Botanical types tend to get pretty excited about photographing plants and flowers that bear a fierce vaginal resemblance. Can only imagine what they made of this amazing rural Xi’an find – a remarkably shaped mushroom-like plant.
Even the village elder who is over 80 years old said he had not seen such a plant before. Poor village elder 😦
Filed under Video
University staff at the Dalian University of Technology said they were disappointed that students went ahead with the traditional square hat fling graduation photo while a campus warehouse fire blazed in the background. Though when I studied at the University I was lit up by the warmth of the teachers and students alike.
Filed under News
In a brief round up of news from the central kingdom:
– blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng might be allowed to go on a ‘gap year’ to the states
Chen had campaigned against forced abortions in his home province of Shandong and had met the brunt of provincial official brutality. Until he knocked on the US door of the US embassy….
– Weetabix are now 60% owned by Chinese company Bright Food.
The Sun have reported that the boss of Bright Food can only manage two Weetabix for breakfast…
either breakfasts in China will start getting better, or breakfast in England will be full of cadmium dihydrophosphodiesterase E4934.
I happen to like Weetabix but a head chef at the Savoy describes them as “cakes that you give to dogs”
Bright Food are also after United Biscuits, which makes Jaffa Cakes and Hula Hoops, and French yoghurt group Yoplait.
What next? Curly Wurlys and petit filous watch out..
Filed under Advertising, Blogs, Breakfast, comedy
Good Al Jazeera 20 minute documentary on Chinese immigrants in Senegal.
+’s
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Once my friend fell down a road work hole on a Chinese university campus – only to be told by a passer-by “You’re not allowed to stand in that hole.”
Filed under Video
Why Ramen is great:
Created by: HackCollege.com
Filed under Art, Design, Food, Propaganda
This story is a Chinese Agatha Christie style murder mystery Cluedo on crack.
The backdrop to this tale of political intrigue is Chongqing, (think Gotham with dumplings) – an overpopulated, murky, fogged up city run by corrupt gangsters and even more corrupt officials.
Gotham
Chongqing
In November of last year a 41 year old British ‘businessman‘ Neil Heywood was found dead in a hotel room and was swiftly cremated, with the official verdict being that he had drunk himself to death. Only Neil Heywood didn’t drink. Heywood was a Mandarin speaking ex public school (Harrow) businessman, Aston Martin dealer and freelance consultant for ‘intelligence’ agency Hakluyt, who seem to be rapidly distancing themselves from the story.
The death of Mr Heyman is one of the key events in the drama of the downfall of the Communist Party chief in Chongqing, Bo Xilai.
Bo had it all. Just a year ago, he was tipped to be one of the new leaders of China and now his political career is in ruins and his wife is being accused of murder. Bo was one of the rising stars of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and was lauded for his stints as Mayor in Dalian, Governor of Liaoniang and party chief of Chongqing. However, his stellar career has come crashing down after he was suspended from the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) after his head of police, Wang Lijun was accused of trying to defect to the US at their consulate in Chengdu. Reports have suggested that Wang discussed the death of Heywood with Bo and suspected foul play. Then in a frightened state he tried to seek refuge from Mr Bo by defecting to the West. An article supposedly penned by Wang referred to Bo as the ‘greatest gangster in China’
Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai has been ‘transferred to the judicial authorities’ in relation to death of Mr Heywood. The relationship between Heywood and Bo is not fully clear. It has been reported that he was a ‘fixer’ for Bo’s family and helped his son gain a place at Harrow school in north west London. Whether the relationship between Bo, Gu and Heywood turned sour or not is unclear.
Bo made a name for himself in Chongqing with his no-nonsense approach to corruption and organized crime. Did he broke a few eggs too many in trying to make his omelette of Chinese power? Over the course of a few months he has gone from hot prospect to hot potato and has been dismissed from the Politburo and is now being investigated for “serious discipline violations”
This is being reported as one of the most significant political upheavals in China for 20 years . The British government have added their approval to the ongoing investigations into Heywood’s death. The reactions on the Chinese blogosphere are also interesting to note. In the censored and monitored world of the Chinese internet Chinese netizens often find their freedom to use language as they please is suppressed so they invent nicknames for people and events to make sure they can still talk about what is going on. In the internal struggles to remove Bo and Zhou Yongkang from power, bloggers reported the following:
In the 18th tugging war contest (18th National Congress) the “carrot ball” (Hu Jintao) led his team members “antenna baby” (Wen Jiabao), ‘learning machine” (Xi Jinping) and “wood seed” (Li Keqiang) to win against their rivals “Master Kong beef noodle” (Zhou Yongkang) who severely lost the game without support from “Tomato” (Bo Xilai).
The drama continues….
Bo, Gu and Neil
Filed under Blogs, Bo Xilai, censorship, Communist Party, corruption, Dispute, media, News, Politics, Propaganda
The People’s Liberation Army play ‘pass the parcel’ with a live grenade.
Filed under comedy, Propaganda
I have just read an interesting article from China Dialogue on how top sporting brands: Nike, Adidas, Puma, Li Ning etc are getting together for a ‘detox’. The world’s top sporting brands are setting out a plan to ‘wean themselves off’ the toxins they use to dye clothing.
In August last year Nike committed to a challenge set by Greenpeace to ‘eliminating all hazardous chemicals across its entire supply chain, and the entire life-cycle of its products by 2020’
Puma have also agreed to up their game and have been taking steps to evaluate their environmental cost. They have ‘calculated that the cost their operations had imposed on the natural environment last year through their greenhouse-gas emissions and water consumption was 94.4 million euros’
I happen to be reading an excellent book on the history of cancer at the moment and just read about how many of the toxins this article talks about were discovered.
In the mid 19th century, the cotton industry was undergoing a revolution and represented about 50% of all of the British exports, however, extracting the dyes used to colour the cotton was still a labour intensive process. The booming cotton industry led to new techniques of dyeing being developed and hastened the creation of the field of synthetic chemistry.
The new dyes that were being developed led chemists to create a whole range of chemical byproducts: solvents, alcohols, alkaloids, amides, alizarins and other non natural chemicals. It was the development of these synthetic chemicals that gave birth to modern pharmacology. They also have serious environmental consequences and it has taken a while for any clothing corporations to take notice. I wonder how long it will take big pharmaceuticals to follow suit.
Filed under Advertising, Dispute, environment, Propaganda, Sport
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