Results tagged “writers”

Lineage lovers take heed: another Mao has been added to the political mix! According to Singtao News, Mao Xinyu, the grandson of Mao Zedong, has become the youngest general in the Military at the ripe age of thirty nine. Besides being the youngest man to be appointed to such high office, he is also the first general to be born after 1970, which seems to explain his Aretha Franklin-eqsue hand movements.

If there was a world record for the quickest post-death biographies ever written, this one would probably win. Two Chinese writers have written an "instant book" on Michael Jackson spanning 130,000 words... in just 48 hours. Entitled "Moonwalk in Paradise - the Michael Jackson biography", the book became available for pre-order on Friday and landed on China's bookshelves on Saturday. The writers "didn't sleep for two days" and survived off of coffee and cigarettes until the book was done. Neither have ever met or interviewed Jackson, instead simply compiling the story from their "accumulated knowledge about the king of pop." Going by what our writing tends to look like after two days of no sleep, we bet the second half of this bio looks like brilliant, not-quite-lucid nonsense. Source: China Daily

The live music selection may be amazing this weekend, but it's not the only thing going on! Today also marks the beginning of two super special events and if you're a fan of sexy things or literary things (or sexy literary things), you've got great reason to be psyched.

Go here to listen to Terry Gross' interview with Beijing-based (and formerly Shanghai-based) writer James Fallows, The Atlantic's "man in China." Fallows discusses a variety of topics, including China's extensive investment in the United States (see his Atlantic story on the topic here), his new book of China essays (excerpt on Danwei), internet censorship and his recently deceased father. Around the 24-minute mark, Fallows makes some interesting statements about how he thinks Chinese people would have voted in the recent U.S. election — we're curious how his observations compare to what Shanghaiist readers saw and heard leading up to November 4.

Cyber dissident Wang Dejia was arrested for "subverting state secrets" (what else?), which means penning too many articles critical of the government. Some of those critical essays pertained to the upcoming summer Olympics:

In recent months, Wang also gave an interview to the Epoch Times, a media group backed by the banned sect F@lun G0ng, in which he claimed the Olympics would exacerbate the sufferings of Chinese people and leave them "living like dogs and pigs."

Continue reading "Beijing Olympics News: State secrets and Spielberg"

One of our favorite Chinese sites seems to have run afoul of the net nanny: vip.bokee.com has been on again off again, but perfectly viewable with a proxy. Using the proxy we saw an article about a list published in a Chengdu newspaper of the top-grossing authors in China, at least based on royalties from the sales of their books. At the top of the list was a Guo Jingming, a young author (born in...

In this week's edition of "Shanghaiist Trashes the Media" we have an article from the Sydney Morning Herald. Here's the premise:

Photo by CaptainVideo taken from the Shanghaiist photos page. To see your photos on our photos page, use Flickr and tag your photos "shanghaiist". Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site.

Shanghaiist doesn't often get emails from the American consulate here in Shanghai. But when we do, they are usually telling us that the likelihood of bad people trying to kill us has either increased or decreased. So, the email we received yesterday was a refreshing change ... and it actually came from a real person. This is what the consulate wanted Shanghaiist and all other Americans to know: If you have always dreamed of dressing up as a member of the military, appearing in a Chinese movie and learning to rumba -- all at the same time -- Friday just may be your lucky day!