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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
This little guy is the offspring of a female zebra and a male donkey, born in Haicang Zoo in China. His unusual genetic make-up has graced him with a donkey-shaped body and zebra-like head, with just a smattering of black and white stripes in his mostly brown hide. There were difficulties during birth, but zoo officials say the donkra is thriving and already weighs in at over 30kg. To watch a video of the cutest little crossbreed in China, check out the report on BBC News. Link
A new fad is taking over China and it may be either cute or creepy depending on your take. People are dyeing their dogs and domesticated animals to look like pandas, tigers and other wild animals. What do you think, could this catch on in the States?
With more money to spend, newly wealthy Chinese have embraced dog-owning culture with a vengeance. Dogs are brought into restaurants, fussed over in public, dressed up in ridiculous outfits and dyed to look like ferocious tigers. Panda or chow chow? Tiger or retriever? You be the judge.
This girl is nine years old, and she has some great moves! Watch her show off her shuffling skills at NeatoBambino. Link
There’s a story that Zhou Enlai, the premier of Communist China from 1949-1976, was once asked for his impressions of the long term effects of the French Revolution. Zhou famously responded that it was “too soon to tell”, which has been taken as a testament to the value of having an expansive view of history and China’s intellectual history of doing so. The problem with this anecdote is that it’s not true:
The former premier’s answer has become a frequently deployed cliché, used as evidence of the sage Chinese ability to think long-term – in contrast to impatient westerners.
The trouble is that Zhou was not referring to the 1789 storming of the Bastille in a discussion with Richard Nixon during the late US president’s pioneering China visit. Zhou’s answer related to events only three years earlier – the 1968 students’ riots in Paris, according to Nixon’s interpreter at the time.[...]
At a seminar in Washington to mark the publication of Henry Kissinger’s book, On China, Chas Freeman, a retired foreign service officer, sought to correct the long-standing error.
“I distinctly remember the exchange. There was a misunderstanding that was too delicious to invite correction,” said Mr Freeman.
He said Zhou had been confused when asked about the French Revolution and the Paris Commune. “But these were exactly the kinds of terms used by the students to describe what they were up to in 1968 and that is how Zhou understood them.”
Link (registration required) via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Indiana University
If you’ve always wanted to step inside a painting–or better yet, have on leap out at you–then you’ll enjoy the highlighted pieces in a recent 4D art show held in China. Visitors to the exhibit had lots of fun taking pictures of themselves interacting with the artwork.
The collection of paintings, on display at a contemporary art exhibition in the Jilin province, uses techniques similar to the ‘stand-up’ advertising hoardings that are sometimes painted on the edges of sports pitches.
With cunning use of shadow they trick the eye into believing that the images are leaping off the canvas, that arrows are firing towards the viewers gaze from the bows of cherubs, or that Pinocchio’s nose is protruding wildly from the frame.
The pieces are a huge hit with spectators who have already shown a talent for interacting with the works to become part of the art themselves.
See more of the cool 4D artwork in the Daily Mail gallery. Link
Image credit: STR/AFP/Getty Images
Sheng Xianhui of Kunming, China went into a hospital to have gall stones removed. A week after surgery, his wife noticed a tattoo on his rear end. Sheng claims that the staff at Yunnan Stone Disease Hospital tattooed his backside with characters meaning “stone disease” while he was in surgery.
The hospital has now called police to try to evict Sheng – but he has welcomed the police involvement and asked them to investigate.
“I’m not leaving,” he said. “I’m worried that if I go out for even half an hour, the hospital will claim I had the tattoo done outside.
“But even if I wanted a tattoo, I wouldn’t want those characters and I wouldn’t want it on that part of my body.”
The hospital staff blames the marks on a possible allergic reaction. Link -via Dave Barry
Whilst Americans are busy shopping at the mall (or too busy scrounging for work), the International Monetary Fund released a forecast that signalled the end of the American economic dominance.
According to the IMF, the Age of America will end in 2016:
In addition to comparing the two countries based on exchange rates, the IMF analysis also looked to the true, real-terms picture of the economies using "purchasing power parities." That compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.
Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. Meanwhile the size of the U.S. economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America’s share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China’s would reach 18%, and rising.
A little ingenuity and a lot of brooms will get you this Chinese street sweeper: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via Arbroath
Oh, nothing special, just a duck walking through Beijing showing off its shoes. Link -via Buzzfeed
(Image credit: China Foto Press/Barcroft Media)
Guangdong Enterprises is selling a coffee cup to commemorate “The Fairytale Romantic Union Of All The Centuries,” the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. There’s just one little problem…. Link -via Arbroath
An 11-month-old Tibetan mastiff named Hong Dong (Big Splash) broke the record for dog prices, going to a new home in China for 10 million RMB, which is £945,000 or about $1.5 million US.
Tibetan Mastiffs are huge and fierce guard dogs that have stood watch over nomad camps and monasteries on the Tibetan plateau for centuries.
They are thought to be one of the world’s oldest breeds, and legend has it that both Genghis Khan and Lord Buddha kept them.
More recently, however, they have become highly-prized status symbols for China’s new rich. The dogs are thought to be a pure “Chinese” breed and they are rarely found outside Tibet, giving them an exclusivity that other breeds cannot match.
Accordingly, prices have risen from around 5,000 yuan a puppy five years ago to the hundreds of thousands and even millions.
Hong Dong’s new owner will command high stud fees, as much as 100,000 RMB and may earn his money back soon. Link -via The Daily What
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