Results tagged “thechinese”

``The Chinese side is willing to keep contact with the U.S. in all areas,'' Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said today at the end of a Beijing press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, neither elaborating nor giving her the chance to respond. ``We're ready to resume the dialogue.''

The Italians are famous for their invention of romance and pizza. The Chinese are famous for expertly copying the Italians. And now along with Dolce and Prada, romance and pizza have been copied in time for Valentine's Day. Perusing the delivery menu of Deli Roma Pizza, you will be delighted to discover the 10" Love Pizza–heart-shaped and extra cheesy for 98 RMB (buy-one-get-one-free, in case you don't like sharing, also comes with chicken wings and 1.25 L of Pepsi or 7up).

So much has happened since our last post on the Edison Chen photo scandal that it is about time we updated you! First, the Edison Chen saga has caught the attention of CNN. The Chinese-speaking world has never been as enraptured in a scandal as this, and its scale and magnitude is threatening to make Paris Hilton look very passé. Kristie Lu Stout reports:

While reading up on the latest lawsuits brought against Baidu by the world's top music labels, we were alerted to this old Baidu advertisement that stars Hong Kong funnyman Stephen Chow (周星馳) as Ming Dynasty poet Tang Bohu (唐伯虎). In the 1min 50 sec long spot, Tang Bohu endeavours to charm over a girl with a Caucasian man who says nothing apart from “我知道” (I understand) in all the wrong tones. The Caucasian represents Google, the foreigner that apparently knows nothing about China. And guess who wins over the girl eventually!

In the Murinae subfamily of the Rodentia order, there are whole heaps of squeekers that in English we name either (Harvest / grass / stink) mice or (water / whistling / bush) rats with no real logic. The Chinese on the other hand just say screw it; let's call them all 鼠 and see what they taste like.

Now that the People's Liberation Army has been called in to battle the snow and the terms "war", "disaster" and "national crisis" are being used in association with the present weather conditions, we're feeling guilty for making a snowman yesterday in the park and secretly loving every flake.

A BBC report (proxy needed) talks about the Confucian schools that are now thriving across China. And why are parents sending their kids to such schools?:

"Traditional culture has many advantages that cannot be learned by modern education," says Yu Fang, the mother of a three-year-old pupil. "It emphasises virtues like kindness and self-discipline. It is very good for my son and very good for Chinese society as well." Another mother, Wang Ching, agrees: "This is a material world, people want a higher standard of living and they are focused on material things, not spiritual ones." Modern China, with its headlong rush for growth, needs more balance and more of the social order and courtesy extolled by Confucius, she says. Confucianism and Communism have never been happy bedfellows... [read more]

UPDATE: New videos added after the jump

Golf in China: All growing, all new, all raw [ESPN.com] In China, the sport of golf is younger than Tiger Woods himself. But the game has grown exponentially in recent years, leading to more courses and the development of some pros through the Omega China Tour. But as Dan Washburn reports, all is not without struggle.PM Manmohan Singh meets Chinese counterpart in Singapore [Times of India] Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday met Chinese premier...

If you've ever wondered about the sex lives of Chinese migrant farm workers, the first report of its kind has been published in the eighth issue of The Chinese Journal of Human Sexuality. Among the sordid details:

Of the 533 migrant workers from other provinces and regions, 41.84 percent of them want a sexual life outside of marriage. Of this category 12.01 percent have that thought often, among which 24.50 percent not only have the intention, but also carry through. These men have relations with mistresses, colleagues and prostitutes. Mistresses are the most common among migrant men, accounting for 67.05 percent.

Continue reading "Sex lives of Chinese farmers and firemen"

Photos from powerprints, beatdrifter, and David Feng.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences recently published a report about how much income you need in order to be classified as white-collar in various Chinese cities. At the top of the list was Hong Kong, where you needed to make at least 18,500 RMB. As for some of the other cities:The benchmarks in some major cities at the upper end are: 8,900 yuan ($1,194) in Macao, 5,350 yuan ($717) in Shanghai, 5,280 yuan ($708)...

Oh boy, we are just beginning to love the things that we can show you here now that Youtube is back. And with these two freshly-uploaded videos, you have two different broadcasters — Australia's Channel 7 and Al-Jazeera English — and their take on the topic of "Made in China". China has just overtaken Japan as Australia's largest trading partner. The spate of headline-grabbing product quality issues, particularly the high profile toy recalls made by Mattel prompted Channel 7 to ask the question: Can we still trust "Made in China"? Their reporters went all the way to Foshan where the Lee Der factory (that made all those lead-laced toys) is located, and spoke to a few ex-employees who are now jobless since the factory has closed down.

Yes, that was our reaction when we saw these pictures, but sorry to disappoint all you Facebook whores (that includes ourselves!) out there, the image on the right is just a Facebook clone, Xiaonei.com (校内网). It looks like the portal was started around 2005 (less than two years after Facebook was born), and since then, it has grown exponentially to cover around 2,000 university campuses in Greater China. They have just recently started to pan out their services to cover high schools and companies (though one wonders how they would do it with a name like that because "校内“ literally means "in school").

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."

The Chinese Communist Party, the world's largest political party with some 64 million members opened its 17th Party Congress yesterday. With over 2,200 delegates from all over the nation, the congress was opened by parliament chief Wu Bangguo with the national anthem, followed by a moment of silence marked for Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun and other "martyrs of the revolution" before President Hu Jintao began addressing the party. A great sense of expectation there as you can see on the video now that the party has just begun, but as the days go by, we will no doubt see more and more of these scenes instead.

The latest issue of TIME Magazine has an interesting story of a US-based company that has just set up shop in where else but Inner Mongolia, to feed the millions of hungry Chinese who are now looking to eat something other than pork:

Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Singapore Airline’s joint bid for a 24 percent stake of China Eastern Airline finally received its blessing from Beijing last week. The deal valued CEA at HK$3.80 per share. China Eastern’s Hong Kong listing after a three month halt resumed trading earlier today and promptly doubled from HK$ 3.73 to HK$ 7.50 before paring back to settle around HK$ 6.90 in the afternoon. Today’s surge in gave the two new investors an instant HK$5.84 billion profit on paper, about USD $750 million. Not bad for a day’s work! Shares of all four major Chinese airlines (the other three are Air China, China Southern and Hainan Air) traded on the domestic exchange rallied 10 percent on the news, the maximum daily limit allowed under local rules. In related news, the Shanghai Composite Index closed at another a record high, up 102 points, or 2 percent, at 5321.

From tigerbalm06 [h/t CDT]:

The North West Food Court is a casual sit-down spot – highly local, moderately clean, poorly staffed – with a rather varied menu. Prices range from 1 RMB (for a Fried Crispy Pancake) up to 58 RMB (for a Big Plate Of Chicken).

Ching Cheong, the Hong Kong journalist who was chief China correspondent for the Singapore-based Straits Times, is ailing in prison somewhere in the Guangdong province right now. On 22 April 2005, Ching was apprehended by Chinese security agents in Guangzhou, where he was to meet a source who had promised to give him a copy of a politically sensitive manuscript on former premier Zhao Ziyang. It took one and a half years before he was eventually prosecuted (for spying on behalf of a foreign intelligence agency and for divulging state secrets) and sentenced to five years in prison.

Starting 4:51pm today, Shanghaiist will set aside his blogging, crane his neck out the window, look heavenwards, and try to feel connected to the universe and discover his cosmic purpose. (And we invite you to put aside all the mundane affairs of daily life and join us in this spiritual exercise, wherever you are.) For that, according to the Shanghai Observatory, is exactly when the first phase of tonight's lunar eclipse will start. It is expected to last 3 hours and 33 minutes.

The Chinese internet is currently abuzz with all sorts of reports and rumours of what went on at Yao Ming's wedding at Shanghai's Shangri-La Hotel on Monday. Earlier in the day, we called up our friend Sebastien Lathuile, who is floral meister at the hotel, thinking we could get some inside scoop or even pictures of the event. Unfortunately, all he could tell us was that he was not personally involved in the event and he knew absolutely nothing about the wedding. Apparently the management of the entire event had been farmed out to a local Shanghai company, and everything was kept under a very tight lid (with a generous budget dedicated to security), so there was nothing more that he could tell us.

Hu in new bid to tighten screws on rival faction, by Chua Chin Hon of the Straits Times:

One has died from an undisclosed illness while another is already behind bars on corruption charges. But there appears to be no let-up in Chinese President Hu Jintao's attempts to put the squeeze on members of the rival Shanghai faction, a group of senior leaders and officials allied with his predecessor Jiang Zemin.

Continue reading "Snippets: The Shanghai faction, counterfeit and corruption"

Closing Dish: Although we haven't ventured out into the heat to check with our own eyes, we did hear from a very credible source that, at least for the 12 minutes he was standing in front of the place, Rendezvous Cafe appears closed for business. Apparently, all the lights were out and a sign written in Chinese had been placed on the locked doors.

So about a week ago, the news surfaced that German-born Swiss-based couturier Phillipp Plein released a limited edition T-shirt that screamed "F-U-C-K YOU CHINA". OK, it was more like a whisper - the words were only readable up close and as we all know, couturiers are all about subtle elegance.

Pioniers, a minor league team in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In 2007, he was signed by the Beijing Tigers of the China Baseball League (more info here). The CBL season already over, Kim recently answered some of our questions via email.

• China to be world's third largest economy
  China's sizzling economy grew even faster in 2006 than previously reported, the government said Wednesday, moving it closer to overtaking Germany as the world's third-largest and possibly adding to fears of overheating.


• China falling short on energy-saving goals
  China is falling short of its goals in a campaign to boost energy efficiency in its fuel-guzzling economy - the world's No. 2 oil consumer - but is starting to make progress, the government said Thursday.


• China "Liantong" condom makes the right connection
  A condom trademark named after telecommunications giant China Unicom has been approved by the Chinese government's trademark office.

Image from NatalieBehring.com.