An exploration of virtual experiences and environments in and about China.
From EastSouthWestNorth:
"It was duly noted that the Civil Administrative Department in China will investigate and penalize anyone who offers to burn paper figures that represent items such as villas, sedans, mistresses, Viagra, condoms, 3P girls and Super Girls for their ancestors during the traditional Qingming festival."
From Pacific Epoch:
"Beijing’s Tongzhou District recently established an internal database of local bribery records, Beijing Star Daily reports. The system catalogues all criminal records of bribery in the construction, finance, pharmacy, education and governmental procurement sectors since 1997. Individuals and enterprises can apply for access to the database, said the report."
PostShow points us over to CSDN Live’s video section: a programmer’s online television channel. (I assume CSDN stands for Computer Science Developer’s Network and is probably a wordplay on MSDN, the Microsoft Developer Network.)
TinyFool gives it a thumbs up. The current first episode is entitled "Programmers Who Blog" and the next episode is called "What is Social Searching?"
Via PostShow via TinyFool@DoNews.
A NetEase BBS forum thread called "super-pretty PLA recruiting ads" opens up the discussion with the question:
"If you were a hotblooded young man, how could you not support this?"
Selected comments (most are along the lines of "great photos!"):
I’d like to join but I’m too old.
They’re a lot nicer looking than Taiwan’s!
What do you mean, join the military? I wouldn’t even know where to go. It seems it’s getting harder and harder to be a soldier. How do they get in? What will China’s troops be like in the future? They all get in by giving bribes, they’re all the children of wealthy families.
Not bad. Good photos and good topic. But on Guangzhou streets you see the military vehicles parking crazy, driving crazy. What’s more, which people are they protecting? Are the common people living equitable, fair lives? With the guarantee of the law? Those who are responsible for protecting the people, please love the people!
EastSouthWestNorth points us to their translation of a BBS post that created the most famous pervert (translated from 变态) on the Internet (according to Tianya Post). The post speaks of:
So why is the president of the Sentinel Union (Tongxu in WoW, Zheng Xin in real life) a pervert? Because his chat logs include such quotations (translation courtsey of ESWN):
"I like the feeling of licking you with my mouth.
I feel that it is even more relaxing than fucking.
Dim Moon’s hemorrhoids are getting recently and it is a lot easier to defecate. Thank the miraculous doctor!!!"
Municator by YellowSheepRiver:
* The product is from Macau.
** China’s own microprocessor
Via PostShow.
One of the best pieces I’ve read on the politics and business of Virtual China: Clive Thompson’s NYT piece on the Chinese Internet, what it means to its users, and how American businesses are navigating the market. The basic conundrum, from an American point of view, is summed up in these excerpts:
…as [Google's Kai-Fu] Lee and I talked about how the Internet was transforming China, he
offered one opinion that seemed telling: the Chinese students he meets
and employs, Lee said, do not hunger for democracy. "People are
actually quite free to talk about the subject," he added, meaning
democracy and human rights in China. "I don’t think they care that
much. I think people would say: ‘Hey, U.S. democracy, that’s a good
form of government. Chinese government, good and stable, that’s a good
form of government. Whatever, as long as I get to go to my favorite Web
site, see my friends, live happily.’ "
…When I spoke to Kai-Fu Lee in Google’s Beijing offices, there were
moments that to me felt jarring. One minute he sounded like a
freedom-loving Googler, arguing that the Internet inherently empowers
its users. But the next minute he sounded more like Jack Ma of Alibaba
— insisting that the Chinese have no interest in rocking the boat. It
is a circular logic I encountered again and again while talking to
China’s Internet executives: we don’t feel bad about filtering
political results because our users aren’t looking for that stuff
anyway. They may be right about their users’ behavior.
But you
could just as easily argue that their users are incurious because
they’re cowed. Who would openly search for illegal content in a public
Internet cafe — or even at home, since the government requires that
every person with personal Internet access register his name and phone
number with the government for tracking purposes?
ElectricPower.cn (电力世界网) is a community website about electric power - in the sense that it features commercial products from different vendors (product specifications, prices, websites), a wiki about electric power, and reviews about components.
In short, a goldmine for electric power engineers who are not networked to a greater company / pool of resources yet. (To my knowledge, the US does not have such sites yet, though startup engineers would benefit very much from them!)
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