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Think you're tough? Probably not as tough as these Chinese soldiers, who played a lethal game of Hot Potato ... with live bombs!
During an exhibition drill in Hong Kong, last month, an elite garrison of 6,000 PLA troops staged a series of impressive exercises for the visit of the island’s chief executive, Sir Donald Tsang. Snipers shot tiny glasses, soldiers carried heavy logs and jumped through rings of fire, but nothing as incredible as a group of men playing a game of pass-the-bomb.
The lethal game is played by six soldiers standing in a circle with a dug whole in the middle. They pass an explosive satchel from one two another, counting down until it detonates. Just before it explodes, one of the soldiers throws it in the hole and they all leap away as the ground trembles and dirt starts flying from the pit. Any miscalculation could mean the end for all six players, but they don’t seem very intimidated by that. They just calmly pass the live satchel as if it were a simple bag.
A
lot of people have compared the Internet censorship bills SOPA and PIPA
with the Great Firewall of China, but how are the recent anti-SOPA protests
viewed by those most affected by Internet censorship?
Beijing-based Evan Osnos wrote about how the Chinese people view SOPA:
In China, the reaction to American protests has ranged from sympathy to gentle Schadenfreude, as Chinese Web users try to sort out whether they are being held up as victims or patsies or pirates.
After several years in which American diplomats have inveighed against Internet censorship in China, the proposals have inspired a bit of snickering. “The Great Firewall turns out to be a visionary product; the American government is trying to copy us,” one commentator wrote.
A Chinese message making the rounds on Thursday said: “At last, the planet is becoming unified: We are ahead of the whole world, and the ‘American imperialists’ are racing to catch up.”
Ah, and in case you were wondering, yes, SOPA was animated by the Taiwanese a while ago.
Cloudy skies over Beijing? Actually, no - the gray haze you see above is pollution.
NASA's Aqua satellite captured the patch of winter haze over the mega cities of Beijing and Tianjin on January 10, 2012:
One major constituent of haze is particle pollution, such as dust, liquid drops, and soot from burning fuel or coal. Particles smaller than 10 micrometers (called PM 10) are small enough to enter the lungs, where they can cause respiratory problems. The density of PM10 reached 560 micrograms per cubic meter of air on January 10, said the Beijing Environment Protection Bureau. By contrast, U.S. cities exceed air quality standards when PM10 concentrations reach 150 micrograms per cubic meter.
But most of the pollution that makes up haze isn’t PM10; it’s finer particles, smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5). These particles can embed themselves deep in the lungs and occasionally enter the blood stream. The fine particles are highly reflective, sending sunlight back into space. The Chinese government does not currently measure PM2.5, but the U.S. Embassy in Beijing reports their measurements hourly in a Twitter feed. On the morning of January 10, PM2.5 measurements were off the scale, though by afternoon they had dropped to moderate levels. The Beijing Environmental Bureau will start releasing PM2.5 measurements sometime before January 23, the Chinese New Year.
You lungs thank you for not living there: Link
The Chinese construction company Broad Group built a 30-story hotel in just 15 days (360 hours) in December. This time-lapse video shows the process. See another, longer video showing more details at Geekosystem. Link
You probably already know that China has a one child per couple policy, but you might not know how it is enforced or who is granted exceptions to the rule. The answers to these questions can be found over at Mental Floss and they are simply fascinating.
Provincial governments are responsible for enforcing the policy and do so through a mix of rewards and punishments doled out by local officials. In most provinces, having a an extra child gets you a fine, the amount of which varies across provinces. In some places, the fine is a set amount (usually in the thousands of dollars), and in others it’s based on a percentage of the violator’s annual income. In some provinces, policy violators can also have their property and/or belongings confiscated and lose their jobs.
Who knew they even can fire you from your job for having an extra baby?
For the ultimate experience in romantic getaways, try China’s Dinosaurs Fairyland. The city of Erlian is home to rich fossil beds, so you can find an appropriate theme park there. Among its attractions are enormous, concrete models of dinosaurs. This one should really be worked into a dystopian movie someday.
Link -via io9 | Photo: Asia Wheeling
Still think that pandas are cute and cuddly animals that eat only bamboo? Surely it poses no threat to other wildlife, right? Well think again: this wild panda in China was videotaped eating a dead animal:
Captured on an infrared camera in the Laohegou forest area, the panda appears to find a dead wildebeest in a gulley and gnaws on its bones for two hours.
Pandas are typically known to eat only bamboo shoots, but according to Chen Youping, deputy director of Forestry Department of Pingwu County, it is not unknown for the beasts to eat meat."The reason why pandas eat meat is because it used to eat meat millions of years ago," he said.
"Now they mainly eat bamboos, but we occasionally see bones of dead animals in pandas' excrement during our years of field work," he added.
Link | Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
What
happened when you toss a hopelessly tangled string of Christmas tree lights
to the recycling bin?
Chances are, if it escapes being put in a landfill, it will end up in Shijao, China, where 20 million pounds of Christmas lights go to die every year:
Adam Minter wrote this enlightening piece for The Atlantic: LinkShijiao, like most of China's recycling zones, began to thrive 20 years ago in part because of its cheap labor and low environmental standards. Even two years ago, visitors to the fields around town would see clouds of black smoke churning off giant piles of burning wire (not just Christmas tree wire), the fastest -- though by no means the cleanest -- way to extract copper from plastic and rubber. But something interesting happened on the road to globalization: China's manufacturers, hungry for cheap raw materials, developed an appetite for the recovered insulation that wraps around insulated copper wire, and devised a way to make into a range of products including, Li tells me, slipper soles.
A red panda decided to move in with a family in the suburbs of Leshan, Sichuan Province, China, last week. The homeowners were watching the wild panda as they ate a meal outside, and slowly approached to get a better look. The panda ran into the house through an open door, and made himself at home. The word spread, and neighbors came to have their pictures made with the panda. Local authorities took the panda and released him into the wild within a few days. Link -via Arbroath
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Hua’ao and Qingfeng’s from the Nanshan Park in Shandong, China are big fans of snow, as you can see from the way they roll around in the powdery covering.
Via BuzzFeed
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Well, of course! Who would go outside without one?
Artificial replicas of pregnant women’s abdomens, made of silica gel, have become hot sellers on the online shopping market, the China News.com reported on Monday.
Looking like the belly of a genuine pregnant woman, the imitations have variously been described as having “flesh color” and “human skin texture,” and as “highly comfortable,” by online shop owners.
There are currently three types of fake bellies being sold, each of which approximates a different period of pregnancy, corresponding to the second and latter trimesters and the final month.
Remember: don’t dress for the job that you have. Dress for the job that you want to have.
Link -via Oddity Central | Photo: China News
Stop playing with that brick! It’s not a toy, but a tool. Buses in Xian and Harbin, China come equipped with brightly painted bricks that can be used by passengers to smash open windows in the event of an emergency. But if you think about it, there are so many possible uses for emergency bricks elsewhere in everyday life.
Link -via OhGizmo! | Photo: Wagnerweb
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Got
a college degree but couldn't find a job? Not going to be a problem in
China!
The ever practical China's Ministry of Education has the perfect solution to college graduates that can't find jobs: eliminate the college majors producing unemployable people. Problem solved!
Much like the U.S., China is aiming to address a problematic demographic that has recently emerged: a generation of jobless graduates. China’s solution to that problem, however, has some in the country scratching their heads.
China’s Ministry of Education announced this week plans to phase out majors producing unemployable graduates, according to state-run media Xinhua. The government will soon start evaluating college majors by their employment rates, downsizing or cutting those studies in which the employment rate for graduates falls below 60% for two consecutive years.
Link (Photo: Zhu Difeng/Shutterstock)
Foot binding was a tradition among Chinese women from around a thousand years ago to less than 100 years ago. Billions of women endured the crippling tradition, although many died trying to achieve the goal of “lotus feet.” The process of deforming a girl’s feet was started when she was between two and five years old.
To begin the foot binding process, the foot binder would gently soak the child’s feet in a solution of animal blood and herbs. Her toenails were trimmed and groomed, and her feet were thoroughly massaged. Once the skin was softened and the muscles were relaxed, the foot binder would curl the child’s toes down towards the sole of the foot as far as the bones would allow. The binder would then curl the toes farther than the bones would allow, snapping the toddler’s phalanges and forming a kind of twisted foot-fist. No manner of pain relief was employed during this process, so the binder was required to disregard any agonized screams. Next, the arch was broken.
But that’s just the beginning of the process. Read the rest of it, and how foot binding finally fell out of style, at Damn Interesting. Link
Photo: Michael Christopher Brown/Newsweek
Ah, the irony. Guess who's profitting from doing something that would've gotten them "re-educated" in a farm back in the days of the Cultural Revolution?
Here's how some clever bourgeious restaurateurs are capitalizing on the boom of nostalgia in China:
To many, the idea of a Cultural Revolution–themed dining establishment is paradoxical, since tasty cuisine was certainly not that era’s strong suit. The first “Red restaurants” sprouted in Beijing in the ’90s, offering little more than a few socialist-realist posters and food that was minimalist in the literal sense of the word. One served dandelion-leaf salad and raw cucumbers to symbolize the grass and bark that some poor Chinese ate during the hardscrabble ’60s and ’70s. Now Red-restaurant cuisine is more in line with middle-class tastes. In Mao’s hometown, “the Chairman’s Favorite”—roast fatty pork—is a must, while Red Scene offers a pricey shrimp dish for $27 alongside less-expensive cornmeal cakes and country-style bean curd.
Melinda Liu of The Daily Beast reports: Link
When the New South China Mall opened in 2006, it was marked as another wonder of the world for China and the world’s largest mall. Today, it has an occupancy rate of only 2%.
“Sometimes tour groups come here from [nearby cities] Guangzhou or Shenzhen,” said Hu Xiaocui, a bored ticket taker at the Teletubbies playroom that is the only functioning business on the mall’s third floor. “But they don’t show them the empty parts.”
Only 47 of an astonishing 2,350 retail spaces are filled, the most successful businesses being McDonalds and KFC restaurants near the mall’s front entrance. Fast-food wrappers and empty paper cups litter ghostly hallways in other parts of the complex. The elevators and lights are switched off, and voices echo off atrium ceilings four storeys high.
“We only sweep near the Teletubbies playroom. The other floors – what’s the point?” laughed a member of the cleaning staff. “No one ever did any shopping here, even when there were stores. It was too expensive.”
Two things I would do here: run up the down escalator and create a secret living space.
Photo: Zhang Xiaoli/Xinhua
Archaeologists in Luoyang, China, dug up 5 chariots and 12 horse skeletons from a 2,500-year-old tomb. The photos over at National Geographic are fantastic, but can someone explain to me why the skeletons of the horses are flat? Link
Farmer Shu Mansheng made his own hovercraft using eight motorcycle engines. Anyone know what the writing on the sides say?
Link -via Laughing Squid
American daredevil Jeb Corliss became the first man in a wingsuit to fly in China, and flew right through a natural arch at Tianenman mountain in Hunan Province. The action starts about one minute into the video. Link -via Arbroath
No, these aren’t scenes from Avatar’s Pandora, they are the China’s Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, which may have been the inspiration for the film’s stunning location. The drastic pillars are a result of thousands of years of erosion thanks to expanding ice in the winter. For more info on the park and more stunning pictures, be sure to visit the link.
It's probably just a matter of time before China becomes the largest economy in the world. When it does claim the top spot, what sort of dragon will it be? Will China be a benign hegemon?
The Economist pontificates:
LinkIf China does usurp America, what kind of hegemon will it be? Some argue that it will be a “premature” superpower. Because it will be big before it is rich, it will dwell on its domestic needs to the neglect of its global duties. If so, the world may resemble the headless global economy of the inter-war years, when Britain was unable, and America unwilling, to lead. But Mr Subramanian prefers to describe China as a precocious superpower. It will not be among the richest economies, but it will not be poor either. Its standard of living will be about half America’s in 2030, and a little higher than the European Union’s today.
With luck China will combine its precocity in economic development with a plodding conservatism in economic diplomacy. It should remain committed to preserving an open world economy. Indeed, its commitment may run deeper than America’s, because its ratio of trade to GDP is far higher.
An unauthorized theme park based on the mobile game Angry Birds has opened at Window of the World Park in Changsha, China. Participants can use a real giant slingshot to knock pigs off a structure, as seen in a video clip.
Fortunately, the birds and the pigs are not as real as the intellectual property case that the game’s owners have against the park, which CNNGo reports opened on September 1 in Hunan province as part of a month-long stress reduction festival.
“This [Angry Birds park] serves as a method for people to purge themselves and to gain happiness,” a park official told Chinese gaming website Gamersky.com.
Rovio, the company that produces the game, may license the rights to an Angry Birds themed park in the future, but no deal was made with the people who opened the Chinese attraction. Link
Fossils of a 160-million-year-old mammal found in China show us a placental mammal that is 35 million years older than any found before. This tiny animal is named Juramaia sinensis, or “Jurassic mother from China.”
With forepaws adapted to climbing trees, the newfound eutherian scurried about temperate Jurassic forests feasting on insects under the cover of darkness. This diet allowed J. sinensis to tip the scales at around half an ounce (15 grams), making the creature lighter than a chipmunk.
“The great evolutionary lineage that includes us had a very humble beginning, in terms of body mass,” said Zhe-Xi Luo, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, who led the team that discovered the fossil.
Although this discovery helps us fill in the blanks of mammals’ evolutionary timeline, the reason for the split between placental mammals and marsupials is still a mystery. Link -via The Caudal Lure
(Image credit: Mark A. Klinger, Carnegie Museum of Natural History)
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Quick, guess which one is the real panda! Tao Tao is a giant panda born at the Wolong Panda wild training base in China, but he has never seen a human face. His caretakers have always dressed in panda costumes any time they were around him! They are training Tao Tao for a life in the wild bamboo forest. See more pictures at Shortlist, where you can also see a video of Tao Tao’s birth and first year. Link -via Buzzfeed
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.
The media’s power to “create” news has become a hot topic in recent years. But it’s nothing new. This true story, from a book called The Fabulous Rogues, by Alexander Klein, is an example of what’s been going on for at least a century. It was sent to us by BRI reader Jim Morton.
Most journalistic hoaxes, no matter how ingenious, create only temporary excitement. But in 1899 four reporters in Denver, Colorado, concocted a fake story that, within a relatively short time, made news history -violent history at that. Here’s how it happened.
THE DENVER FOUR
One Saturday night the four reporters -from Denver’s four newspaper, the Times, Post, Republican, and Rocky Mountain News- met by chance in the railroad station where they had each come hoping to spot an arriving celebrity around whom they could write a feature. Disgustedly, they confessed to one another that they hadn’t picked up a newsworthy item all evening.
“I hate to go back to the city desk without something,” one of the reporters, Jack Toumay, said.
“Me, too,” agreed Al Stevens. “I don’t know what you guys are going to do, but I’m going to fake. It won’t hurt anybody, so what the devil.”
They other three fell in with the idea and they all walked up Seventeenth Street to the Oxford Hotel, where, over beers, they began to cast about for four possible fabrications. John Lewis, who was known as “King” because of his tall, dignified bearing, interrupted one of the preliminary gambits for a point of strategy. Why dream up four lukewarm fakes, he asked. Why not concoct a sizzler which they would all use, and make it stick better by their solidarity.
more …
Do you or someone you know have an addiction to Warcrack? Are you spending so much time farming and battling monsters that your life is passing you by? Well, at least you haven’t sold your kids to pay for your MMO habits! One couple in China, however, have sold three of their children just to pay for their online gaming obsession, and they see nothing wrong with what they have done. They are so honest, in fact, that they admit to not wanting to raise the children, and that their intention from day one was to have children in order to sell them for cold hard cash. Thankfully the two are now in custody, and here’s hoping that the kids don’t follow in their parents footsteps and end up in a gold farming camp!
Link Image via Image*After
If you love MMORPGs, particularly WOW and Starcraft, then you’d most certainly have a great time at China’s counterfeit theme park based around the epic Blizzard videogames. You can see all kinds of pictures of the park over at Shanghaist.
Link Via Consumerist
China
is currently being invaded ... by an insidious attack of green algae.
It's not the first time green algae infestation occurred - back in 2008,
the same stuff threatened
the Olympic sailing event.
Though non-poisonous and not detrimental to water quality, would you let your kids swim in it? Link (Image: China Foto Press)
The United States has the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but China has got something truly important: the Strategic Pork Reserve.
You’ve read that right: the Chinese government is stockpiling frozen hogs in warehouses to stabilize the price of pork against market fluctuations and ensure supply.
China is a porcine superpower as well as a human one. The Middle Kingdom boasts more than 446 million pigs — one for every three Chinese people and more than the next 43 countries combined. So when there’s a major disruption in the pork supply it hits the economy hard; the "blue-ear pig" disease that forced Chinese farmers to slaughter millions of pigs in 2008, for example, drove the country’s inflation rate to its highest level in a decade.
To prevent further disruptions, the Chinese government established a strategic pork reserve shortly afterward, keeping icy warehouses around the country stocked with frozen pork that can be released during times of shortage. The government was forced to add to the reserve — taking pigs off the market — in the spring of 2010 when a glut led to prices collapsing.
From a very interesting Foreign Policy article about the politics of food: Link – via Fast Company
See also: NeatoShop’s Bacon Store
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The streets of Nanjing, China, may not be paved with gold, but here’s the next best thing: a bus covered with 24-karat gold leaf.
The distinctive "Golden Bus", which began rolling on April 25th of 2011, is the centerpiece of a rather expensive promotion by a Nanjing jewelry store… expensive meaning 200,000 yuan (about $30,800). Usually bus promotional ads involving an entire bus cost 1/10th as much.
Inventor Spot has the story: Link
