Results tagged “pla”

2012, the new apocalyptic movie by director Roland Emmerich, opened this weekend in Shanghai to smashing box office records, showing that Hollywood's discovered at least one way its blockbusters can make a killing in China - by pandering to the Chinese.

• Chinese Army opens (small) window on operations [CSMonitor] "Foreign reporters this week got a rare peek inside an infantry base of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). At the same time, officials were reportedly putting the final touches to a bilingual PLA website that is due to go live on Aug. 1, the 82nd anniversary of its foundation. Taken together, these efforts are designed to signal greater transparency by a 2.3 million-strong military whose rapid expansion has stirred unease among other foreign powers, including Japan and the United States. But these baby steps seem unlikely to silence the debate over China's military capacity and how it intends to use it in future."
• Hidden Gobi Desert relics found [BBC] "Rare Buddhist treasures, not seen for more than 70 years, have been unearthed in the Gobi Desert. The historic artefacts were buried in the 1930s during Mongolia's Communist purge, when hundreds of monasteries were looted and destroyed."
• The last tattooed women of the Dulong people [China News Wrap] "The Xinhua News Agency website has a headline photo story about the the last women of the Dulong people in China’s Yunnan province - one of China’s smallest and remote ethnic groups - to have traditional facial tattoos. According to the news story, the custom of facial-tattooing amongst China’s Dulong ethnic group is first described in historical records from the Tang Dynasty (7th to 10th centuries C.E.)."

• China to recruit 120,000 college graduates to join the army in 2009 [People's Daily Online] "The People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China will recruit more than 120,000 college graduates this year, a military source said here Sunday. According to a website run by the Ministry of Education to help college graduates find jobs, it is the first time the PLA has recruited college graduates on such a large scale, as the army seeks to improve its overall quality by drawing more talent and advancing its science and technology."
• Building of dams goes on despite halt order [SCMP] Construction had continued on two highly controversial hydro dams on the Yangtze River in Yunnan province , despite orders from the mainland's top environmental watchdog for the projects to be abandoned, state television reports. The two dams are being built by power giants China Huaneng Group and China Huadian Group, which together produced a fifth of the mainland's electricity last year.
• Peking Opera troupes take bold steps to be profitable [China Daily] "The China National Peking Opera Company, China's top operatic troupe, entrusted Beijing Guoyishengping Culture Development Co, Ltd to manage the theater and make it commercially viable one and a half years ago. Zhang Delin and his wife Yu, a famous BTV anchorwoman, own the Beijing Guoyishengping. That move marked a turnaround for the State-owned firm used to government funding to run its operations. An opera ticket at the theater is priced between 2,080 yuan to 50 yuan."

                 

Highly controversial (and tit-tilating) art works from 53 year old Beijing-born painter Hu Ming (呼鸣). Hu's parents were military doctors who had always hoped their daughter would some day become a great surgeon. During her days in high school when the Cultural Revolution was in full swing, Hu's time was all spent either drawing the portrait of Chairman Mao (after her teacher found out she loved painting) or studying the Little Red Book. Finding it all very boring, Hu begged her parents to let her join the army. They relented, and at age 15, Hu joined the People's Liberation Army, where she would serve another 20 years in various roles as a hospital broadcaster/announcer, a librarian, a projectionist, recreational club director, cultural secretary and nurse. [h/t to Wang Ning]

What would you do if you paid a shitload of money to study at some college, thinking it would legit and all, only to be told that your diploma would not be recognised after all? We don't know about you, but we would definitely riot. Well, that's what some civilian students at the Hefei PLA Artillery Academy did a few days back. And it turned out to be a very bloody incident. Iron doors were...