Stories about Chinese from July, 2010
Taiwan: Build a home for bats
Green architect, book author, and blogger Alin(阿羚) introduces how to build a home for bats and decrease the rampant trouble of mosquitoes in Taiwan[zht] because each bat can feed on at least 1000 mosquitoes and bugs a day.
Taiwan: Threatened by Microsoft
Tetralet complains about his recent experience with Microsoft [zht] about how the software giant emailed and called to threaten that if Tetralet does not welcome Microsoft to “help his company on software property management“, Microsoft would report to superiors and “what's going to happen is not predicable“.
China: Social media as political subversion tool
This past month has been an interesting one in the cat-and-mouse game between Chinese Internet censorship and its non-conformists. Microblogs in the People's Republic had begun to feel the weight of a heavier government crackdown, following the publication of a report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) claiming...
Taiwan: Manhattan”s” in Taipei
Pomelo(鉑鎂鑼) criticizes the vacuum promises(zht) made by Taipei mayor Hau Lung-pin who promises to build one Manhattan in Shezi region, yet another Manhattan in the basin of Danshui river before the coming election.
Taiwan: Film Festival of “Food and People”
Karen Yu announces on okogreen blog that the “2010 Food and People Film Festival”(zht)-co-hosted by fair-trade coffee shops and environmental NGOs-will be showing 4 documentaries on each friday through out September. The 4 documentaries are We Feed The World, Sustainable Table, Bullshit, and Black Gold.
Taiwan: Rice fields outside the Presidential Office
On July 18th, Taiwanese farmers transformed the Presidential Office into rice fields, not for creating a city garden, but for a protest to the Land Expropriation Act.
Taiwan: Foxconn and the shame of Taiwan
After 12 employees’ jump of buildings and one more jump in Chimei Innolux Corporation-a subsidiary company of Foxconn-on July 20, Chairman Terry (Tai-Ming) Gou was criticized by Taiwanese scholars as “the shame of Taiwan”, so he threatens to halt all investment in Taiwan. Blogger and book writer Kue-hsien Liao argues that...
Taiwan: TEDxTaipei is coming
The second TEDxTaipei installment: TEDxTaipei 2010 will be on July 24th and 25th with 27 speakers from local and from abroad, from musicians to scientists. The whole event will be live-streaming here.
Hong Kong: Citizen campaign to save Tai Long Beach
Many people have the impression that Hong Kong is a concrete forest made up with high rise buildings. However, actually 75% of the land in this global city is undeveloped country side. Such landscape is an unintended result of the colonial history, when after the WWII, the British government tried...
Taiwan: Driftwood in Tsengwen Reservoir
After almost one year since typhoon Morokot, Tsengwen Reservoir is still seriously blocked by driftwood and silt. Citizen journalist Sadapeopo documented the situation in a video report, interviewed the boss of local yacht-tour company and several travelers when visiting the dam, and gave his own observation(zht). “Two-thirds of the wood...
Information Bridging on the Case of Tibetan Environmentalist Karma Samdrup
The case of Tibetan environmentalist, businessman and philanthropist Karma Samdrup, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison on June 24, 2010 by a court in Xinjiang, has been highly unusual in that those monitoring the case were able to see events unfolding almost in real time thanks to constant blog and Twitter updates by his wife and lawyer.
China: Unrestricted cultural imports coming soon, maybe
Remarkable news if it's true, that China has agreed to end restrictions on imports of entertainment products. Despite initial reports, hesitation and eager film buffs, final confirmation, however, remains to be seen.
China: Police's call to set up censorship norms
Beijing City Chaoyang district police station issued an urgent notice today regarding "Calling for a working meeting on the security norm of Internet Company". Jason Ng tweetcasts the talk on censorship norms in the meeting.
China: Buy BP assets? Could do!
Britain's new foreign secretary William Hague is in Beijing today, and Chinese online media are reporting the goal of his trip is to sell China on BP assets from the company's South American holdings. Comments on the news suggest netizens are eager to help begin negotiating the terms of the deal.
China: Wang Hui's plagiarism scandal, international turn
A plagiarism scandal broke out in March in Chinese academic circles when Nanjing University literature professor Wang Binbin charged that Wang Hui's dissertation on Lu Xun -Resistance to despair – contains a number of passages lifted from other books without citation. (More background information from Granite Studio and ChinaGeeks) Wang...
Taiwan: Nojoud Ali's book cover choice shows rooted discrimination
Allison on iPPOST talks about the rooted discrimination (zht) from the example of Taiwanese publisher's business decision to use a white skin and golden hair girl's picture on the cover of Nojoud Ali's book in Chinese, while all the other editions around the world use Nojoud Ali‘s real photo. “WTF? ?...
China: Proposal to use more Mandarin in TV provokes Guangzhou citizens
A recent proposal to use Mandarin instead of Cantonese in the TV news programs of Guangzhou, the capital city of China’s Guangdong province, has been strongly opposed by local residents. The proposal, brought up at the city committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference on July 5, advised Guangzhou...
China: ‘Fraud cop’ accuses IT bigwig, legal action threatened
Well-known for his crusades against academic and scientific fraud, Fang Zhouzi's newest target is former Microsoft China president Jun Tang (pictured). Do his accusations hold up and, even if so, as many feel, has he gone too far?
China: Why is Chinese football so weak?
Recently the New York Times posted the question on “Why does China lag far behind in soccer when it competes so aggressively in many Olympic sports?” and invited a number of experts to answer. Actually similar questions have been raised by Chinese netizens in various QA forums since the beginning...
China: Strong country, poor people
The state broadcaster CCTV revealed in June 28 that China is expected to receive 8 trillion yuan ($1.18 trillion) in financial revenue by the end of 2010. Such figure will turn China into the second-largest country in terms of revenue income after the United States. It seems that China has...
Taiwan: Criticism on the new version of the Presidential Office website
Tai compares the website of the White House and the new version of the Taiwanese Presidential Office website that costs 7,000,000 TWD (217060 USD) to rebuild(zht). Although most criticism online are about the rationality of the cost and the stupid “mobile version“(amended after criticism), Tai points out the major problem...
About our Chinese coverage
Oi wan Lam is the North East Asia editor. Email her story ideas or volunteer to write.
