Remember that video of the five young North Korean accordionists' rendition of A-ha's Take On Me? It's totally gone viral since we showed it to you last Friday (watch it if you haven't!). Evan Ramstad, the Wall Street Journal's Seoul correspondent, caught up with Morten Traavik, the artist behind the performance that will soon open at Barents Spektakel, an international arts fest in Norway. He writes of Traavik's long labour of love in making the project happen: more ›

Thirteen students killed themselves last year - five more than in 2010 and seven more than in 2009, the Shanghai Education Commission said in the annual Primary and Secondary School Students Safety Report. more ›

Gordon Chang, the China skeptic famed for his apocalyptic pronouncements on the People's Republic, begins his latest essay, "China's Unstoppable Billion", with the following anecdote: more ›

Most people in China prefer to have sons instead of daughters to continue the family name, but not one young woman in Yancheng, Jiangsu province. In fact, she wanted to have a girl so badly she took a pair of scissors and snipped off her five-month-old son's penis. The court has handed her a five year prison sentence. more ›

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A popular American English teacher has been helped out with her medical bills by her students and former colleauges at Xiamen University, after she made notice her struggle with Parkinson was financially and mentally engraving on her too heavily. more ›

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Shanghai Daily reports: "Three local officials are among the six men detained for having sex with two teenage girls in Lueyang County, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, according to the police." more ›

A 14-year-old boy has been sentenced to 12 years jail for killing his mother and sister in Guangdong's Liannanzhaigang Town more ›

A high school student in Shangrao, Jiangxi province, recently jumped off the building to show a girl his love after he was rejected by her. more ›

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“We should be reaching out to our allies and constituencies within China. They're called the young people. They're called the internet generation. There are 500 million internet users in China. And 80 million bloggers. And they are bringing about change, the likes of which is gonna take China down.” more ›

One October afternoon after school, two primary school girls in Funan, Anhui province made a pact to kill themselves in their empty classroom. Before drinking the poison that they hoped would lead to their death, the students scrawled "blame our deaths on our math teacher" on their classroom's blackboard. After being treated in the hospital, the girls explained that they were upset that the teacher "deliberately found fault in the girl's work after the two did not attend their make-up lessons." The teacher denies these allegations. more ›

Around 20 girls under the age of 18, including two under the age of 14, have had a prostitution ring of their own making uncovered in Shanghai's Zhabei district, after a customer who had his watch stolen reported the ring to local authorities. more ›

The soccer team of an elementary school in Beijing was demolished by its Russian counterpart in a friendly match 0:15, according to Beijing Times journalist Zhang Bin. Zhang said over Sina Weibo yesterday: more ›

Zhang Xinyang (张炘炀), a 16-year-old getting his PhD in pure mathematics at Beihang University (北京航空航天大学), earlier this year refused to defend his master's thesis until his parents agreed to buy him his own apartment. Finally out of options, Zhang's parents rented an apartment in Beijing, and lied to their son about buying it. He's found out about the ruse, but his demands for an apartment haven't wavered. more ›

After three fruitful years of political involvement, Bai Yitong, China's youngest village chief and the leader of Gaojie village in Shanxii, could possibly resign before the upcoming 2012 election. This move would mark a surprising turning point in the saga of such a promising politician who at just 18 years old in 2009, carved out her niche in the male-dominated world of Chinese politics, becoming an inspiration not only for her villagers, but for Chinese women everywhere. more ›

Seeing Red in China just put up a great post highlighting "what life is really like for the average Chinese person that has yet to fully reap the rewards of China’s rapid development." They break down the monthly expenses of a 20-year-old college student in Nanjing who is currently fulfilling a mandatory unpaid internship for her final semester. more ›

America's top teacher Michelle Shearer visits China to find out...
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Via Danwei: A Chinese student interviewed on Phoenix TV says he was "overjoyed" at the news of 9/11 because it was "caused by American hegemony". But he's still applying to make a trip to the US of A, and hopes he can stay there. Hopefully someone from the US Embassy is reading this. Dude needs to get his visa revoked. more ›

Zhang Lijia, author of the book Socialism is Great, offers us a personal anecdote on the identity of her mixed-race kids. She writes of a recent trip to Bangladesh with her daughters:

Everywhere we went, people asked us which country we were from. At point, May, my older daughter, aged at 14 (but going on 18) replied without thinking: “We are from England.” I immediately contracted her: “I am from China and my daughters are half-Chinese.” Later I pulled May aside and asked: “You were born in China; you spent 10 out of 14 years in China and you are living in China. How does it qualify you as ‘English’?” May blinked her big round eyes. “Well, if I tell people I am Chinese, people wouldn’t believe me.” more ›

Another day, another student suicide: "A schoolgirl jumped to her death from a residential high-rise building in the Pudong New Area early yesterday morning, just minutes before she was supposed to fetch her textbooks for the new school year starting the next day. The student, 15, jumped from the top of an 18-story apartment building on Zhangyang Road about 7:50am... She was wearing a school uniform when she jumped and left her schoolbag and cellphone on top of the building, security guards said." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Via TechRice comes this fascinating presentation on internet cafes in China and what really goes on in them. You will never look at a wangba (网吧) the same way again: more ›

Not sure how we missed this, but Feichang Fresh, supposedly China's hottest laowai boyband, has this catchy little love song for Beijing that went pretty big after airing on CCTV in May. The boyband was formed by a group of foreign students at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. Check out the English translation of the song here. Also check out another of their songs here.
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"EIGHT students told to quit a Beijing music school due to poor academic performances sought to commit suicide together, it was reported yesterday. One student from the Chinese Music Conservatory Middle School is being treated in the Beijing Chaoyang Hospital for attempted suicide; three have returned home; and four remain missing, the Beijing Times reported. The 10th-graders at the school's vocal department were told to leave before the end of August because they had failed more than one-third of their required courses. The 16-year-olds bought sleeping pills and decided to die together, according to the girl, who has not been named, receiving hospital treatment, the report said." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

The only thing surprising about this report is that young people in Shanghai are still having sex that late!: "YOUNG people in Shanghai are having their first sexual activity earlier than older generations, and more choose cohabitation before marriage, according to a report issued yesterday by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. People born in the 1980s have sex for the first time at an average age of 21, said the report based on the questionnaires of 2,200 locals born from the 1950s to the 1980s. The average is the same for men and women. In comparison, men and women born in the 1970s had their first sex at an average age of 23, while the average age for people born in the 1960s or 1950s was 25 for men and 23 for women. Meanwhile, about 45 percent of married people born in the 1980s live together before marriage, compared with 30 percent for people born in the 1970s and 15 percent among those born in the 1960s and 1950s." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Thanks partially to the inability to express criticism on the internet, it seems that a new style has emerged - a new feature of internet slang, to rant about their dissatisfaction. It's called paoxiaoti (咆哮体), or "the roaring mode of writing". more ›

If you didn't make it to this weekend's Midi music festival, then you're probably going to feel the dull ache of regret after taking a gander at the sort of people who did. more ›

On March 21, a reporter visited the No.2 Women's Detention Center in Fuzhou and captured on film the lives of some of the prison's youngest inmates. Most of them under the age of 25, they spend their time focused on a fresh start instead of dwelling on their past mistakes. The reporter also captured a special open house, where family members were allowed to visit and experience the lives of the inmates. more ›