy in Tokyo. No information on the victim was released at the request of the bereaved family. All we know is that he/she was killed in Ishinomaki city, Miyagi prefecture, when the quake-triggered tsunami hit the area. more ›

Remember Li Yang (李阳) of Crazy English fame? The self-styled English guru who believes that the best way for his students to master English is to yell out phrases after him combined with hand gestures? more ›

Heartwarming video from Tudou featuring survivors from the devastating 2008 earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan sending their love and well wishes to the victims of the Japan earthquake and tsunami.
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Unless you've been living in a cave, you would have heard about the unprecedented nuclear crisis going on in Japan right now. Radiation spreading from damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plants is very high, and there are signs that it has already reached Tokyo. more ›

It looks like the Foreign Ministry might have made its claim that there were no Chinese casualties in the Japanese earthquake a little too soon. more ›

We've been wondering why our infamously slow internet access has ground to a halt this week. One reason, as we've told you, is a possible GFW level up. Well here's another reason we missed out -- the Japan earthquake has damaged a large number of undersea fiber-optic cables that carry internet data and voice calls between Asia and North America. more ›

A few links to start out your day: more ›

• Remember all those kids who were supposedly growing breasts after drinking milk?! Well it turns out that it was all an elaborate hoax with the rumours started by a rival milk company.
• Whilst we all may have been lulled in to thinking that all was quiet on the Sino-Japanese front after the Diaoyu Island incident, more nationalistic protests took place that the government plainly ignored.
• Here’s an idea to try to soothe the relationship between Beijing and Tokyo; why don’t we make use of 120 kilos of rice? It seems where diplomacy has failed with Norway following the Nobel prize fall out, 8734 pieces of sushi has done the trick!

The Shanghai International Music Fireworks Festival, which was due to feature displays by both China and Japan this Thursday, has been cancelled, Shanghai Daily reports today. Organisers have not disclosed why, but we can safely assume that the recent spat between the two countries has something to do with it. more ›

Taiwan-based NextMedia seems to be moving from its more tabloid fodderesque news topics to well... actual news topics, but they're keeping the hilarious, irreverent tone. Case in point: their newest video carefully but quickly outlines the entire Diaoyu Islands conflict - from the initial arrest of a Chinese fisherman to the mysterious panda death to the unlikeliness that any of this will really matter in a couple of months. more ›

It overtook Germany in 2009, and now China has overtaken Japan to become the world's second-largest economy. Yi Gang, China's chief currency regulator, mentioned the milestone in an interview with China Reform Magazine on Friday. Of course, Japan's individuals are overall much wealthier - China's per capita income has risen gradually, but is still but a fraction of both Japan and Germany's. But with 4 to 20 times the amount of people as anywhere else, any small increment helps propel the entire country up to the top spot - depending on how fast the exchange rate rises, China could leapfrog past the U.S. in 2025. more ›