Results tagged “war”

Uh oh! Something is afoot - two navy patrol boats from our peninsula-ed friends to the East began shooting at each other near Daecheong-do, an island about 125 miles west of Seoul earlier today. According to South Korean news service Yonhap, fighting erupted when a DPRK navy boat crossed the Northern Limit Line. South Korea issued warning broadcasts, and then fired some warning shots when the broadcasts were ignored. “It was then that the North Korean patrol boat attacked our high-speed patrol boat... Our ship returned the fire," according to the military statement. We wonder what this will do for next weeks bilateral nuclear weapons talks, of which China has a great part.

So admittedly we're not an expert in India-China relations, but last we checked, they weren't exactly sour. Sure, we're not best buddy-buds with our neighbors to the South, but we seem to back each other up a lot on certain issues (like climate change).

If you've ever been curious about the failures of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, Taiwan is set next month to declassify confidential documents on his many attempts to take back China. Visitors, including us mainlanders, will be allowed to visit Back Tzuhu, a previously restricted section of Chiang's Mausoleum in Taoyuan County, Taiwan. The area was a wartime command center during the 1960s. From 1964 to the early 1970s, Chiang tried repeatedly to launch naval attacks, only to have each of them fail spectacularly. With each failure, Chiang's confidence in retaking the mainland eroded, and by 1972 the project had been abandoned. Source: South China Morning Post

Last month, we reported that Chinese-made grenades were found to have been used by the terrorists that launched the deadly spate of attacks in Mumbai. This time, Israel is saying that whereas previously Palestinian terrorists used predominantly home-made rockets, now they're using more sophisticated rockets, some made in China. Said Brigadier-General Avraham Ben-David of the Israeli Defence Forces to YNetNews:

The army official said the rocket that struck the school in Beersheba was manufactured in China, is heavier than the Qassam and can "potentially cause much greater damage." He said the rocket contains metal pallets that can spread out across a radius of up to 100 meters (about 328 feet) from the point of impact.

In the not-quite-so-distant future in a universe not so far away, a war has begun. Well actually, it's not surprising that in a country renowned for reverse engineering and manufacturing knock-off handbags that a war has begun for the hearts and clicks of netizens throughout China.

As a country that has largely distanced itself from the clusterf*ck we call 'The International War on Terror' back in America, China has generally been considered one of the safer places in the world in terms of not getting blown up. While we hope that this doesn't change any time soon, recent developments have given us some cause for concern.

Earlier this week the heat in our bedroom pooped out. The weather on Friday hit a promising 18 degrees and we thought our prayers had been answered, but no such luck. Xinhua has put much of China back on a code red weather alert and it looks like we're head right back to highs in the single digits.

Anhui and Jiangsu in east China, Hubei and Henan in central China and Shanxi and Shaanxi in mid-west China will experience snow or sleet, while blizzards could hit the northwest part of Hubei, said the NMC.

Continue reading "China goes to war and other weather related news"

From the World’s Biggest Fishing Village to Bruce Lee’s Most Famous Kick ...

We've all been hearing reports about the nightmare caused by the snow, or what Xinhua calls "China's war on snow havoc", which isn't quite as felicitous a phrase as the "US War on Terror", but hey, at least it's more real! The New York Times, among other media outlets, talks about the sense of anger and resentment that people are feeling about what some consider as a lack of preparation on the government's part.

Take a walk down Panyu (Fanyu) Lu from the Film Art Centre and you will soon pass by the SH508 restaurant. It occupies a slaughtered renovated colonial mansion adorned with a huge neon sign. Unknown to the proprietors, reviewers and most of the customers, this is actually the former family home of British writer J.G. Ballard.

Four Chinese from Hubei have just opened a restaurant in the world's most dangerous city — Baghdad — reports the London Times. Edited highlights:

A reminder that Shanghai's airwaves weren't always the preserve of Love Radio's soul-negating pop or bizarre phone-ins dedicated to giving out street directions, courtesy of the Radio Heritage Foundation. Around 40 stations operated out of the city in 1940, though this dropped during the course of the Japanese occupation to less than ten by 1945. The website has put together a list of the stations that broadcast during the period, and is calling for anyone who has any related pictures, stories or memorabilia from the period to get in touch. It also has an excerpt from a 1940 Time article profiling Carroll Duard Alcott, an American radioman based in Shanghai who made his namer needling the occupiers. There's another snippet on him here, also by Time.

If you've been browsing the DVD shops lately, you might have already come across Nanking, a documentary—of sorts—about the Nanjing massacre of 1937. The film consists of three elements: first-person accounts from survivors and eye witnesses, including Chinese civilians and soldiers as well as Japanese soldiers. These are all real people, telling their stories on film. Then there actors portraying some of the people, mostly Europeans and Americans, that played a role in setting up...

The Red Laowai (红老外) — yes, that shirtless dude in New York that's been singing communist propaganda songs such as “My China Heart"《我的中国心》, "Without the Communist Party, there is no New China"《没有共产党就没有新中国》and "Oriental Red"《东方红》and putting his videos online — has done it again. This time, he has put his shirt on, created a music video and he's singing Jay Chou and rapping. The song 止战之殇 (The Wound That Ends War) is an anti-war song in...

Last weekend, we told you that Yahoo! is now apologizing for not telling the full truth to Congress at the February 2006 hearing where Yahoo! was taken to task for its role in the conviction of Chinese journalist Shi Tao. Now both Republicans and Democrats have launched scathing attacks on Yahoo. San Mateo Democrat Tom Lantos has called Yahoo "moral pygmies", and New Jersey Republican Chris Smith compared Yahoo’s cooperation with the Chinese government to companies that cooperated with Nazi Germany during World War II.

Photo of a Mummy 3 set in a Hebei Province desert from China.org.cn

Even weirder stuff than the Youtube block seems to have been happening, though. Apparently, for a short while on the 17th, before the Youtube block occurred, blogsearch.google.com and live.com were both redirected to Baidu! Blogsearch.google.cn was totally inaccessible. This has been confirmed by Ken Wong (see screencaps on his blog) and other Chinese netizens. Google Blogoscoped reported that yet more exotic pages like search.ibm.com.cn were also being hijacked to Baidu.

A few months ago, we informed you of the latest information about the 15th edition of CBS' Survivor: China, to be held...in China (surpise, surprise). In a few short weeks, the show will debut after filming its episodes during July and August. As the stentorian narrator in this early promo for the show says, "For the first time, a major American show goes behind the Great Wall to shoot entirely in China. It's a place...

Photo from US National Archive and Records Administration via Pingnews.com

The Youtube video shown here produced by Chinese Malaysian student Wee Meng Chee, 24, triggered torrents of invective from Malays, and support from some Chinese in Malaysia.

Fire broke out today at the US$910 million 101-storey tall Shanghai World Financial Center in an elevator shaft on the 40th floor at about 4pm today. Eight fire trucks were dispatched to douse the fire, and it was eventually extinguished by 5.42 pm. There were no reports of injuries or deaths.

China is a Democracy, But Not Copy of the West, by Zhu Jing of the Chinese Embassy in Nairobi for the East African Standard, [via A Glimpse of the World]:

China practises a unique democratic experience, which is beneficial, reasonable and fruitful because it suits the country and has stood the test of time.

Continue reading "Snippets: China and Africa"

Image of the Great Wall from Laurence: Will it be counted among the new 7 wonders of the world?

• 3 in US accused of enslaving Chinese acrobats
  Three men enslaved more than 20 Chinese acrobats, feeding and paying them little to work, and confiscating their passports and visas.


• 'Mass incidents' on rise as environment deteriorates
  Chinese people's refusal to accept an ever deteriorating environmental situation has resulted in a rising number of "mass incidents", the country's chief environment official said on Wednesday.


• Becoming Bill Gates' right-hand man
  Showing signs of genius even as a young boy, it was not surprising that Dr Zhang Yaqin would rise to become a right-hand man of the world's most powerful billionaire.

Image of mass games in Pyongyang from wkenney.

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week.

Celebrated American writer and critic Gore Vidal was interviewed by former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr on Sunday at Glamour Bar before a full audience as the opening speaker for the 2007 Shanghai International Literary Festival. Over his career which spans more than 60 years, Vidal has produced novels, plays, screenplays, and numerous essays and pamphlets, and most recently, he published his memoirs, Point-to-Point Navigation.

The New York Times Magazine has an interesting story about General Tso's Chicken, probably the most famous "Hunanese" dish that most people from Hunan Province (or anywhere else in Mainland China, for that matter) have never heard of: