Oriental Morning PostSeptember 3, 2008 Many of today's newspapers reported that China is going to launch another manned spacecraft before the end of September. The reports say that China's third manned spaceship, Shenzhou VII, originally planned for an October launch, has been rescheduled to lift off before the National Day holiday on October 1. However, a report in the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post refuted those stories: Yesterday, some Hong Kong media quoted a source from ...

Economic Evening NewsSeptember 1, 2008 Today quite a few newspapers reported that economist Wu Jinglian denied allegations that he was a spy in an interview with the media including The Beijing News and China News agency. Wu's employer, the government-funded think tank Development Research Center of the State Council, also confirmed that Wu was not arrested for being a spy. During the last few days, online rumors had it that Wu Jinglian was suspected of ...

Popular search terms related to economist Wu Jinglian (吴敬琏) today include "Wu Jinglian arrested," "Wu Jinglian spy" and "Wu Jinglian intelligence." Netizens are looking for more information in support of the following (unsourced) news item that's been getting wiped from forums and blogs this afternoon (screenshot): According to a knowledgeable source: Wu Jinglian, noted Chinese economist and research fellow at the Developmental Research Center of the State Council, is being investigated on suspicion of spying ...

Southern Metropolis DailyAugust 29, 2008 Modern ExpressAugust 29, 2009 Yesterday's Beijing Paralympic torch-lighting ceremony, looking like a replica of the one at the Athens Olympics, made the front page of most of today's newspapers. And like the Athens ceremony, it was held at an ancient site: the Temple of Heaven. Jiang Xintian, a deaf sign-language broadcaster, lit the torch from a fire kindled in a parabolic mirror and passed it to Jin Jing, the Olympic ...

That's all you're getting kid, mommy's on a diet This is a translation of an article that appeared in the Southern Daily (南方日报) which is the Guangdong Province Party newspaper, sister to the more lively and commercial Southern Metropolis Daily and part of the hydra-like Southern Media Group. 9 out of 10 new mothers don't have enough breast milk Original article by Sun Xiaosu; translated by Xiao Mo An obstetrics and gynecology expert explained to ...

This video shows a gun battle with characters from the popular game Counterstike, in Beijing's yuppie office and apartment complex Jianwai Soho. It's from Youku's monthly roundup of interesting web videos, which you can read in the extended entry: Youku Video Buzz by Kaiser Kuo Counter-Strike Comes to Life It's no surprise that Counter-Strike, the wildly popular tactical first-person shooter that started off as a modification to the game Half Life, has been a huge ...

Danwei presents the following as a public service for our American Democratic friends: Dear Americans in China for Obama, TOMORROW, FRIDAY AUGUST 29TH * * * BEIJING LIVE! OBAMA SPEECH WATCH, HAIDIAN Come watch Obama's acceptance speech for his party's nomination for US President LIVE at 10AM! Also: major speeches from Michelle, Joe, Hillary, Bill, Teddy and Al, as time permits. BRUNCH from 9A-Noon -- 20% off All Breakfasts. HAPPY HOUR from 5P-8P -- 15 ...

The Beijing NewsAugust 28, 2008 A new school year starts this month, and millions of new freshmen are going off to college . Two major Beijing newspapers, The Beijing News and Beijing Times, printed a photo of incoming freshman Wang Jiaming on the front page. Unlike most other students, Wang didn't take the National College Entrance Examination (aka gaokao); he was admitted to Tsinghua University, China's most elite institution, because of his status as an ...

An authoritative brand Last December, CCTV's the venerable Network News Broadcast (新闻联播) added fresh faces to its lineup of news readers. At the time, Danwei was fairly unimpressed with the changes and the accompanying state media blitz: the three opinion pieces we translated all pegged the program as being hopelessly mired in the past, weighed down by its association with the state propaganda apparatus. What use was it, we thought, to update the look of ...

In the belly of the beast Arup, the engineering firm that has been behind most of Beijing's new architectural wonders including the new CCTV headquarters, the Bird's Nest, the Water Cube and China World Tower 3, has launched a new website about their Beijing operations: ArupinBeijing.com. The above map of the department arrangements of the new CCTV building is a screen grab from the website. This article is from Danwei.org

In last place The thrill of victory may be satisfying enough for many Olympics spectators, but others may get tired of the relentless focus on the gold medal winners. Where's the agony of defeat in this year's harmonious Olympic Games? Liu Xiang came through on that front, but for less well-known failures, we have to look to this week's Southern Metropolis Weekly, which gives full-page profiles to twelve Olympic athletes who didn't even come close ...

Lin Miaoke in her breakout performance The Global Language Monitor, a Texas-based organization whose biggest claim to fame is its dubious pursuit of the millionth word in the English language (they're up to 996,341 right now), recently released its latest analysis of the media buzz surrounding various Olympic personalities. Michael Phelps topped the list, and Yao Ming was #3, but second place belonged not to an athlete but to Lin Miaoke, the girl in the ...

Chose your poison On August 20, China technology, telecoms and media consultant David Wolf wrote a blog post: Apple's bi-polar China disorder So here is the deal. Apple starts selling an album called "Songs for Tibet" on its iTunes Music Store (iTMS), and they do it right in the middle of the Beijing Olympics. Coincidence, or passive-aggressive middle finger to China? Apple isn't saying anything about it, so we are left to reach our own ...

If you are in China right now, try doing a search on Google News for "China" (using the international site at Google.com, not Google.cn). Here's our result from Shanghai: A little strange for a country where the Olympics are about to finish. The absence of China from news searches does not appear to be a Net Nanny phenomenon or at least it does not resemble the usual blocking and filtering. However, doing a search for ...

Hua Guofeng, leader of China for a short time in the wake of Mao's death, died yesterday. Xinhua issued a short obituary (Hecaitou notes that there are 101 characters, including punctuation). A commenter on a Xinhuanet thread memorializing Hua succinctly sums up his place in Chinese history: laorwhy: At one stroke you smashed the Gang of Four and ended the Cultural Revolution; bringing China's period of chaos to a close showed your courage and resolve. ...

This video was shot by Leah Thompson as part of a series by the Asia Society: "A Week in the Life of Beijing: The 2008 Summer Olympic Games." Here is another about Google.This article is from Danwei.org

Zuoxiao Zuzhou's 500-yuan double album What's the secret to getting rich in the arts? The culture section of this week's issue of New Weekly addresses that question in a number of different ways, looking at marketing strategies for online fiction, classical music, and modern art. The piece translated below examines the intersection between China's rock scene and its modern art world, and runs the numbers to figure out which is a more lucrative career path: ...

As reported on Danwei on July 23, "BOCOG's Security Department head Liu Shaowu said that Beijing had already set up special demonstration zones for protesters to express themselves" (link). Mirlin168 visited the three protest zones on August 11, and found them free of protesters. Last week Xinhua published an article that explains why there are no protesters in the protest zones: Spokesperson: Beijing authorities receive 77 demonstration applications since Aug. 1 Beijing authorities have received ...

Above is the second of a series of images from TooManyTribbles, go to her blog to see the whole set. This article is from Danwei.org

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (World Affairs Press, 2006 printing) Zheng Yifan tells of going to Germany in the early 90s for an international conference on Trotsky, where he was informed that he was unqualified to join the discussion because, given that Trotsky's works were unavailable in Chinese, he had obviously never read any of them. Zheng replied that Trotsky's major works had actually been translated in the early 1960s. In fact, ...