Two days ago, we heard about Chinese women getting trafficked into Ghana as prostitutes to service expatriates working in the country. Today, Shanghai Daily tells us of a transnational police action which has seen a prostitution ring busted in Angola and ringleaders captured in China: more ›

God, this is a good giggle. An unidentified man got caught up during a police raid at a Jilin brothel and escaped by jumping over the side of the building and climbing down...naked! He very nearly got stuck but eventually maneuvered his way down using a drainpipe. Prostitution is illegal in China so we can see why he got out of there in a jiffy. In the last two shots, you can see another man and woman fleeing the scene barely covered. more ›

In Northern China's Jilin City lives a man whose nose is as big as an adult fist. 42-year-old Fei Jianjun suffers from rhino carcinoma, a severe form of nose cancer, and his face has been so altered that some of the crueler villagers have nicknamed him the "Hippo Man." more ›

• We're experiencing a pretty terrible natural disaster too, by the way. Some 100,000 homes have been either flattened or damaged by extreme blizzards in Xinjiang. Four people have been killed and half a million are snowed under. [The Associated Press]
• It's a good thing that text messaging services have resumed in that region, we suppose. We're hoping it helps those in need keep in touch with each other through this difficult time. [BBC]
• Peter Beaumont notices that some claim that there is even less freedom now than before 1989, and wonders why China is so terrified of dissent. [Guardian]

• China announces first panda from frozen sperm [ KOLD News 13] "For the first time, a giant panda cub has been born in China after being conceived using frozen sperm, officials announced Friday — an innovation scientists hope will help the endangered species avoid extinction. The new cub's birth Thursday means breeders will no longer be forced to rely on semen from China's few virile males, and may even be able to bring in sperm from zoos in San Diego, Mexico City or elsewhere."
• 'You're just a pawn' [The Standard] "Hong Kong must give way to Shanghai in the nation's financial development, according to a top Beijing official, who sees the SAR role as being reduced to that of a "pawn." Xia Bin, head of the Financial Research Institute, which comes under the State Council's Development Research Center, also said there may be a change in the role of the Hong Kong dollar by 2020. "Shanghai's financial market must eventually surpass that of Hong Kong's," Xia told the China Economic Times."
• Meet John Doe. No, Really! [NYTimes] "First he turned “Jang” into “John.” Then, he talked his family into adding an “e” to their last name. He was concerned, he said, about razzing and wanted to make sure it would be pronounced like the “do” in “tae kwon do” and not the “do” in “hairdo.” He has been John Doe ever since. Airport security grills him every time he flies. “I have to sit in the office,” he said. “Every time.” Landlords and election inspectors view him quizzically, and prospective dates need more than a little assurance that he’s not hiding a dark past. “I say my name is John Doe and they say, ‘No, what’s your real name?’ and I pull out my ID,” he said."

A policewoman daringly rescued a would-be suicide case yesterday in a surprisingly well photographed incident in Changchun City, Jilin. more ›

China Digital Times points us to these two videos of forced evictions by the local government in Jilin Province's Ji'an City (集安市) that are quickly spreading throughout the Chinese internets. The videos, dated May 29, 4am, were found on Sina but subsequently copied by a journalist from Boxun.com (a dissident site) and posted up to foreign video hosting sites since they would soon be censored from the Chinese internet for being too unharmonious. One protest banner put up by residents at the start of the clip reads:

Resisting corruption and the collusion of government and businessmen; more ›

So,the Mountain Goats have a new album out and on it is a song called "Tianchi Lake." It's about the the crater lake at Changbai Shan, in Jilin Province, on the North Korean border. (More photos from our 2004 trip to Tianchi here.) more ›