• [044]  The most popular photograph on the Chinese blogosphere today is not a semi-nude woman, but a map of Shanghai.  According to 6Park, this is a map of best spots to commit suicide in Shanghai (inculding hanging, jumping off a building, jumping into the path of an oncoming subway train, running in front of a car, drug overdose, drowing in the river, electrocution on a high-voltage powerline, etc.  Probabilities of success are even included.
  
   
• [043]  Some backtracks to ESWN:
  (Taccuino di traduzione)  "Che cosa ci perdiamo a parlare solo inglese?  Questo."
  (No Sword)  "If you only read English, you miss out on all the cool stuff."
   
• [042]  In InMediaHK's The Internationalization of the Internet: ohmynews, global voices and eastsouthwestnorth, there is a contrast between the bridge blogger approach with the unnamed (and unpatented) approach used by this blogger.  According to Global Voices, a bridge is "usually the project of a single blogger, or a small group of authors. Bridge bloggers write for an audience outside their everyday reality - for instance, when Ory Okolloh writes about corruption in Kenya, reaching family at home and readers at Harvard, she is bridge blogging.  And when people comment on her blog from outside Kenya, they're bridging back."  So why am I not a bridge blogger?
   
  Let me demonstrate with a simple example.  The subject is the introduction of the freely distributed newspaper Headline News in Hong Kong.  The global brand Metro is already present in Hong Kong with an exclusive distribution arrangement with the MTR subway system.  Another free newspaper AM730 will appear soon.  As a bridge blogger, I could have given a summary of some representatives in the Chinese-language blogosphere in Hong Kong:

- Duke of Aberdeen noted that Swedish-originated Metro has raked in profits of HK$20-30 million precisely because it is apolitical, whereas Headline News will not be able to refrain from meddling in politics due to its parentage (the Sing Tao group).
 
- Florence Lai (Over the Rainbow) discussed about how the human resources for Headline News were allocated.  Mostly, they will be Sing Tao people helping out on a temporary basis.
 
- Florence Lai (Over the Rainbow) is a reporter by profession, and she compared the two free newspapers according to reporting styles with illustrative examples.  She offered the example of the decision to stop live horserace broadcasts at Radio Hong Kong, which is an objective fact.  However, a traditional journalist cannot offer his/her own opinion on this decision because that would be subjective.  Instead, he/she needs to speak to other parties to elicit their opinions.  This is interesting because surely the decision of which third parties to talk to must be subjective as well.
 
- Miss Lee in Summer provided a common reader's viewpoint, and she is definitely not happy about the aggravation.  She concluded: "This is a free society and commerce operates freely.  You can publish whatever you want to, and I can refuse to read whatever I don't want to."

These are interesting blog comments, but they seemed to be only scratching the surface.  As a reader, I personally don't find the summaries terribly interesting and I would need to follow through on the links.  But a non-Chinese-reading reader will not be able to follow through with those links.  Somehow, my sense is that if one is really interested in the subject, this English-language blogpost at Dustless Workshop is superior to the reading of the bridge blogger's summary.  Instead of bridge blogging, I would have done an English-language blog post instead to articulate my own and as well as other viewpoints.
  
As an individual person, I think that the more interesting blog post would be about my meeting with the Metro managemet in Santiago de Chile in which they explained their business model and distribution strategy to me.  And I can also tell you more than two or three things about the readership characteristics of free vs. paid newspapers that may affect their survivability.
 
So how shall I spend my time?  Bridge blogging?  Blogging for myself?  Or consultancy for money?  Hmmm ... is there even a choice?
  

P.S.  Dustless Workship: In reply to EastSouthWestNorth...plus some thoughts... "I personality found that very interesting, and should ESWN decided to write about the two topics he outlined, I will certainly be the first one to read them."  Alas, that will not happen as discussion of the first topic implies betrayal of trust while the second topic involves commercial interests. 

• [041]  In late May this year, Lung Ying-tai's The Taiwan That You May Not Know About caused a sensation in China because this was an explanation of Taiwan-style democracy written by a well-known Taiwan public intellectual and published in Beijing Youth Daily, owned by the Chinese Communist Youth League.  Yazhou Zhou has two Chinese-language articles (article 1 and article 2) about the reception of the article (published on May 25, there were 1.4 million related links on Google by May 28).
   
• [040]  This is one of those Hong Kong newspaper headlines that infuriate me: "HK$20,000 stolen from Bridget Lin's neighbor" (Ming Pao via Yahoo! News)  Why do they do this?  Because "HK$20,000 stolen from a Fei Ngo Shan Road house" is unappealing whereas Bridget Lin is much beloved.  But this linking is totally gratuitous.  Someday, I might get rolled over by a bus and the headline will read "Andy's Lau neighbor gets rolled over by bus." 
    
• [039]  (Nanfang Weekend)  Photograph of Japanese soldiers forcing Chinese laborers to take them across the river on rickshaws during the War.
  
   
• [038]  Excerpt from InMediaHK: The Internationalization of the Internet: ohmynews, global voices and eastsouthwestnorth:
   
  到議題的翻譯, 在網絡上做得最成功的是東南西北, 它不單把中文地區的新聞翻成英文, 而且還會把議題擴展, 成為國際性或普同性的問題, 讓不同地方的人都能把議題聯繫到自己關心的議題上。而且東南西北的國際想像並不是 “西方” 而是透過翻譯和脈絡化不同世界不同區塊的議題(而由於作者比較長在香港, 所以較多寫中文世界的議題), 進行交流。
   
  [translation]  On the translation of discourse, the most succssful instance on the Internet is EastSouthWestNorth.  Not only does it translate news in the Chinese-language areas into English, but it expands the discourse into an international or common topic so that people from other places can connect the discourse to things that they care about.  Moreover, EastSouthWestNorth's international imagination is not just 'western', but it offer goes through the translation and systematization of the discourses from various regions of the world (although the author tends to write more about the Chinese-language world since he spends more time in Hong Kong) in order to encourage exchange. 
    
• [037]  (Information Times via 6Park)  Volunteer students from Guangzhou University go into the community to teach proper use of condoms to prevent AIDS and/or family planning.  The students had been trained by the Department of Health and the Guangzhou University Red Cross.
  
   
• [036]  (VOA via Boxun)  Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Inc. conducted a survey of ex-patriates in 14 countries and asked them to evaluate the quailty of the English-language news in their countries of residence.
   
  In order of ranking from best to worst: Australia, United States, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, China, Vietnam.  The first two countries has English as the primary language, so they had better come out ahead.
   
  China -- "The media are controlled by the government and are therefore just propaganda mouthpieces.  China does not believe that the role of media to be providing truthful news to the public; rather, they believe the media exist to propagandize for the government.  They may begin to report on corruption, not because they are more open, but because the government doesn't like corruption and they wanted the media to showcase that determination."  China plays an important role in global economics and politics today.  Media control means that foreign business people cannot obtain the latest information on policies and markets, and this hurts their commercial interests.
   
  Taiwan -- There are not enough English-language media as the demand is low.  The limited number of media also lack information about China and the Asia-Pacific region.  "Taiwan controls information from China.  Any business person who wants to market to Greater China will be handicapped by the lack of information about China in the Taiwan media."
   
  Hong Kong -- The English-language media reporters are very uneven in quality and lack in-depth analyses.  The editors also make poor choices in news selection.  The Journalist Association president said that the English-language media are deficient in professionalism, caused by self-censorship and pressure from China.  The top talents have all gone to work for foreign-owned media.  "Self-censorship exists in Hong Kong.  When the boss has commercial interests in China, there will be the concern that certain news reports will affect their position in China.  Thus, the reporters will write in a safe way."
   
• [035]  Radio Hong Kong will cease live broadcasts of horse races at the Hong Kong Jockey Club.  This action has been interpreted by some as the proof of the death of freedom of press in Hong Kong (see NCN).  With due respect, I find it hard to think why my tax dollars ought to be used upon live broadcasts of horse races.  In fact, I was stunned by the financial analysis for Radio Hong Kong (Ming Pao via Yahoo! News).
   
  Each year, Radio Hong Kong receives more than HK$400 million in government subsidies.  More than HK$200 million goes towards salaries.  Another HK$60 million goes to technical engineering.  After deducting the costs of operation, only HK$4.5 million is earmarked for RTHK One for program production.  In years past, HK$1.5 million was used on the live broadcasts of horse racing, or 1/3 of the total program production budget.  While I understand that Radio Hong Kong is a public radio station, were they serving the public good with those live broadcasts?
   
  Recommendation: Privatize the damn thing as quickly as possible ...
   
• [034]  (Ming Pao via Yahoo! News)  In Wuhan (China), a 59-year-old woman has been convicted of organizing a transnational human-smuggling ring with Hong Kong as the destination.  The woman will receive 5 years of jail time, plus a 50,000 yuan fine.  The woman had a niche market -- old women who come to Hong Kong ostensibly to visit relatives but worked as street beggars instead.  For example, in 2002, she arranged three elderly women to get 3-month visas.  During the day, she took the three out to the field locations and then she picked them up in the evening.  All the money went to her.  At the end, if a woman can earn better than HK$400 per day, she will receive HK$2,000; otherwise she may receive as little as HK$1,000 per month.  After three months, the organizer reaped HK$47,400 in pure profit.  In total, she organized four groups of 24 people.  This woman is not the only operator in this type of racket.  How will you look at this kind of Hong Kong scene the next time? 
  
   
• [033]  There is a post by Chinese blogger Michael Anti on the neverending semantic debate on Karl Rove.  The meta-issue is about the dangers of rigid categorization that tumbles into absurdity when transplanted into another context.
   
  Let me simplify the issues tremendously here:
   
  In the United States, there is a political battle for the soul of the country.  On one side are the conservatives/rightists; on the other side, the liberals/leftists.  Some of the major issues for the liberals/leftists are the unchecked expansion of government power, government accountability, freedom of press, protection of personal privacy and freedom of speech/dissent.
   
  When transplanted to China, the government has unchecked government power, is not accountable, restricts freedom of press and speech and has no concept of peronal privacy.  But should we call the people who fight for these freedoms and rights 'liberals/leftists'?  If yes, then should we characterize pro-government people as 'rightists/conservatives'?  And if so, why aren't the American rightists/conservatives friends with the Chinese rightists/conservatives who share the same political values?  And why have Communists become the rightists and their opponents are the leftists!?  Oh, this is giving me such a headache ...  Such is the absurdity of attempting to move a conceptual framework from one country to another.
    
• [032]  Here is a cultural test at Civic Express that can be used to figure out the age of a Hong Kong Cantonese-speaker:
   
  Read the sentences: 平時樽意同貧友趕嘢，同藍友閑街唱K
   
  -If you can read the above sentences fluidly and you are not laughing, then congratulations to you -- you are probably quite young (less than 20 years old).
  -If you find the above sentences to be very funny, then you are at least 20 something years old.
  -If you have no idea what the above sentences are about, then we are sorry to say that you must be ancient.
   
  Actually, my own reaction was none of the above.  I did not find the sentences funny; in fact, they made my skin crawl.
   
• [031]  From Information Times (via 6Park), here are the photos of a woman jumping down from the 10th floor after a five-hour standoff.
  
  Unlike An Incident in Shanghai, this woman dropped into the air cushion bag set up by the police and was then rushed to the hospital.  Is the event really that rare and therefore newsworthy?  Or is it because the photos are rare and that is what was newsworthy?
   
• [030]  It continues to be all Lin Chiling all the time.
  
  Here is one reporter/photographer's chronological record (via 6Park)
  - 350pm.  Chiling is carted out on a bed by six guards from her 16th floor VIP room to the first floor CT room for X-rays.
  - 357pm.  The door opens and a doctor enters the room.
  - 359pm.  The door opens and Chiling is escorted out into the room next door.
  - 415pm.  Chiling exits the room and is escorted by the guards downstairs to the lobby.  She is wearing dark glasses.  She is then carried onto an ambulance.
  - 423pm.  Chiling's ambulance arrives at another affiliated hospital and taken into an X-ray room.  
  - 435pm.  The reporter asked the hospital staff, and was told that there was an X-ray equipment malfunction at the first hospital.
  - 451pm.  The reporter talks to a male Chiling fan in the lobby.  He is a hospital patient and he is holding up a glucose bag while being injected intravenously.
  - 506pm.  The door opens, and Chiling comes out again.
  - 514pm.  Chiling arrives safely back at the first hospital and returns to her 16th floor VIP room.
  - 935pm.  This report is filed at the news deadline with no further developments.
   
• [029]  In the blog post, The Creative Censor (Body and Soul), the subject was Tim Wu's response at Slate to Nicholas Kristof's NYT article Death By A Thousand Blogs.  

A post like "Let's hold multiparty elections" is deleted before posting or soon after. But more crucial is the party's channeling of chat-room discussions to serve its own interests. The pattern began in 1999, when an American B-2 bomber dropped five 2,000-pound bombs on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. State-run media immediately used the Internet to suggest that the bombing was no mistake. As anti-American riots erupted, the People's Daily, China's largest Communist Party-owned newspaper, created a Web chat forum to denounce the bombing. Thanks to these efforts, today an astonishing number of Chinese still believe that the bombing was a deliberate attack, and chat-room-fired protests against the United States or Japan are a regular fixture. When China captured a U.S. spy plane in 2001, the government encouraged posts like, "If little Bush goes on squawking, we should rope together his 24 white pigs and parade them through the streets."

Here are the closing paragraphs of the Body and Soul blog post:

This is intriguing not just for what it says about the limitations of free speech in China, but also because of its insight into how political conversation works in this country. Outrage of Newsweek's uncrossed t's and undotted i's in the Koran desecration story sweeps real revelations about torture under the mat. Spitting and sputtering about Eason Jordan makes it harder to be taken seriously when you talk about the clear evidence of targeting at least some media workers. And it's not only in the press, but also in blog posts, which can be nearly as bad as the corporate media when it comes to jumping on the latest hot story.

Blogs increase free speech. They amplify small voices. But at the same time, they increase the ability of intellectual bullies to shove the conversation in directions they want it to go. Is free speech on the internet, whether in China or anywhere else, something of an illusion? 

• [028]  In Income Inequality In China, there is a citation of a survey done by the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics: "The survey, which polled 54,000 urban and rural households, found China's richest 10 percent had disposable income 11.8 times greater than the lowest 10 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2005."  Terrible, isn't it?  Time to make more hay that the Communist regime inevitably create more inequality.  Oh, if only they could become a democracy like Taiwan ...
   
  In ETtoday via Yahoo! News, according to the the government in Taiwan, the richest earned more than 1.7 million NT dollars, while the poorest earned only 140,000 NT dollars for a ratio of 11.7 times.  This is a historical high, as the ratio was just over 7 ten years ago.
   
  This pair of ratio is good for making some snarky comments, but there is no point in arguing about whether China or Taiwan is better since the issues are broader and more compilcated than comparing a couple of income ratios.  The simple point here is that having a democratic system with a free market economy does not automatically guarantee greater (or lesser) income inequality.  The devil is in the details.

• [027]  More stuff that you don't need to know about Lin Chiling -- on the question of why her injury was so serious that she could not risk the flight to Taiwan, the answer is that the silicon bag for her breast enlargement project have bursted as a result of her fall from the horseback (see the very exclusive report from ETV via Yahoo! News; in fact, it is so exclusive that you can be sure that they made it up).  And since her management company has issued an angry denial, it must be true then!  However, a cosmetic surgeon has assured her fans that if Chiling's breasts are real, so there won't be any issue about uneven breast sizes as a result of fractured ribs.
  
  And did someone mention the New Party ...?
   
• [026]  From the Media Post, George Simpson wrote about hearing Stuart Zakim, the senior vice president corporate communications for American Media, say "American Media stands for quality journalism."

The occasion was a public apology (and donation to the Arizona Burn Center's Foundation for Burns and Trauma) after American Media Inc.'s Weekly World News named Phoenix police officer Jason Schechterle (who was tragically burned and disfigured four years ago when a taxicab rammed into his patrol car, which burst into flames) one of the 10 ugliest people in the world.

There are a great many adjectives that come to mind for the kind of journalism practiced by a publication (or company) which could dream up such a bottom-feeding idea as a list of the 10 ugliest people in the world, but "quality" isn't one of them. And it doesn't matter who got fired, or how quickly they pulled the issues off the newsstands, the fact that it was considered a viable story idea in the first place is nearly as repugnant as featuring the likeness of a police officer disfigured in the line of duty. And one can never be sure the donation and apology weren't the most expeditious ways of avoiding what was sure to be a breath-taking lawsuit.

You can't help but think that H. L. Mencken's "No one ever went broke under-estimating the taste of the American public" is somewhere painted on the entrance way of American Media's newly relocated headquarters. 

• [025]  During that long 16 hour plane ride, I was reading Tao Kit's new book which has shot straight into the bestsellers' list.  It is actually annoying, because the essays about China/Hong Kong are full of disgust and rancor, where those about United States and Europe are filled wth adoration.  As a simple exercise, after I arrived in New York City, I noted during my US$57 taxi cab ride from the airport into Manhattan about the Van Wyck Expressway: mounds of garbage in the meridian littered among five-foot-tall weeds; the overpass bridges were painted in green and every one of them is pockmarked with the color of brownish-red rust showing up; and let us not forget the marvelous sight of that architectural masterpiece known as Lefrak City.  If I had not been reading those essays, I would have taken all of these sights as a natural state of affairs.  However, Tao Kit is likely to say this proves that New York City has a unique personality that Hong Kong will never ever get.
   
• [024]  In this Hong Kong Economic Journal (via NCN) review of the Hong Kong media industry, the last bit is incorrect.  Just like me, the author counts on using the website Made In China to access the six local Chinese-language newspapers through the direct links.  As of last week, Apple Daily was no longer accessible, and the author hoped that it had nothing with Chinese politics.  This speculation is off the mark.
   
  Like the South China Morning Post, Apple Daily's online strategy is the subscription model, charging several hundred HK dollars per year.  Previously, Made In China provided deep links to their articles without requiring subscription.  Made In China has no business relationships with any of the linked newspapers, and it supports itself through and donations.  Therefore, Made In China was causing Apple Daily to lose money.  Last week, every time that someone clicked on an Apple Daily article linked from Made In China, the link was re-directed to a registration page.  As of now, Made In China has given up linking to Apple Daily.  This was a straightforward financial decision (no different from SCMP, which is customarily referred to as 'the unlinkable SCMP).
   
  The item preceding this issue in the article was also off the mark.  The subject was the announcement by Hong Kong television stations ATV and TVB that Hong Kong Television Audience Measurement will be done by CSM (a company set up by CCTV and Sofres to measure television audience in China), and the prior contractor A.C. Nielsen has been shown the door.  My insider source (and this is absolutely trustworthy) is that the contract was lost not out of political considerations but because of customer service issues -- the incumbent had the job for many years and had gotten so complacent that they had forgot about customer focus; it had gotten to the point where the customers said that they didn't care who gets the job as long as it was someone else.
   
• [Administrative Note]  I am flying from Hong Kong to New York City today.  No updates for about a day or so.
   
• [023]  I have been asked numerous times about the differences between Chinese-language and English-language media in Hong Kong.  I don't have an easy answer, but I can illustrate by actual examples.  Here is one example from today.  In the English-language South China Morning Post, one reads: "A man died early yesterday after leaping from a footbridge in Tuen Mun.  The man, whose wrists had been slashed, struck the roof of a car and bounced onto the road into the path of a taxi, which hit him."  The reader would not have given it another thought.
   
  From the Chinese-language Ming Pao and Sing Tao, you get the whole deal (and much more than you ever need to know).  I have deliberately shrinked those photographs.  If you had picked up the print copy of Sing Tao, you would have seen the gory details of the body parts of the subject being picked up piece by piece.  Welcome to the real Hong Kong of the 95% Chinese-speaking/reading population.  We don't necessarily want to know this, but our media have decided that this is what we want.  We are probably to blame because we have not told the media that the media unequivocally that we don't need to see this.
  
   
  Addendum: Another photo that you'll only see in the Chinese-media in Hong Kong (Oriental Daily via Yahoo! News)
  
   
  Addendum:  More stuff that you will never ever see in English-language meda.  This photo appeared on the front page of Apple Daily in Taiwan.
  
   
• [022]  There is big news for Taiwan coming from the city of Dalian in China.  Could it the arrival of the New Party delegation in Dalian to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the victory of China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression? (see People's Daily)  Could it about the direct importing of Taiwan fruits into the huge China market?  Hmmm ... no, the hearts and minds of Taiwan are presently turned to supermodel Lin Chiling who fell off a horse and injured six ribs.  When that happened, the Taiwan media in the New Party entourage broke away immediately and deserted from a New Party press conference, much to the shock and dismay of Chinese officials who had the final revenge by setting up an impenetrable protective ring outside of Chiling's hospital room.  When Chiling returns to Taiwan in a few days, there should be an airport media riot.  Note: Chiling is the singlemost beloved figure in Taiwan, not just because of her physical beauty but because her likeability score is through the roof.
  
   
  (TVBS via Boxun)  Those Who Dared thinks that this incident is amusing, but Chen Shui-bian know a good thing when he sees it.  At a cocktail reception, Chen praised Lin Chiling: "Ms Lin Chiling made four short films in the Marshall Islands in praise of development workers from Taiwan.  In the near future, Ah Bian will personally lead a group to visit the Marshall Islands to look at the fruits of Taiwan's love for the Marshall Island."
  
   
• [021]  Daily Kos: "A sizable portion of the whole right-wing blogosphere, during the aftermath of the attacks, immediately leapt to play the go-to-Kos-and-search-for-damning-comments game. Most of them busied themselves finding the inevitably lame comments and trying to spin them into something outrageous ... Of course, we all play that game. Others have amply documented some of the sentiments at right-wing websites after the attacks (and before the attacks, for that matter), continuing into today."  What a waste of time!  Wikipedia reference: Internet Troll.  P.S.  On the day when the London bombs went off, Daily Kos received an all-time high of 700,000 visits (see the item below for comparison).
   
• [020]  For the record, during the first six months of 2005, there were 723,239 page views (or 3,995 page views per day) for total bandwidth consumption of 805 gigabytes on this blog.  It is my goal to reduce this to about 1,000 page views per day for the rest of the year.  I am no longer interested in numbers for the sake of numbers (even though I know how to get them with a flick of the finger), but I only want the people who want to come here for the right reasons.
   
• [019]  Lance Armstrong's summary of the day at Le Tour de France: "Un jour de merde."
   
• [018]  The movie Initial D may be the a good way of reducing xenophobia among Chinese youth:
  - The story: Based upon a popular Japanese manga series
  - The setting: Japan
  - The main character: Jay Chou, a pop singer from Taiwan and extremely popular in Greater China
  - His girlfriend: Anne Suzuki, a Japanese actress
  - His father: Anthony Wong, the son of a Chinese woman and a British sailor
  - His best friend: Chapman To, an authentic Hong Konger from Mongkok
  - His best friend's father: Kenny Bee, a former Hong Kong musician
  - His major rival: Edison Chen, a Canadian-Chinese
  - Another rival: Shawn Yue, from Hong Kong
  - A professional rival: Jordan Chan, from Hong Kong
  - The directors: Hong Kong/Chinese persons who just finished directing a movie in Holland starring a Korean actress
  Above all, it is the manner in which the fact the mostly Chinese cast just treated the Japanese setting as if it were completely natural.  If everyone can behave that way, there won't the entire emotional baggage of the Nanking massacre, the Yakusuni war shrine, and all that, and they can just look at the straight facts of current affairs.
   
• [017]  (6Park)  In the city of Jilin (China), a western-food restaurant has a Chinese-language sign outside the door: "Japanese must apologize before entering (日本人谢罪入内)."  The restaurant said that if Japanese customers want to dine here, they must properly apologize for the fact that Japan invaded China, or else the restaurant will not offer any services.
  
  For more of the same, see the previous post No Chinese Or Dogs Allowed.
   
• [015]  Among the famous lines suggested at Political Animal, here is one that I didn't know about.  If better known, it would have stopped that cliché.  Robert F. Kennedy: "The advice 'bomb them back to the Stone Age' may show that the speaker is already there himself, but it could, if followed, force all of us to join him."

• [014]  Not a good day for some proofreader at China Daily...
  
   
  
   
• [013]  The front pages of Chinese-language newspapers in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan on the London bombings:
  
  
  
  
  I will spare you the editorials.  As Tim Worstall said: "May I just remind you of one of those little rules that we have in our civilised society? We bury the dead and console the bereaved before we start making asinine political points."
   
• [012]  The Shengyou Reporter's Field Notes  You may recall that this previous post was about the field notes from the Beijing News reporter in reporting this violent assault on peasant villagers over land rights.  Further down this post, I have just added my translation of the field notes from the Phoenix TV reporter Zeng Zimo as published in Phoenix Weekly.  She had expected to be stopped and searched, so she made up a video tape beforehand to hand over and then she kept the real tapes.  Sweet!  Then she wrote about her experience.  Here are some excerpts:

There is a large sign with the word 'Injustice' (冤) in black-on-white background.  In the courtyard, there were six mourning altars lined with flower wreaths for the six dead villagers.  The banner across the center read: "In order to carry out the land policy of the central government and to protect the interests of the villagers, they gave up their precious lives."  ... The villagers said that the cadres have disappeared since the incident: "They are not cadres from our village.  We hadn't elected them!"  The office of the village cadres has been turned into a mortuary, with flies everywhere inside.  ...  By the time that we were allowed to leave, the final words from the local officials to us were: "If the National News Office did not call us and your station director had not come today to fetch you, you couldn't have left here this way."
 

P.S.  I have added just added photographs from another blog to corroborate the Phoenix Weekend story.

• [011]  Danwei points to how "a team of journalists were visiting Linyi, a 'model city in the war of resistance against Japan', and were 'embarrassed' by a number of unsavoury goings-on there.  The BBS responses were generally very dismissive of these 'over-delicate' hacks coughing into their handkerchiefs as they came across the sort of massage parlour, KTV joint and hairdressing salon that are, of course, quite typical of mid-tier cities like Linyi."
     
  I suspect that the reporters were less than shocked but much more offended by the brazenness in which business was being promoted.  (SCOL):  [summary]  There were the usual night calls to the guest rooms from the hotel's beauty center for special services.  After receiving complaints from the group members that they can't get any rest due to the repeated calls (like a dozen per hour), the reporter took the call next time and asked for a girl to be sent up.  She came and he established what the special services and rates were.  Then he called the hotel security manager to complain.  While most operators would flee at the sight of reporters, these two sat down and gave interviews.  The security person said that the beauty center was outsourced and therefore the hotel has no control over the activities.  When the reporter asked to call the police, the security person offered 5,000 yuan for the sake of the reputation of the hotel.  When the reporter indignantly turned the bribe down, the security person said, "If you report to the police, you shouldn't expect to leave Linyi."  Then the two got up and left.  Now if you were the reporter, wouldn't you write this one up, regardless of the nature of the place?
   
• [010]  (6Park)  Help wanted ad: (translation)  "I am a handsome third-year male university student.  Recently, I find that I am unable to concentrate when I study alone.  I would like to hire a diligent female students as my study companion, so that we can learn together and encourage each other.  I will supply the seat, water and I will wipe the desk top.  Wages: Two yuan per day.  The applicants must be interviewed by me in person, and then I will make the hiring decision.  Telephone number: 77XXXXX."
  
   
• [009]  Smile! You're on Communist camera covers the hundreds of thousands of suveillance cameras in China.  The first three photos were taken by one such camera in the university entrance exam hall in Haiding.  When the bell rang, the students moved up to hand in their exam booklets and someone went in to swoop up their mobile phones and MP3 players.  The fourth photo was not taken by a surveillance camera.  This was a regular digital camera photo of the perpetrator and his stash of 17 mobile phones plus MP3 players at the police station.  Check out that special chair!
       
   
• [008]  A brief trade news item: At the Hong Kong toy fair, a local cartoon figure is looking to expand internationally into Europe, United States, Japan and Korea.  The name of the character is Kapo.  Hmm.  Kapo, eh?  Here is what I thought of immediately.  According to the Simon Weisenthal Center, it is a "term used in the Nazi concentration camps for a prisoner chosen by the SS to head a work gang made up of other prisoners. Often chosen from the criminal element, the Kapos were treated better and, more often than not, brutalized other prisoners."  There is nothing warm, cuddly and fuzzy about a Kameradenpolizei.
  
   
• [007] SCMP: "Photographs published in several newspapers showing bodies with the limbs exposed stacked on top of each other at a government mortuary had been altered, the health minister claimed yesterday.  The newspapers reported that bodies had been stored on top of each other in refrigeration rooms at government mortuaries, with staff stepping on exposed limbs.  They also ran photos of the bodies that were sent to them from an anonymous source who claimed to be a former mortuary worker."  But the SCMP probably had the good taste not to show you those photographs, of which there are around 60 and a video.  Here are three of the photos:
     
  To clarify, the dispute is not about whether the photos have been manipulated by PhotoShop.  The issue is whether the scene had been deliberately staged for maximum impact, and that is unverifiable.
   
• [006]  (Blogger Anti reviewed Jung Chang's Mao: The Unknown Story)  [translation]  I have been reading Jung Chang's new book <<Mao, The Unknown History>>.  I've read several chapters and felt that the 23 British pounds were not worth it.  This book is basically a work of literature, and not a work of scholarship.  It only wants to prove that Mao Zedong was evil from birth to death.  I paid special attention to the footnotes.  Jung Chang has certainly read many sources, but her citations basically did not involve cross-analyses.  She picked the theme first, and then assembled various materials unfavorable to Mao.  I am not qualified to write any critique of this book.  An important matter such a biography of Mao Zedong ought to be treated by experts.  I hope Chinese Commuinst Party historians such as Gao Hua or Li Rui can spare some time to read this took and provide expert critiques.
   
• [005]  At the Hong Kong Chief Executive's Q&A before the Legco (see The Standard), legislator Emily "Lau said [Chief Executive Donald] Tsang had ignored the fact that half a million residents - roughly 7 percent of the population - marched last July to protest against Beijing's veto of direct elections for chief executive in 2007 and the legislature in 2008."  In the aftermath of this year's march, will Lau say, "Tsang had ignored the fact that 21,000 residents - approximately 0.3% of the population - marched this July"?  Never mind ... change the subject ... change the script ... anything ...
   
• [004]  A child who cannot afford to pay tuition has to listen in from outside the classroom door.   More of the same from Wild Goose Journal: Is this the “emerging economic superpower”?

• [003]  To Hell With Live 8 (from Eric Alterman):  "I’m an idiot, I know, but I just figured out that Live 8 is not raising any money for famine relief or malaria cures or AIDS treatment in Africa. It is just designed to “pressure” G8 countries into doing what’s right.  Thing is, guys, the G8 doesn’t, (and shouldn’t) care what Madonna, Elton John, U2, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music, R.E.M., Coldplay, Bjork, Sting, Dido, Justin Timberlake, Green Day, Snoop Dogg, P. Diddy, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Celine Dion, Tim McGraw, and Faith Hill think about anything, particularly if they won’t put their own riches where their big mouths are. (Ditto Pitt, George Clooney, Will Smith, Natalie Portman and Salma Hayek.)  I am in favor of harnessing the power of celebrity for global good but where’s the good in this? Good God, this is a moral crime."
   
• [002]  According to SCMP, "[Commercial Radio talk show host Raymond] Wong approached the company making a clear and strong request to host a programme five days per week, and [said] that it would be a waste of [his talents] if Commercial Radio only arranged [for] him to host a programme once a week," said Commercial Radio's general manager, Rita Chan Ching-han.  She said Wong had asked for his contract to be terminated if the company was unable to accommodate his request and then Commercial Radio terminated Wong forthwith.
  Hmm ... that is a gross simplification of what happened ... according to Sing Tao (print edition only), employees at Commercial Radio said that Wong showed up at the office referring to Commercial Radio director Winnie Ng with "My last name is Wong and not 'Sexual Harrassment'" and then he asked a female employee, "Has she sexually harrassed you?"  He was then heard in a very public explosion of obscenities.  Some local media have characterized this as yet another instance of political oppression against freedom of speech and press.  Hey, I am clueless but I can only tell you what I read in the newspapers ... but what if you were McDonald's and an employee comes at you like this?  How quickly will he/she be tossed out?  Would you be offended at this probative attack at the sexual preference of the decision-maker?
   
• [001]  A pictorial illustration of wealth inequality in China.  Which do you own?  A Bora or a bicycle?  (6Park)